Any of you guys hire contractors/consultants in your line of business and hence have to pay for their flights/expenses etc? If so, there is, what can only be descried as a scam, to look out for.

I work for a very large city financial consultancy, and hence we send consultants out to clients a lot and charge them the expenses of doing so. What is out of order however is the following:

We are told to book the flights through the firm's travel agents. The agents buy the flights at full BA prices and we are then given a receipt for this price which we can then provide to the client in order to claim back the expenses.

However, due the the size of our firm, we obtain preferential rates from BA (upto 50% off). At the end of the year, our firm is given a rebate which totals the amount of the discount for all flights booked over the year.

This means that we not only reclaim the full cost of the flights from the client, but we also get a rebate back from BA. Hence we make a profit at the expense of the client. What should happen, is that we only charge the discounted air fare to the client.

Dirty rotten scoundrels?