FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Can't book award flight because all cards declined
Old Apr 15, 2017, 9:11 am
  #14  
WidgetTravels
 
Join Date: Apr 2016
Posts: 159
Originally Posted by RealHJ
If it's declined will show at card issuer as declined. Does it? Or does it show as authorized. It's most likely not declined, just that Dullta has a very buggy system for phone agents now and if AVS match isn't exact, then the Dullta system will VOID the AUTHORIZED charge.

Make sure that you give all the digits and zip code (5 or 9 digits, as on file with card issuer) to DL exactly as the card issuer has it. Any slightest mismatch in the address, or if the card issuer doesn't support AVS, will result in Dullta voiding the authorized transaction.

This has most likely nothing to do with card issuer and has to do with DL having a buggy and untested system for payment processing by its phone reps. It's a well known and documented problem, present for the last few years (ever since the downgrade in the res system). Basically, the Dullta developers never put in the error response and handling for AVS address mismatch or N/A - so it gets stuck at that point and the transaction will void (no way to handle it any other way, that part of the code never got done), and for years Dullta hasn't bothered to fix it, though they know it has to be fixed. The workaround is to get someone to use the old reservations/ticketing system which has a more functional payment gateway, as I've been told.
The address verification system hasn't changed in years for Res. Don't know quite what you're talking about here. We have an error message sent to us when the address is wrong, if the CID/Expiration Date is wrong, if the card number is wrong, etc.

If the response comes back that card is declined, it means all information on Delta's side is correct, but the bank isn't authorizing the charge. This can be for a variety of reasons, the most likely is that there are not enough funds on the card.

Now this is where things COULD'VE been caused by the rep on the Delta side. If they don't put in the international billing address properly (there's a separate field for non US/Canada addresses), the card would've errored out due to the address being put in incorrectly. But it still pulls pending funds from the card. Then, when the address is inputted correctly, the agent wouldn't have received the wrong address, but not enough funds (or over a daily limit/suspected fraud) were available.

There was an update about 18 months ago that briefly caused hangups with card payments, but that had nothing to do with the billing address. It was quickly fixed.
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