But the Herald was told several families realised the vendor was providing inconsistent and misleading explanations, and parents contacted airlines directly and were told the tickets were not genuine.<\/p>\n
The SkyKiwi website was reporting the allegations, and had spoken to some alleged victims who said they\u2019d been in touch with police in Auckland.<\/p>\n
SkyKiwi said the estimated losses amounted to 1.79 million Chinese Yuan Renminbi ($444,000).<\/p>\n
A WeChat post claimed several affected customers had been planning to visit relatives in China and travel abroad at the end of the year. <\/p>\n
\u201cDue to rising airfares, many of them chose to purchase tickets through \u2018agents\u2019 on third-party platforms,\u201c the poster added.<\/p>\n
Authorities in the southwest Chinese city of Xingyi in Guizhou province had reportedly been alerted to the alleged fraud.<\/p>\n
This situation has had a serious impact on the community, the Herald reader said.<\/p>\n
She said many victims were now unable to travel to visit relatives, especially as airfares had risen since they originally made their purchases.<\/p>\n
Cath O\u2019Brien, Board of Airline Representatives (Barnz) executive director, said the allegations highlighted the need for vigilance. <\/p>\n
\u201cCustomers should always take care to ensure they are buying the airline tickets from the airline in question, or from a travel agent that they know and trust.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear what airlines were involved, or what contact New Zealand authorities have had with international partners about the alleged fraud.<\/p>\n
New Zealand Police have so far not provided comment on the specific case or allegations. <\/p>\n
\u201cPolice urge anyone who sees something they think might be attractive or a great deal to do their research, speak to friends and family, check with the Financial Markets Authority, and be vigilant about anything that seems out of the ordinary,\u201d a police spokesperson said. <\/p>\n
The Consulate General of China has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But the Herald was told several families realised the vendor was providing inconsistent and misleading explanations, and parents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[94529,63057,4376,138,4444,2562,1259,6183,5988,3561,6501,111,139,69,1118,17182,766,1461,20705,1458,10507,2963],"class_list":{"0":"post-138861","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-444k","9":"tag-airfare","10":"tag-airline","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-chinese","13":"tag-claims","14":"tag-community","15":"tag-dozens","16":"tag-families","17":"tag-fraud","18":"tag-missing","19":"tag-new-zealand","20":"tag-newzealand","21":"tag-nz","22":"tag-of","23":"tag-reportedly","24":"tag-reports","25":"tag-scam","26":"tag-struck","27":"tag-targeted","28":"tag-ticket","29":"tag-zealands"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}