why don’t you pop over sometime and see what you do for yourself?

We are completely transparent and proud of our operation.

Regards

Barry

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Teletext occupies a very important place in the travel portfolio and many millions of people happily view our advertiser’s products and book their holidays through us. For this reason I think that the TV will remain an important area going forward. In addition we operate some of the top sites on the internet and even through SMS phone alerts. Anyone selling a package holiday must be a member of one of the well known trade bodies.

No one else comes close to doing the checks we do nor having the stringent rules we have. We insist on trade body membership for package holidays.

As I said before I agree with you that consumers should do their own checks after all if its not on Teletext you could be dealing with anyone – including a fraudster.

Barry

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Thank you for taking the time to respond – as I mentioned in my earlier comments, it’s good that companies like Teletext have processes in place to protect consumers from holiday scams. I have to admit not using Teletext on the TV or on the internet, but do list companies that aren’t a member of a travel association?

Also, do you think there’s a future for Teletext on the television?

@ Rohan

Sorry, I didn’t reply to this message (hopefully you subscribed to it so you get this) My dad uses Teletext on the television, but has started to use the internet a lot more recently. I still think there’s a place for it for finding holidays especially.

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As Head of Compliance at Teletext I am the first to advise that consumers should check out who they are booking a holiday with.

Darren is correct we do vet every advertiser very carefully indeed. No other media portal carries out the extensive vetting and checks we carry out on every potential advertiser both before and after they join us. This is not to make it difficult for advertisers, but rather to ensure that our consumers can be assured that they are dealing with genuine travel companies.

I head the two bodies that are fighting fraud within the industry and Teletext has committed a lot of time and resource in trying to stamp out fraud at all levels across the industry – even though this is not something that generally happens on Teletext. indeed we worked with the Metropolitan Police, ABTA and the CAA very closely to bring about the recent successful prosecution of Chris Philippou and gang. I do not believe any other media portal would do this.

Hopefully we spot any issues and deal with them before they affect consumers – and this is borne out by our track record.

On the pricing. Teletext is one of the few places that every top brand is competing and so they have to show their best prices to get noticed. In addition Darren is correct about the discounts, I have seen some truly fabulous deals advertised. How do i know they are available? Teletext maintains a dedicated team that spend their lives mystery shopping every advertiser. They spend their lives duplicating the sort of search that consumers do and concentrate on the cheap and popular. We have the toughest rules in the business and always punish those that break them. This is why we have been working with ABTA on transparent pricing for a number of years. We are confident that our advertisers prices cannot be beaten.

Every advertiser on Teletext is rated for compliance performance and we have made it plain what standard we require to everyone. In the next year we will gain access to the systems advertisers use and so will be able to give a high degree of assurance about the prices shown.

Barry

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Darren, you are right, customers should make sure that they are booking with a reputable company. However the spate of ‘Bust Outs’ in the industry, which caused ABTA to change their policy on bankruptcy, included some companies that were ABTA members. So travellers need to educate themselves on what to look out for when booking. Also understanding the difference between ATOL and ABTA bonding.

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