pbd456

Thanks for the additional information that you provide. Was the award ticket booked long before departure or only days before? Your account was locked? I imagine you used your credit card to book the tickets?

There are a lot of fraud with air plane tickets and for example, credit card verification are needed to check in for many airlines.

A3queen

solewalker

I'm sorry for what you and your friend experienced.

Based on what you posted, it seems that VPN + South Africa + last minute one-way ticket triggered off fraud on Alaska's anti-fraud detection.

You definitely got a bad agent or something got lost in communication re: not being allowed to book for friends and family.

I am not sure why mentioning the passport is relevant, since no passport information is required for booking tickets for others using your own account.

Also, after re-reading your first post, I'm not sure what specific advice do you want from people on FT.

Eastbay1K

(1) Good to know points on what might trigger the fraud detector to start buzzing.
(2) Good to know that if my account were to be hacked from a far away source, the AS fraud detector would start buzzing.
(3) Good to know that if I ever make an "unconventional" award reservation (i.e., not me on the reservation, non-US point of departure, made from an IP address that AS might not recognize, etc.), I should call to speak with someone promptly.

One can only surmise that both fraud in violation of MP T&C department and Hacking department have occurred more than once with the OP's reported fact scenario.

warakorn

But wouldnt that one-sided cancellation warrant a DOT complaint?

UAPremierExec

Brokers and people who sell miles will typically provide their Alaska login info, so when Alaska starts seeing CA/WA/AS based accounts logging in from foreign points is where the flag starts.

Many companies are now starting to block some VPNs- for instance Im up in the Yukon right now and I use a VPN with 2 selections of locales in California to use Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc. Well, Hulu now recognizes the VPN & blocked it. So no more Hulu for me

Ill bet ya Alaska is now monitoring that traffic as well...

Xrayman

I typically do not use miles for travel unless needing last minute travel or for friends/family (as I travel today out of Seattle a day earlier due to potential snow delays for my planned flight to tomorrow). This is useful to know if I am traveling abroad and will consider directly calling the MVP75K line to have them book my ticket for me or for a friend/family.

UAPremierExec

I don't think ONE time is going to ding you, but seeing travelers NOT in your profile using high-value point spends, or multiple spends, will raise a red flag and cause someone to look at your bookings. Thankfully, they also track when you login to as.com and can probably also see you did other searches. So I think a one-off isn't going to cause your booking to get flagged. There's a lot more algorithms in place for flagging possible-fraudulent bookings. So in the OP's case, it was more than likely their use of a VPN, a high-value ticket, to points that aren't anywhere near the VPN/IP #s location. (make sense? example: buying a first class QF ticket from Australia to DEN, when your last login was in Los Angeles a day before, you don't have any QF redemptions/earnings, haven't been to DEN, and using a traveler that's not the same name/age/in your profile).

flatdawgs

AS should attempt to contact you before cancelling anything. Even banks will contact you for approval regarding a potential fraudulent charge, and in this way you can clear things up prior to having to go through something like this MP member has been forced to go through. Seriously, Alaska? I too use a VPN whilst traveling - a large enough one that I'm sure "ticket brokers" use it as well (and probably a million other people). It should never be incumbent upon the customer to have to worry - or even know about - "calling the MVP75G number" when a ticket was booked legitimately under the rules of the program. The vast majority of their customers are NOT FT-savvy and would reasonably expected to have no clue that anything other than booking the ticket normally would ever be required, particularly once it was confirmed. If it's legitimate through the terms of the program to book a mileage seat from SA to the US, then if Alaska has a problem with something they should reach out to the customer long before the flight - and certainly before cancelling it without notice hours before departure. That is unconscionable. The onus is on them in this case - particularly as their customer is clearly a long-term MP member.

pbd456

No so savvy people buy round trip ticket to Africa...

bobblevins

You could get another VPN that may work awhile.

tom911

Makes you wonder if the sheer quantity of suspected fraudulent tickets may be something that they're not set up to handle 24 hours a day. Even if that was the case, surely there must be one person in the organization that could at least make those calls during business hours Monday-Friday and alert the account holder.

Tom using his VPN at the Newark Airport (always do when on wi-fi)

icelandman2

Agreed. I would be FUMING if something like this happened to me. Onus absolutely needs to be on AS to suspect fraud and try to contact the account owner - booking a different route close-in on a VPN should not be enough to cancel a ticket.

estnet

ABSOLUTELY - cancelling a ticket with no notice to booker (not to mention a 10 year member - maybe to alert them if their info was stolen) is just plain WRONG

Details aside - cancel with no notification is just not right. And - the ticket was a 47.6k ticket ?economy class NOT high value bus or first - not the highest chance of broker/sale scenario.
In addition if the rules are as agent said (which I can't find) why can I put any name I want in when booking an award ticket on line?

ashill

Agreed. At the very least, if there's suspected fraud/stealing miles, AS should definitely send a notification email to the account holder.

It sounds to me like the agent who said that policy prohibits Mileage Plan members from booking flights for others was just wrong, perhaps simply misspeaking or perhaps making up an explanation for something they didn't understand (something that is fairly common in the airline industry but not something I often encounter with AS). But I'm glad that it now seems pretty clear that this was an overzealous fraud alert, not a new policy.

Any chance @missydarlin could shed light here, particularly on why there was no notification to the account holder of the suspected fraud?