A Visit to the Dark Side - CX and wrong CC
 

Just a story, nothing more and nothing less.

I have been flying LAX to Bkk several times on CX, and every time they told me when I booked with the CX agent over the phone - you must show your Credit Card when you check in. Ok, but in about 5 prior trips in which they never asked, I got a bit casual about it.

But recently, when I checked in at LAX, the agent asked me to show my credit card. I showed it to him and he said "do you have another credit card?" At that moment, panic set in. I had totally forgotten that several months earlier, after I booked the ticket, my CC was compromised, and my bank had issued me a new one - same account but of course different number. My bad.

He then said - please follow me - and I stepped behind the counter and followed him. The first door had a code and we entered, no problem. But then we came to a second door, with a guard there. Now I am worried - he said something to the guard and I thought this is it - I will never see my friends or family again.

But in fact we entered a big room with a bunch of cubicles. He asked me to sit down at one, and please show him the charge on my CC for the ticket. Again, no problem. But as we all know now, if you try to access your bank account from a remote computer, they want to know why. My bank said, we will send you a code on your phone and you can access your bank account. The problem is that it is not instantaneous - it takes a few minutes.

So while we are waiting for the code, I am looking at him, thinking "will I get on my flight to HK?" He is looking at me, thinking - "have I finally caught a scammer?

After a few minutes the code came through and I was able to show him the statement with the charge on it. He then turned to someone nearby and said "$1500". She then said (in a voice much too loudly in my opinion) "ECONOMY?". He said yes, and I was in. He walked me to the front, we said our fond farewells, and I made my flight.

This is not a complaint about CX - they told me on my booking that I needed to show the CC. The young agent was always very polite. But as most Americans now know, debit/CC card fraud has become an epidemic - millions of cards have been reissued because of hackers.

But on the long flight to Hong Kong I was thinking - when I booked I put in my passport number, and I had my passport with me at check in - why didn't he just asked me for my passport? Much more reliable these days than a CC/debit card? Passports can be stolen, but my guess is much less frequently. Are there that many people who book a ticket 5 months in advance, then use a fake CC. Maybe they re trying to stop resellers??

Another example of the LAX customer service

I think it's more to do with agreements with the bank. They need to show they have fraud protection measures in place, and one of their agreements is that they physically see the card that the booking was made with. Otherwise if there is a dispute from the cardholder, CX will be liable for the charge and will not receive the cash from the bank if they don't have these kind of measures.

It's a pain as I've also had the case where the card I used has been cancelled before I took the flight. The usual endgame if you can't present the card is that they will credit back the original card and then make you pay the fare again before boarding.

In a recent booking, CX no longer ask for the credit card to be presented at the airport. (all previous booking used to say, you need to present CC). I haven't used this new booking yet but i think there was a different system used (its not mastercard secured). And i fly out of LAX. (I carry that card anyway).

And yes its true, US debit/credit card have encountering a lot of compromises recently, included that Target one. I believe they are tackling this one now.

This is a perfect illustration of the problems this policy can cause for customers. The other case could be that you purchased a ticket months prior, but recently closed the credit card account (unhappy with the product, fees, etc, whatever...).

Now you are stuck trying to check in - and what they asked you to do (log into your account) would not have even been possible as your account was closed...

ALWAYS keep your old credit cards
 

This is why I always keep my old and cancelled credit cards (assuming they were not lost or stolen).

While not explicitly on CX (this was SQ), I had a similar occasion where I had cancelled my old AMEX and replaced it with a new AMEX. Both were charge cards and obviously registered to myself so they had similar numbers including the same last 5 digits but obviously the entire number was different.

In anticipation of such similar problem, I emailed SQ after I got my card informing them of the situation and whether it would be OK to discard my old card or not. They gave me the OK to discard so I happily went to the airport, only to find out that when my new card was swiped at check-in, the system obviously didn't like that.

Luckily, I had the email from SQ saved on my phone to show the check in agent and we just had to go over to the service desk which was immediately next to the F counter and had the supervisor 'override' the system.

Still, I was thinking it would've been better if I had kept the old card.

I was asked for my Amex when I checked in PVG (on Friday), but not in HKG. For some reason the agent spent like half a minute looking at the card and I'm standing there wondering if I need to point out which is my name and which is my card number (!!!).

Thanks for the responses. It is interesting to know about other experiences.

I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was not funny. I was worried about missing my flight to Hong Kong (and my prized exit row seat). Even though I made my flight, it was a bit stressful. After we took off I kept trying to get the FA's attention to get a gin and tonic, but the flight was packed, and she whizzed by me with eyes straight ahead.

Just a couple of thoughts (rants)

At what point in time does flying become so "not fun" that casual flyers like me stop flying? I have made this trip to Asia 6 or 7 times in the last few years, but this flight was so bad I really wonder if I want to keep doing it.

The CX counter agent (I am thinking maybe in his 20's) was fine - my impression was that he was just doing what they told him to do in training - he didn't want to lose his job. My problem is with the higher ups - they are the ones who create these policies to cover the less than 1% of the scammers, but I am not sure they understand what it is really like to fly now.

The comment about CX vs the banks is an interesting one - I had not thought about that. My thoughts on the long flight to Hong Kong was that it is the attempt by the airlines to cut out the middleman. I paid about $1500 return for my ticket from San Diego to Bkk, which was a good price. Anyone booking within 30 days would have paid about 30% more, so a reseller could make good money. Money the airlines could have made.

Cheers.

The irony is that had you bought your ticket from a travel agent (including an OTA like Expedia etc.), you wouldn't have had to show any card.

The top management obviously didn't quite get the customer service aspect of this policy (you suffered stress you shouldn't have), but it appears from this thread that they've removed the silly extra check. Credit cards are indeed fungible.

TAs are more willing to take the risk in case of a dispute, but not CX.com. That keeps TAs in business.

Actually, I'd say this is great customer service as compared to having to pay the airfare AGAIN on another credit card and then get credited back the original credit card. Especially since if the original credit card was cancelled I'm not sure how they'd manage that... @:-)

I've been hit by this as well when I booked a ticket for Mrs. MR. She was less than pleased to have to fork over a "double" payment, and hounded me constantly until she was sure that we weren't really charged twice. Now THAT was a stressful experience! :D I'd much rather go into the back room with the agent and sort it out on the spot...

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10B142 Safari/8536.25)

Eventually its possible.

Shacomm hk owes me a cheque on a refund that im yet to receive

I don't think it is required that you show your CC at checkin if you've booked online, however in a recent booking I've made over the phone ex-KHI, the agent mentioned that I would be required to show my CC at checkin.

False.
MOST of the bookings requiring a CC at checkin are the ones made online.

When you do an online booking if you get prompted to verify via Verified by Visa or MasterCard secure code (or whatever it's called) then you don't need to show your card at checkin.

Exactly!

A lot of countries' issuing MC/Visa doesn't use this security method. Hence why I said 'most' online tix.