Problems Paying on copaair.com
 

Over the last couple of months, I have been unable to pay when attempting to book a reservation. I get to the "Purchase" button, but it is non-responsive.

Because I was unable to complete the pauyment, I had no reservation after carefully selecting my flights. By accident I discovered that holding a reservation on their 48 hour hold would give me a resrvatio number, but I still couldn't pay when logged in using my card profiles.

I finally connnected the dots. If I wasn't logged in, thus had to manually enter my payment info, the payment would complete and I was booked. After figuring that out, I attempted to "pay with a card not in my profile," even though it was one of the cards saved. I don't save it, proceed to "purchase," and it works.

I'm a Mac user, and I have tried this on Chrome, Firefox and Safari with identical results. It seems to be a major glitch in the Copa IT (no big surprise there). Is anyone else noticing any such similar website behavior?

I got that for the last set of flights that I booked a few weeks back.

There is a longer reference code (maybe 8-10 digits long) at the bottom of the purchase page that is actually linked to the booking you are trying to make.

If you call them up, give them that code, they can look it up and you can pay over the phone (they do not charge the admin fee for these cases)

Thanks, pmarrsouth! I'll look for that if I get stuck again. With no dedicated phone line for PPs, I try to avoid calling Copa unless there simply is no other way to resolve something.

If I must call, however, it's always good to have more info for resolution. It's rare that I have the opportunity to phone into the English line during the day. Although I do speak Spanish, the wait is always longer than desired, and the quality of their phone lines makes for a vocal clarity that further complicates understanding their agents. Hopefully that code will make the process less painful.

Don't feel alone
 

Copa's system is well known to be fraught with problems. Double billing, non-billing, authorization without subsequent billing, and a lot more. I fly Copa all the time because I have no choice. But I always buy my tickets at an online agent (Orbitz, Expedia, Priceline) because you can often get better prices online than at Copas website (Copa guarantees your purchase is "secure", but not the lowest price for the ticket) and when you buy from an online travel agent you often get a 24 hour window to cancel and refund, whereas when you buy from Copa direct, the minute you gave them the money, you're lucky to be able to do any changing without a penalty, and many tickets are directly nonrefundable.

I fly Copa at least once per month and I always buy my tickets thru Expedia/Travelocity/Orbitz, for the reasons mentioned, but also because my U.S. based credit card charges me an International fee when I use Copa's website.