Stranger

That;s ot what the other poster was saying. But makes sense.

Not so quick.

First, this is now the third report of cases where the (new?) AC fraud dept stood in the way of somewhat traveling. AC claims that's what the issue was too.

Second, this is *the AC fraud dept,* not the CC fraud dept. Which would get into action before the CC is deemed to be compromised by the CC issuer. Precisely to avoid a situation where someone buys a ticket fraudulently and flies. With the true card holder later filing a complaint, the charge getting reversed and the airline being on the hook.

That seems to me the only possible rationale for AC having set up a fraud detection mechanism. Probably too many cases...

Indeed. Would be AC anticipating a situation where the charge would have been reversed after they had flown. Not a blocked CC.

WR Cage

The effort to drag TP is in part because of my own professional and personal experience with credit card data security. Prior to the introduction of Chip and Pin technology in Canada, I routinely had debates with store clerks, customer service managers, corporate fraud departments, CFOs, etc. At the time I was hocking PCISS data security consulting services. My professional and personal problem was anyone who took the low tech uninformed view that asking for a second form ID was better (least costly, more effective) than trusting new cyber security technologies. This is a long way of saying that if a clerk asked to see my drivers license when I paid by credit card, my response was to request the store manager and refuse to produce the second form of ID.

At the corporate level, I was involved in one BC Office of the Privacy Commissioner inquiry as to whether the Okanagan Avis/Budget franchise could photocopy and require both the drivers license and credit card for purposes of performing the credit card verification.

In all theses corporate and personal instances, I found the vast number of credit card verifications are initiated by customer service clerks and cashiers thinking they are doing a service for the customer or protecting the company's assets. Also in all instances where there was a large company, the corporate office did not sanction the clerks actions and there was no corporate policy to conduct credit card verifications. However small companies and NPOs did subscribe to the unofficial processes.

So yes, perhaps my own personal and professional experiences are colouring the view of the subject incident.

Guava

The information is contained in the CBC story in post #1 , it helps if you actually read it: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfou...lict-1.4115596

It's pretty clear you don't even have a basic grasp of the facts.

And the relevance of previous reports of such fraud detection to the case at hand is what exactly?

I am well aware of such process since I have been on the receiving end of such charge back before, I can assure you. This kind of cases is a concern for the merchant as the rules of VISA/MC/AMEX are heavily in favor of the card holders as long as the cardholder claims the charge was not authorized by him/her. So yes, I can appreciate why AC or any airlines would be rather careful about these chargebacks. I also know in this kind of cases, CS is duty bound to contact the affected customers and try to resolve the situation, not unilaterally cancel the contract. While the TorStar article used "suspended", the original CBC article clearly used "cancelled":

Fraud detection does not summarily cancel a partially flown ticket. Doing so could potentially be stranding actual customers overseas and that would be a major no no for any competent airline. If fraud is suspected, verification needs to be performed. The cardholder can be contacted based on the information provided by the CC issuer, not whatever the passenger filled in online, including their address. If no verification has been performed even on a genuinely suspected fraud, then the company cannot use it as a legitimate defense since the merchant has a duty to validate that information before summarily cancelling a contract. Since AC clearly did not do that and did not inform the stranded pax while they were in LIS, giving them a chance to address the airline's concerns, there is no reason to believe fraud was the real cause of the ticket cancellation. Suspicion of credit card fraud is not difficult to resolve when airline has a chance to intercept and validate the identity of the passenger especially when the card member is one of the passengers.

That explanation still does not make sense, the ticket was already partially used at that point.

This is not a case where things could go either way. AC has no credibility here.

tcook052

Doesn't seem more likely to me.

Stranger

???

We had been talking about the second, *new* ticket. No argument that the original one was bought on aircanada.com.

BTW no point in using language like that. Does not help keeping the discussion civilized.

Relevance should have been clear. That (1) there is such a thing, so it's not unreasonable, given that AC brought it up, to assume that this was indeed what was at play, rather than invoking dark conspiracy scenarios.

Good that you are aware. Did not seem so earlier.

As to "suspended" vs. "cancelled," in the heading cbc.com also uses "suspended." I guess "cancelled" sound more dramatic. But can we really trust a newspaper article to be that careful with words?