denuaflier

Hi,

I heard a new one today. I called to ticket a held reservation. They took my credit card number and said they are sending this in for ticketing queue.

An hour later, I still don't see the reservation tickets to I went to Chase website and see that authorization is approved.

I called Untied and the first agent says you never gave us your credit card. I mentioned to her that I see Chase has authorized the amount so I did give you the credit card. She insist she will need the credit card again to charge it. I did not want to do this fearing double charge (this is United IT).

I asked for a supervisor. She explained that yes, we did take your credit card but we don't have authorization code so Chase must have denied it. I mentioned that Chase has a pending authorization so they actually approved it. She says we must have lost the authorization code. How do you loose the authorization code!

She says she can look it up if I give her the credit card number. Again, I did not want to give the credit card number twice. I ended up cancelling and rebooking the ticket.

I hope they did not charge for cancelled itinerary.

bruceba

I would just give them what they asked for. You have no liability if they double charge you.

channa

+1

And I also wouldn't believe any reason they tell you.

The culture is to see what happened and say something to justify it. They don't really have anything on their screen that shows them the CC was authorized or the code is or isn't there.

All they can see is the ticket wasn't issued, and they need to try it again.

Often1

A total waste of OP's time. He did wind up providing the CC a second time because he needed it after cancelling the first ticket. Lucky he was able to rebook at the same price or he would truly have cut off his nose to spite his face.

Had he, in theory just provided the CC# and been double-charged, he would have been credited the amount by UA or through a chargeback. Just the same net as he will now have with two charges and a refund.

Aspen

Chargebacks do not always proceed a smoothly as one hopes. The last one I had took six months to resolve.
It was a bricks & mortar business so there were hard copies involved not just telephone or website authorisations. I had both copies of the disputed transaction due to the either incompetent or fraudulent behaviour yet the banks still took six months to refund me.
I'm with the OP about being reluctant to give UAL the opportunity to charge me twice, especially if it was a large amount pushing you towards your credit limit.

WineCountryUA

Double charge issues seem to resolve much quicker than that (based on an non-UA experience).

Often1

True. They happen, but if you call in an the CC issuer can see that it's a duplicate, particularly where the ticket # is the same, a temporary credit is typically instant, even if it takes a while for the final credit to issue.

Wx4caster

How do you "loose" an authorization code, indeed!

WineCountryUA

Likely the code was never properly entered by the phone agent.
Also in some systems the code is deleted once authorization is done, appears the deletion may have occurred prior to authorization completing.

And equally likely this is a made up reason.

bldr1k

I end up with double authorizations all the time. They have some process that goes through and deletes one of them. About 50% of the time when I change a ticket online it fails, but it actually does the authorization. Then I call to have it fixed and they do a 2nd authorization.

Why agents constantly make up nonsense answers is a mystery. It is a bit scary that many of us know more about how things work then many of the agents.

physioprof

I am on the side of just giving the agent the CC# again. I have seen all kinds of pending charges on my CC that make no sense and then they disappear. For example, I recently ordered flowers to be sent from my local florist that my wife and I patronize regularly and have an excellent relationship with. I didn't want to use the credit card that I already had on file, and so I gave them a new one over the phone. I noticed that they actually put in pending charges for the flowers on both credit cards, and then only the correct one went through to an actual charge.

gengar

But CC preauthorizations are different from actual charges. Most CC users have experienced preauths that eventually just "fall off", but that is not necessarily relevant to the OP. In this case, the OP's concern was that the preauth would eventually process as an actual charge - a concern that may have arisen only because of OP's perception that the UA phone agent was lying.

FWIW, last year I was double-charged for a booking by Hilton and it took several weeks to get a refund (although to be fair, Hilton did compensate me when I complained about the long delay). These things don't always go smoothly, so some consumer concern is justified.

channa

If they don't have the tools to give you a real answer, and they have performance measure that value short calls, giving a BS answer is better for their metrics if it sticks than saying they don't know and finding out the correct answer. And for the occasional person who challenges them, they take the call time hit.

It's really what the company values -- in this case, speed over accuracy.

docbert

If they do, you're going to end up with 2 charges, for 2 different ticket numbers - which is going to take effort to get resolved in your favor (although in the end I'm sure it will be)

If you had simple let them re-process it then worst case you would have ended up with 2 charges for the SAME ticket number, which would have been trivial to get resolved in your favor.

So... yeah... Probably not the best plan.

However realistically UA probably did the pre-auth, but never actually processed the transaction so you'll likely only be charged once (for the new ticket).

emcampbe

Happens with Farelock every single time. They authorize the proper amount, but do it twice. But I have only ever seen one go through. Over the year, I've probably seen this the ~dozen times I've used Farelock, so doesn't bother me anymore.