Astar Ripped off scammed us of money and didn't refund it. Tampa, Florida

We received a phone call early this morning about 7:00am about me winning a holiday to Florida as I had entered my details about 6 weeks ago in a competition or something.I don't remember doing it. I immediately though ye right this is a scam just hang up, but for some reason they kept me on the phone and sucked me right in.

I put the phone on speaker for my husband to listen to as well, and even he though it was a scam but neither of us thought to just say no sorry we are not interested and just hang up. As we kept talking to then man I did ask him "is this a scam or a joke" he replied "no this is a legitimate call and company and what we offer is government approved". I thought ye OK but still a bit suss.(I still don't know why I am still listening to him).

After I finished speaking to him, he pasted me over to the "travel coordinator" to check my personal details (name, address, telephone number.email address) and to also take my debit card details. I asked what for he replied " to pay for the $998 tax to secure your holiday for you". I said to him "ye ok but we don't have that amount in our account, and he said " that doesn't matter we just need to enter your account details into the system and even if it doesn't get approved today, it will show up that we processed your payment and secures you the holiday and you can pay the $998 at a later date before you wish to use the tickets". I said ye ok, (dummy me) gave him my details and at the same time my husband was going to check to see if the money will come out as we only had a small amount in our account that we needed.

Unfortunately we lost $286.00 to so called secure our spot. I said to him " I thought you said that we could pay it at a later date!" he said" yes but master card will attempt to take part of it out even if we try to take the full amount out. Then I thought this sounds fishy and yes,why would master card try and take out only $286.00 if he wanted to take out $998.00 that doesn't make sense!

I then asked him to reverse it and he said yes he can and it will be done straight away as I really needed that money. Then he said that a conformation email will be sent to us about the reversal and just hung up. I was dumbfounded,and knew straight away we were scammed.

We contacted our bank and told them what had happened and they said that when the transaction was done, their system automatically brought up an alert about the transaction and put a stop on our cards. They said that someone from our fraud team will ring me this morning about it and they said that we may be able to get our money back as the transaction is on authorization only and that an alert was raised automatically.

I am still waiting for the call and I really do hope I get the money back asap, but huge lesson learned, do not give details out over the phone unless you are ringing a company you know and have dealt with before.