Costa Rica News – Scams are rampant in Costa Rica due to the fact that the scammers know exactly how to work the inept Costa Rica legal system.
The Office of Consumer Support has received 44 recent complaints about two travel agencies.
The Ministry of Economy has reached out to both companies, which have disappeared without fulfilling contracts, without success.
They are said to either cancel on or leave their customers hanging or even stranded in an airport. They do not answer the phone or emails. This attitude has been denounced as cowardly. The travel agencies sell packages for hundreds of thousands of colones and then disappear.
39 complaints were received about a trip to Mexico that was canceled suddenly, affecting 85 people. There are 5 complaints about a tour in Orlando being suspended a week before the date it was supposed to take place. Another group recently traveled to Mexico for a soccer game and denounced breaches of the contract they signed.
It has, so far, not been possible to negotiate the reimbursement of the money.
These cases are sent to the Public Prosecutor’s Office where the scams and frauds will be seen as a criminal offense, which of course can take years to actually have an outcome.