HIDDY

You obviously don't live in Argentina.

golfmad

I use Quicken in the US and the good old (now defunct) Microsoft Money in the UK and categorize all spending every couple of months. This reveals any dodgy transactions but as you rightly state does not highlight things not charged that should have been. Having said that I'm anal enough that I will probably notice if large expected transactions are not there.

The only fool-proof way to reconcile things is to do what I set up at work which is to have a Purchase Order system and an Invoicing system. Purchase Orders are raised for all items that are to be purchased and then matched up against Invoices received or credit card payments. That way you can also see instantly if there are purchase orders outstanding for which they are no invoices/payments.

That's probably overkill for most consumers (including me).

Tobias-UK

Well in that case until we know the answer to that question it is pointless continuing the discussion.

golfmad

Indeed

Prospero

I had a similar moment of panic last year after booking IB flights via Iberia’s website. About two days after booking the flights I received an email from Iberia. It looked innocuous at first glance - the email had “Travel Document” in the subject line and contained a full breakdown of the itinerary. At the very bottom, under “General Information” included vital information that really should have been highlighted at the top of the email:
What transpired was Iberia.com failed to draw the funds from my credit card so no tickets were issued and the booking subsequently auto-cancelled because the customer, i.e. me, failed to notice the action required on my part to rescue the booking.

I rebooked the flights in the end but ran into the same ticket issue problem. After giving up on Iberia.com, I called the airline and completed the booking offline. Had I not revisited the email, I would have been oblivious to the cancellation. After that experience I’ve treated all IB bookings with meticulous care.

HIDDY

I had a trawl through my emails regarding my earlier post about non payment.

The first one was a ''booking confirmation'' however once opened above the flight details and PNR info in bold red type it said ''purchase request being processed'' and on closer inspection ticket numbers were pending.
This was closely followed by another email titled ''Credit card denial notification'' detailing what I said in the earlier post.

agehall

¨

Wow! That is just nasty!

corporate-wage-slave

And just to allow comparison, here is my recent sequence when nothing went wrong, by email Subject, from Iberia L.A.E.:

- "Booking Confirmation" - Ticket number marked "Pending"
- "Ticket confirmation" - very short email with 075- ticket number showing centre stage, with a 93kb PDF attached with full flight details, ticket number and VAT stuff. Also the fare calculation. This second email arrived 100 minutes after the first.

The subject lines are as basic as that.

Interestingly, and just in case this is useful, it gives the registered address as: 10 Hammersmith Broadway, London W6 7AL

At least one EC261 claimant used the oneworld / Heathrow address.

I mentioned in a previous discussion with CaroFos that if Iberia shows something as cheaper, it is worth a call to BA to check their prices. I have more confidence in the BA system on the whole, though I can't actually point to any problems with Iberia.

Ber2dca

My bank literally blocks every payment I ever make for flight tickets and texts me asking me to call their fraud department. It's taken me at times over 24 hours to do so and yet you wouldn't have known from the tickets that the payment hadn't been completed. You even get the 'eticket has been issued' emails. If the bank didn't inform me or if I didn't check my messages on that phone, I may go without noticing for a long time.

golfmad

Time to change bank?

Ber2dca

My expectations concerning the financial services industry in this country are low.

DELLAS

What bank is that ?

happeemonkee

Exactly the same thing happened to me Prospero but their emai went to my spam folder Like you I managed to rebook only by speaking to an agent.

henkybaby

<--- is now frantically checking that all his bookings have ticket numbers....

Yllanes

Actually, most of the time I get a single email with the subject "Confirmación de reserva" (booking confirmation), which already shows the ticket number. In this case you get the message "Compra confirmada" in big letters at the top of the email and the ticket number is there.

Other times (the minority in my experience) you do get both emails, as you say, in which case the first one says "Solicitud de compra realizada" rather than "Compra confirmada" and explicitly lists the ticket number as pending. I suppose it just depends on the payment method and I could match each case with one of my credit cards.

Anyway, the take home message from this unfortunate situation is that IB either sends you the ticket number immediately (in which case there should be no problem) or explicitly says it is pending (in which case it is probably a good idea to be alert for the second email and call if it doesn't arrive in a short period, unless one has as many flights as our CWS). I fully sympathise with the point of view that this should not be the passenger's job, but weighted against the risk of spoiling a vacation it is probably worth it.