No credit/debit cards working on website
 

I am trying to purchase a premium economy fare for the VVI-LIM-CUZ route and no matter what card, browser or device combination I try the website keeps saying the card did not work. I want to buy on their website since the premium economy fare is refundable, but on OTAs is showing as non-refundable (and I'd rather not deal with OTAs during this time). Does anyone know what else I could do to make this work? Are there some kind of strange restrictions on being able to buy flights on that route? I would really like to get this ticketed in a refundable fare as soon as possible. Thank for your help!

Hi,

Im not sure of the card problem but perhaps it’s not in the same currency? I don’t know

However, keep in mind that there are two Premium Economy fares, Plus (P) and Top (W) with plus not being refundable.

Couldn't be a currency issue since I just bought a CUZ-LIM flight with one of the same cards I am trying for the VVI-LIM-CUZ sector. It's only that flight where I keep getting a payment failed error.

Yes, correct. Besides OTAs not being easy to deal with during problems, I can't see what fare class they are selling. On the LATAM website it is the Top (W) fare that I am trying to buy.

I tried calling them over the phone, but the one agent I got just kept asking me to hold while she did something (but never asked for flight details). Tried again, but never got an answer after over an hour of waiting. I'm going to try the social media channels next. Maybe they can help.

I have exactly the same probelm trying to purchase economy ticket GRU-GIG for two days already.

I reached out to them on Facebook and they made a callback to me. But by then my card worked. It's weird.

It may be dependent on what LATAM site you are browsing and where you are physically located / issuing country of your credit card. If you are booking on the Peruvian website you need to be located in Peru.

I suspected this as well, so I tried VPNs too. But that didn't work either.

In the end, I figured out that for whatever reason (only known to LATAM) the website throws errors on certain ticket/flight/price combinations. While not on others.

For example, I was able to buy a LPB-CUZ flight but kept having the payment issues on the VVI-CUZ route. Same card, same website. There's definitely something off with how they process payments.

I haven’t tried Peru, but LATAM Brasil won’t work at all on the Brazilian site if you’re using a non-Brazilian card or don’t have a Brazilian address/CPF. The LATAM US site SOMETIMES works, although fares are always either a little higher there, or sometimes multiples higher. I will clarify that this happens to me even though I’m physically in Brasil. The problem is not having a Brazilian bank card and CPF/Address.

Another tip, don’t try too many times before calling… each time you go through the process and get to the payment page, a temporary reservation is made (they don’t give you the locator number though…) and you can easily end up forcing yourself into a higher fare category when you do call as you’re already blocking inventory due to all the earlier attempts.

Sometimes I really wonder how LATAM manages to sell to anyone. For many years their system of receiving money from us has been a complete shambles.

Yeah, discovered this issue earlier in the year too. But luckily moving to their German website I was able to buy the ticket. At first it failed there too, but then a couple of days later it worked.

This is indeed good advice. I didn't think this would be happening, until the airfare I was looking for just disappeared. Waiting for a few hours it reappeared, but of course, then it's just a lottery of whether the airfare will be taken by someone else or not.

I've tried reaching out to them on FB and their team there has tried to help. But out of the two times when I couldn't buy online, they couldn't help either. They did offer to call me by phone and take payment that way, but luckily thus far I have always found alternative routes that the payment worked for.

Hopefully, they will fix this issue because buying through OTAs is really not something I want to have to do.

LATAM website's have been a total pain in the last few months, I cannot buy a ticket trough my computer. The only way I could get it done was using the Safari app on my phone.
I tried everything before.

Try using the Chrome browser. I was using the Safari browser and could not buy tickets through the US site. And then for some crazy reason I tried Chrome and all of a sudden it worked. Literally minutes later. Always trying to buy the same route GRU - FLN or reverse.