Korean Job Discussion Forums

[alphalfa]

Agencies and businesses asking individuals to provide personal credit card info over the phone and/or through email is PLAIN WRONG. They should not be asking for this info and individuals SHOULD NOT be giving
it to them .

I have been working with an agent here in Canada who recently asked for my credit card info and I said NO. I pointed out that it was not wise and more importantly not safe to do this. Common sense would tell you.
I spoke to the travel agent with whom this agent does business with and asked them how I could pay for the plane ticket since a booking has already been made on my behalf. Again, this travel agent asked me to give /send my credit card info to them over the phone and by email.
Duh?? going in a circle.. I asked the travel agent whether their website
had a secure link whereby I could pay for the ticket using my cc ifo...
They told me they did not know about any secure site ..https:// Besides,
their website is all in Korean hard to navigate. The travel agent was to send me the travel itinerary immediately following our phone conversation
I had with them one hour ago. Still waiting for the booking reference #.

I called the agent who secured a teaching position for me about this. He STILL thinks it is fine for me to give my cc info to him over the phone. He says other 'teachers' have done this.. In his mind, there are only two ways 'teachers' can pay for the plane ticket - by phone , by email. It's not possible to visit the agent's travel office as the office is in Toronto and I am in Vancouver.

I do not think I will receive the booking reference number from the travel agent to purchase the ticket myself... for obvious reasons. The agent has booked a 'block' of tickets and so they would receive a certain amount of commission for the purchase of ALL tickets. I am the 'holdout' at the moment. I would prefer to pay through a secure airline website or visit a travel agent (with a booking reference in hand) here to make the purchase.

There's gotta be a better and more safe way to do this.
I may have P%$$ed off the recruiting agent over this matter. So be it, but I am not providing him with my personal cc info in the manner he wants.
ARRGGHHH!!

By the way, the recruiting agent in Toronto is Canadian Connections and the travel office they use is naratravel.

[spliff]

Why are you paying, you school should foot the bill.

[cmr]

What if you didn't have a credit card in the first place?

[dogshed]

Giving your credit card to a travel agent over the phone should be fine. It would not be any different than giving it to any other merchant over the phone. Email theoretically could be intercepted by a third party which one might assume would be more difficult to track than an insider at a merchant stealing your credit card info.

Although email is not encrypted I not sure it's more dangerous to send a credit card number in email than sending it via a secure server.

Some credit card companies have a website tool that will generate a one time use credit card number. Once the merchant uses it the credit card number is invalid. This should be safe even with email.

To nose into your personal business, unless it's EPIK they should be paying for your travel and if it is EPIK then you do the booking yourself and they reimburse you later. I used http://www.bt-store.com/ and got a really low price. (I think getting a good price made it easier to get the reimbursement without a hassle.)