Originally Posted by
Youngmiler
No, a lot of companies do the $1.00 charge to authorize the card, restaurants do too.
It actually makes no sense for UA to do this in the context of processing a ticket purchase.
Apparently UA didn't do this before CO took them over according to OP's observations.
$1 auth only makes sense when necessary to validate a card that won't be charged right away. If PAX is purchasing a ticket, charge amount is known, so it should just be charged.
The real stupidity of this apparent new strategy is that COdabUA is now paying c/c processing and authorization fees twice: once for the $1 auth, then again for the separate charge transaction. This doubles their card authorization expense in terms of per-item fees.