Originally Posted by
irishguy28
I think that’s being too paranoid.
A mileage broker is likely to find themselves in this situation for every booking they make on behalf of their clients, and will soon tire of the effort and bother of attending AF ticket counters each time and/or creating convincing fake IDs for each new name they use (FB would quickly catch on if they use the same name each time).
A genuine passenger, only expecting to find themselves in this situation once, is far more likely to follow this required course of action (though, invariably, all such reports here on FT come from US customers living hours from the nearest AF ticket desk).
For what it’s worth, while we regularly have reports here of people being told to report to an AF ticket desk, we have yet to hear of anyone doing so and still being refused. As such, there is no reason to suspect that the OP would have the ticket cancelled even after attending an AF ticket desk. However, that we have heard no reports of this happening is more likely due to the fact that these people never bother to go through with the booking....which from AF’s perspective may validate their use of this approach.
I hope that the OP will tell us how this situation concludes, because most other posters neglect to complete their stories.
I do remember a recent thread where the OP showing up at the airport was not sufficient to clear the award.
I am not sure how you describe a mileage broker. My understanding is that they act as middle man to make demand and supply meet. X wishes to fly on AF ORD-CDG. The broker checks for availability and find Y who has plenty of FB miles (usually by transferring from a cc). Then the broker charges say $1,000 to X and pays $800 to Y when he has booked the award ticket in the name of X. If FB refuses to issue, then it is up to Y to clear the problem. The broker is never in contact with FB.
In the current case, the fact that the "friend" travels on exactly the same flight as the FB member should/could help.
BTW: I.remember reading an interesting blog (cannot find it now) about some ways people use to minimize the risk of getting flagged when bartering miles. This is .in USA where this activity is primarily taking place with very-generous credit cards. A guy books an award for himself and a "client" on the same flight. A couple of weeks later he cancels his own ticket. A guy was found out as he had done it repeatedly on his account.