I had a similar but less extreme situation with AmEx. I misdialed their phone number by one digit in an obvious way that must happen frequently. In retrospect I should have hung up immediately when I didn't hear their usual recording.
The guy who answered pretended to be AmEx and insisted that I listen to info about vacation packages. I just wanted to pay my bill by phone quickly but he tried to say that I needed to listen to him first and he wouldn't help with my payment unless I was nice and polite to him. When he refused to let me talk to a supervisor, I hung up, fortunately before I gave him my card number or any personal information.
It sounded well practiced, although it could be some dodgy travel agent or outfit that normally makes unsolicited phone calls to sell their vacation packages rather than some scammer who deliberately picked a number very close to a legitimate AmEx toll free number.
What I learned from this is to be very careful about whether the correct number starts with 800, 877, 888, etc.
Originally Posted by
PBAudit
A temporary, albeit, distasteful, solution is to pay the $400 Service fee, take you trip and then dispute the new $400 charge. I recall the trip is in the Summer and since you have a couple of months (?) to dispute a charge, the timing should work.
Something does sound "off". It is unusual to have a company the perpetuates fraud, to accept credit cards. I believe the credit card companies pay close attention to the # of disputed charges and would kick out this company if there is a pattern of fraudulent charges.
If you accept the $400 charge now, what would be the later reason for disputing it since now you're aware of the nature of the service to your plane tickets that the guy does? Doing this could even get you in trouble with your credit card company since they could think that your original chargeback was fraudulent.