How do dummy tickets/itinerary service websites work?

Question

I'll try to keep this short. I spent the last few hours looking up the nature of the so called dummy tickets, and I could not get a direct answer to one question I had. Is it just a document I pay for to save on flight tickets? From what I learned, you basically pay a website like Visa Reservation 50 bucks, and they allow you to write whatever information you want on a document before emailing it to you. If the visa gets denied for something that isn't related to the itinerary, you don't get any refunds. If you do get accepted, you go pay the full price for an actual plane ticket and accommodation etc. Is that the gist of it?

So, in order to not pay the full price of plane tickets, I pay for a document from a website that says I'm getting a ticket. Then I either pay the full amount to the airline company + hotels anyway, or I get denied and the upside is that I only spent 50 bucks on this document instead of a plane ticket?

TLDR: Are these itinerary services just (still somewhat costly) safety nets? Their whole purpose is an insurance that makes you pay a fee before your visa so you don't lose out on more if you're denied? (And if you're accepted you just spent that extra 50 bucks to be safe before actual reservations).

Answer 1

Some countries demand to see paid reservations before they will even consider issuing a visa. You could buy refundable reservations, but these are often very expensive. Or you could pay someone a small amount of money to lie and say you bought something. You will not get your "lie money" back. Once you have your visa, you can then buy cheaper nonrefundable reservations knowing you're able to go.

I don't think using such a service is a good idea. It involves lying in writing, and paying someone else to participate in your lie. I would not be ok giving personal details like my passport number to someone like that. Who knows what other ways they might decide to make money?

• in fact, here's an interesting wrinkle in the situation. Even though the UK does not require you to prebook tickets, at least one "we'll help you lie" site claims that they do, and that you therefore require their services. I should not be surprised that an organization that exists to help you lie might lie to you, I suppose. That's the thing: trusting such a site is inherently risky and not something I would recommend at all.

A safer and more honest approach is to first check whether you in fact need either plane tickets or a hotel reservation. If you do, buy the expensive fully-refundable thing, and refund it even if you get the visa; then buy the cheaper nonrefundable one. It requires you to invest the initial nonrefundable price, but there is no lying and no chance of you committing fraud or some other crime, nor doing business with lying fraudsters who know your personal details.

Answer 2

Metrics easily abused are quickly disused

There's a reason UK and many countries no longer want to see your proof of airline ticket: because they are so easily faked, using websites just like this one.

There are hustlers who will get you fake documents of several kinds. Need a British sponsor? They know a guy who knows a guy. Fake bank accounts? Not a problem. Every one of them will tell you that you need those documents to improve your application. They make money when you buy those documents, and therefore have every incentive to lie to you about this.

Anyway, once Immigration realizes that an analysis metric they used to use is so easily faked, it stops being helpful and they don't want it anymore.

What's more, people have an unfortunate habit of getting their info from search engines, and in your haste, that's exactly what you did. Search engines are computer algorithms that smart people can fool. Doing this is called SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. So you have

• an army of swindlers all aggressively SEO'ing content which claims you need the documents they sell
• burying content from the government, who is not doing any SEO whatsoever
• secondary news sources who write articles on subjects, do lazy research with search engines, and presume search engines are always correct. * ...and they do SEO on those.

Don't bother buying any sort of fake "proofs"

One of the great conceits of the novice traveler is that he is more clever than the government, and can "pull one over on the gov't". Such a great fantasy, isn't it? Laugh and recognize that for what it is. Fantasy.

Immigration sees a lot of applicants. They see the patterns that you don't realize are patterns. Your company with the travel documents, they see 100 a day and they know they're fake.

This will apply to basically anything you can easily do to fake credibility. Presenting it will backfire.

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* Often these articles are actually for "article marketing" / "content marketing", and is written specifically to put adverts on it, without giving a damn for quality. If you ever see articles where you're 6 paragraphs in and it doesn't seen like they've really said anything, but have repeated some keywords a few times, you're reading one of those.