Boraxo

So is this only a problem with phone orders or is there a risk with internet bookings?

Guvner067

The CVC/CVV code on the back of a credit card is there to deal with this exact issue, known as a Card Not Present transaction. The reason it is there is so that you don't have to physically present the CC to verify it. If fraud is suspected, call the Police.

RangerNS

Credit cards have had "multiple" factors to attempt to prove one is physically in possession of a card for a long, long time. The physical embossing was a first thing (or maybe recording the expiry date). Signatures, magnetic "track 2" data, CCV/2, chip/pin all are part of this. Note that no card "ever" has had CCV2 numbers embossed; it takes time to do both the ca-chunk-ca-chunk with the embosser, mag swipe, or chip usage, as expected in person.

But a card physically being there, or at least in the hands of the person on the other end of the interwebs, is not the same thing as the card's use being authorized.

Guvner067

So nobody, ever, has bought anything online or on the phone with a credit card and had it delivered, card unsighted? Or if they have, it's not authorized? Might need to shut down Amazon.
The card is authorized at purchase, not at the gate.

RangerNS

Its the responsibility of the merchant to establish authorization. The CC company helps, to be sure, but the risk is the merchants. By that I mean if there is a dispute by the card holder, done in good faith (which is at least always "the first time"), then the merchant gets the money taken away with basically no recourse. The CC companies (brands, clearing houses, banks, issuers, etc) are "never" on the hook.

Its quite reasonable that AC take interest in fraud prevention.

The details and response to this particular case, however.....

Guvner067

I fully understand how CC's work.
The card was authorized and there was no proof of fraud. If fraud was suspected, then call the Police. The alleged "perpetrators" are present at the gate, they are not anonymous internet scammers.

RangerNS

No one is calling the police over < $10k in attempted fraud.

Now, this gets into the deep parts of this all. A credit card charge is never really truly authorized until the time runs out and the holder can't complain any more, which might be 90 or 180 days after the transaction (or delivery of service, FOB of goods, etc).

And AC is further not really good at "identity". One needs to do a better job of proving identity to get a Tinder account than to buy a AC ticket, even involving national borders.

There is a complaint driven, statistically analyzed, mostly works, sometimes error, system. Not entirely on AC to fix. Not even mostly on AC to fix.

Customer service details aside, AC was well within their rights to deny the provisioning of service. They well could have hive-mind decided it was fraudulent, but to let this one go at the gate, with the corporate suits not being faced with children in front of them, flagged and denied the card the next time, while letting the smiling, but trafficked children, board. They did not.

The details of the hive mind decision is classic AC customer capriciousness..... But not fundamentally unreasonable.

Transpacificflyer

That’s your personal choice. You decide based upon the characteristics of the transaction. If you are going to be sending a kid across an international border in this manner, there is a possibility the transaction will be questioned. The airline has no obligation to contact the passenger prior to the flight. Nor is a merchant obliged to extend credit to its customers. The obligation is on the customer to be able to support the extension of credit.
This was an ecommerce transaction where the card was not present for physical verification . The typical issuing bank agreement obliges the merchant to assume the cost (loss) of this type of transaction if the transaction following the purchase, is deemed fraudulent. The airline has a legal right to verify the purchase transaction.


I am not as confident of your knowledge of credit card contracts and legal obligations as you are. The two passengers were challenged at check in. You are off on a tangent offering scenarios that did not occur. What ifs are not relevant to this case as they are imagined scenarios without any supporting fact. Each case must be examined on its own merits.

In respect to the tariff reference to merchant redress subsequent to the start of travel, there are times when a fraudulent transaction is discovered after a passenger departs. Systems can be down, delays in confirmation can occur etc. The language of the tariff allows the airline to address the scenario should it occur. Again, the facts of a specific incident will determine the response.
The Air Canada tariff language in respect to payment has been tested in the courts and has held up over the years.. The tariff reflects the legal obligations and duties of Air Canada as a merchant and offers the merchant a reasonable means of protecting itself.

There is a fixation upon the credit card transaction itself. The complete event and its characteristics must be considered. There are family custody disputes with children removed from Canada every year. This was an International flight, not a domestic jaunt. There is a distinct problem in some communities of family members being coerced into travel for reasons such as "honour", marriage or sexual identity. It is no secret and there are "bountiful" illustrative cases.

Adam Smith

You seem highly focused on the legalese here.

There's what AC is legally entitled to do, and what it should have done. If they truly waited until boarding to verify the card, then refused to speak to the person who could do so, regardless of whether that was legal (I'm not going to debate that one way or the other), it's not how they should have handled it; call it principles of customer service.

What's your source for that? Her tweets refer to "gate agent" and talk about not "boarding" the plane, which strongly imply they were airside - not at check-in - when this occurred, and none of the articles I read suggest anything to the contrary.

​​​​​
As are your repeated references to custody disputes. Not only did that not come up anywhere in the article that prompted this thread (or any others I found online), showing the credit card used to book a ticket would do nothing to prevent an unauthorized person from removing a child from the country. There is an entirely separate set of paperwork for that. So, with my moderator hat on, unless you have information from a public source that the issue here was actually about transporting a minor internationally, I'll ask that this off topic subject be dropped.

ryanpower8

Very similar thing just happened for me. Booked a flight for a friend who didn’t have a credit card from Yul-ytz and they couldn’t check in because they didn’t have the card that paid for the flight. Gate agent said only way was for me to go to ytz and talk to a gate agent there and verify. Lucky I wasn’t far. Talked to a gate agent who put a note on the reference saying it was verified but that on top of that they needed the credit card number in Montreal even though it was verified in Toronto.

SKYEG

On CBC yesterday https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6206511

Fiordland

More common than not. Quite common in a smaller company to have an admin assistant take care of booking the flights and hotels and putting them on a company card. In fact AC and WS provide portals to manage such bookings.

RangerNS

And such tickets would, presumably, would have a different threat analysis applied.... Possibly tighter in some cases, if a new named PAX was booked on a route outside that companies standard history.

aznfreak007

with today's technologies, it is easy for the GA to demand proof (ex: facetime showing id and credit card numbers on the back and front or a sign authorization and send it by email) it comes down to whether the GA wants to do the extra mile.

simpleflyer

https://www.triptipedia.com/tip/dg6s...ng-this-policy

About eighty airlines have this policy. The section "How Will I know if the credit card will be needed at the airport?" may be helpful.

I agree that more advice to people, especially parents, about how to handle the situation would be helpful. However, for the kids to merely calling someone supposedly the card owner to verify the purchase isn't going to work, as someone above already pointed out.