Help: anyone in Hungary can do me a favor?

sebastiangraeber wrote:

....
Go to a ticket-machine, collect the ticket, go to a service desk and claim for refund. That's all

I will reward your efforts with 30 EURs. However, this should be done today or tomorrow, as the train was booked for Sunday.

Any help highly appreciated: post(at)sebastian-graeber(dot)de

Thank you very much!!

Sebastian

How do you collect the ticket from the ticket machine?

fluffy2560 wrote:

How do you collect the ticket from the ticket machine?

He has to PM you the reference number. Which of course MAV tells ticket purchasers not to do.....

klsallee wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

How do you collect the ticket from the ticket machine?

He has to PM you the reference number.

Ok, no idea. Don't travel by train normally but train tickets aren't so expensive so I am wondering why 30 EUR is also on offer?

Could be a scam. E.g. Fella wants refund for the ticket up front minus the EUR 30, then you are given a duff reference number.

fluffy2560 wrote:

tickets aren't so expensive so I am wondering why 30 EUR is also on offer?

Don't know. Could be an international ticket or multi-day pass.

klsallee wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

tickets aren't so expensive so I am wondering why 30 EUR is also on offer?

Don't know. Could be an international ticket or multi-day pass.

Could be but I amended my post to suggest it might be a scam of some description.

sebastiangraeber wrote:

I am a bit in a hazzle and hope anyone can help.

Did you contact MAV? See the MAV FAQ section on how to get your refund. (See the "How to get a refund" link at the bottom of the web site).

fluffy2560 wrote:

Could be a scam. E.g. Fella wants refund for the ticket up front minus the EUR 30, then you are given a duff reference number.

Always possible. But a cleaver criminal would give over the 30 Euro "reward", so you think everything is copacetic, and then abscond with your bank account information......

klsallee wrote:

... and then abscond with your bank account information......

Hmmm....but bank account on its own isn't much good. Still needs ID, password, SMS code etc.

Ok, it's almost certainly a variation on an airine ticket refund scam. I just Google'd it here:

http://scam-detector.com/travel-scams/a … ket-refund

The difference is that this is for trains and possibly does have the tickets, but as soon as they have the money up front, they'll refund the tickets to themselves immediately, in case someone rings MAV to check the tickets exist. Or the tickets don't exist and someone us are just gullible. I think the OP has made a number of mistakes in thinking that a ticket with MAV would be of very high value, especially for the EUR 30 "reward". Moreover, they've used an anonymous e-mail address at probably a hacked e-mail location.

So, I guess the answer is: DON'T DO IT, IT'S A SCAM!!!!

fluffy2560 wrote:

but bank account on its own isn't much good. Still needs ID, password, SMS code etc.

Ah, but I said "bank account information" not just "bank account". The "information" part includes your ID, password, PIN code, etc.. A pro can squirrel a lot of information from some victims.

But overall, I also had my tongue firmly in my cheek when I wrote that. The 'dot-dot-dot' is my pause after the joke (as often seen in Cary Grant movies).

More subtle than a ...

fluffy2560 wrote:

Ok, it's almost certainly a variation on an airine ticket refund scam. I just Google'd

And the train tickets are refundable too. As I pointed out above. The MAV web site has a pretty obvious link how to get your tickets refunded. 

From your link: People transfer money to a stranger by Western Union??? How many colors of stupid/greedy for a "deal" does one have to be to do that? There is an old saying: it is hard to scam an honest person because they are not interested in "easy money" or a "great deal" from trying to game the system.

So IMHO, anyone falling for such scams like this would have to mark their loss down as a self inflicted stupidity tax.

klsallee wrote:

.... stupidity tax.

I like the idea of that but how to apply it? Maybe rephrase as "gullibility tax", e.g. if you are stupid enough to be suckered into paying it....

I once had a job doing mailing shots. The return rate was less than 1%. Obviously by volume, the spammers win on percentages so that alone makes it profitable....

fluffy2560 wrote:

mailing shots

How does that work? Mail a letter then take a shot of vodka? Sounds like a great job!

fluffy2560 wrote:

Maybe rephrase as "gullibility tax"

Sure, that works too. There are all sorts of taxes out there.

klsallee wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

mailing shots

How does that work? Mail a letter then take a shot of vodka? Sounds like a great job!

Haha, no it's stuffing envelopes in a snail mail attempt to drum up business. Junk mail basically. Junk mail returns are pathetic and I guess, now replaced by spam. It costs virtually nothing to spam millions of punters.

With a return rate of less than 0.5%, volume is everything. With a bit of effort in narrowing the audience by buying lists, hitting just 100,000 targeted e-mail addresses is still going to turn up 500 possible leads/responses and if only 1% of those decide to engage, it's still 5 sales or cons. Obviously if they can scam small amounts, say $200 off each one, it's still $1000 for doing not much at all. Scale that up with spam 10 or 20 times and it's going to be pretty profitable/attractive for one man scam artists.

I get about 10 spams a day myself on my other e-mail addresses. Luckily the mail provider is pretty good at catching most of them. The also seem to go in cycles. The most popular one at the moment is fake Viagra. Obviously, the chances of catching the spammer is zero and even if they were caught selling fake Viagra, one has to wonder if it would stand up in court......(ha,ha)...