Seeking Advice, Please

My guess? It's more profitable to see who shows up at the airport then
attempt to bill them higher rates (and otherwise resell the seat) then
to attempt to contact people and identify whether a transaction is
fraudulent or not.


I don't know why easyJet are working the way they do. Other airlines have
been known to allow the passengers to check in and then allow the passengers
to travel on the basis that by questioning (with the cooperation of the
police) the passenger they can determine who the fraudster intermediary was.

In message , at 12:57:18 on
Wed, 27 May 2009, DevilsPGD remarked:
I can understand why there is greater risk when the ticket is paid for
by a third party - but when the Credit Card is in the same name as the
passenger, why are Easyjet cancelling those tickets too?

My guess? It's more profitable to see who shows up at the airport then
attempt to bill them higher rates (and otherwise resell the seat) then
to attempt to contact people and identify whether a transaction is
fraudulent or not.

They don't have to start working out if the transaction is fraudulent,
they could just cancel the ticket and *tell the customer* there was a
problem with the card. To also not refund the payment is rubbing salt in
the wound, and strikes me as an extremely dubious practice.

(Of course, we should also be asking where the false "card declined"
messages are coming from. I have experienced this several times
recently, but for flights/train-tickete at the time of ordering so I
simply used a different card; but one long-standing CC monthly charge
was falsely bumped[1], and a phone company cut me off!)

[1] Phone company says it was declined, Card Company say they were (a)
never asked and (b) have in any event never declined any transaction on
that card.

"Card Declined" is sometimes used as a catch-all for other errors,

I know - that's why I put it in quotes.

or where the merchant account's fraud system detected something
suspicious and declined the transaction (although not the specific
card) before even talking to the issuing bank.

But putting the blame on the banks is disingenuous.

Also, one time this happened to me it was a monthly telephone payment
that had gone through OK for several years. Then suddenly bounced for no
reason that anyone could discover (they almost lost my business over it,
and I ended up talking to the MD about it).

Unfortunately, it's not in a company's best interests to return the
exact error message received, doing so actually encourages fraudsters to
use said company's services to validate credit cards. For example, if I
have a credit card number, name, billing address, phone number and CVV2
but know that one piece of information is wrong, a merchant that will
tell me which piece if wrong is invaluable.

Yes, but when all those things are OK, it's frustrating for the genuine
customer to be told the card has been declined when he knows it's not an
issue with his credit limit.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 07:26:05 on
Thu, 28 May 2009, Graham Harrison
remarked:
My guess? It's more profitable to see who shows up at the airport then
attempt to bill them higher rates (and otherwise resell the seat) then
to attempt to contact people and identify whether a transaction is
fraudulent or not.

I don't know why easyJet are working the way they do. Other airlines
have been known to allow the passengers to check in and then allow the
passengers to travel on the basis that by questioning (with the
cooperation of the police) the passenger they can determine who the
fraudster intermediary was.

The immediate problem is the stone wall they throw up when there isn't
an intermediary, and there didn't seem to be any reason why the ticket
was cancelled. On Watchdog they described how Customer Services said the
passenger should contact the Fraud Prevention team, then refused to give
any contact details!
--
Roland Perry

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 12:57:18 on
Wed, 27 May 2009, DevilsPGD remarked:
I can understand why there is greater risk when the ticket is paid for
by a third party - but when the Credit Card is in the same name as the
passenger, why are Easyjet cancelling those tickets too?

My guess? It's more profitable to see who shows up at the airport then
attempt to bill them higher rates (and otherwise resell the seat) then
to attempt to contact people and identify whether a transaction is
fraudulent or not.

They don't have to start working out if the transaction is fraudulent,
they could just cancel the ticket and *tell the customer* there was a
problem with the card. To also not refund the payment is rubbing salt in
the wound, and strikes me as an extremely dubious practice.

(Of course, we should also be asking where the false "card declined"
messages are coming from. I have experienced this several times
recently, but for flights/train-tickete at the time of ordering so I
simply used a different card; but one long-standing CC monthly charge
was falsely bumped[1], and a phone company cut me off!)

[1] Phone company says it was declined, Card Company say they were (a)
never asked and (b) have in any event never declined any transaction on
that card.

"Card Declined" is sometimes used as a catch-all for other errors,

I know - that's why I put it in quotes.

or where the merchant account's fraud system detected something suspicious
and declined the transaction (although not the specific card) before even
talking to the issuing bank.

But putting the blame on the banks is disingenuous.

Also, one time this happened to me it was a monthly telephone payment that
had gone through OK for several years. Then suddenly bounced for no reason
that anyone could discover (they almost lost my business over it, and I
ended up talking to the MD about it).

Unfortunately, it's not in a company's best interests to return the
exact error message received, doing so actually encourages fraudsters to
use said company's services to validate credit cards. For example, if I
have a credit card number, name, billing address, phone number and CVV2
but know that one piece of information is wrong, a merchant that will
tell me which piece if wrong is invaluable.

Yes, but when all those things are OK, it's frustrating for the genuine
customer to be told the card has been declined when he knows it's not an
issue with his credit limit.
--
Roland Perry

It's always difficult to know what caused some of these problems. In the
past I've seen humans get a reject on a card from a known and trusted client
and simply try again to get authorisation. The problem has been in the
interbank communication system which timed out on the original request (and
not getting a reply the requestor assumed the worst and rejected). In the
meantime the first transaction completes and reduces the available credit.
The request for authorisation goes in a 2nd time by which time the available
credit is no longer enough and so you get a genuine "no" but it's impossible
to tell the difference. I've actually seen transaction logs showing the
same authorisation request being sent 3 or 4 times in which case you have to
think "no wonder the guy has no available credit left".

In message , at 08:55:28 on
Thu, 28 May 2009, Graham Harrison
remarked:
I've actually seen transaction logs showing the same authorisation
request being sent 3 or 4 times in which case you have to think "no
wonder the guy has no available credit left".

It's a pity the system wasn't designed with a mechanism to de-dupe
multiple attempted identical transactions. The originating system giving
them a unique reference number, re-used after a "no reply" would
suffice. There would then be a way to debug the few remaining problem
scenarios, rather than simply having everyone wring their hands and
point at the other guy.
--
Roland Perry