Commie

I am trying to book the DPS-JOG flight with Air Lion on the Air Lion site, and when it came to the payment screen, I tried all my credit cards, Visa and American express from Canada, and none of them worked.

Is there a way to book a ticket with Air Lion through their website for a Canadian?

Commie

I was having trouble booking direct with Air Lion, so I used eDreams site to book a flight with Air Lion from DPS to JOG for January.

However, I didn't read all the bad reviews with eDreams before booking, my fault.

I tried looking up the flight with the booking reference from eDreams on the Air Lion website, and it can't pull up the booking. Should I be worry about this?

blandy62

Paying with overseas credit card in Indonesia can still be a hit or miss. You may want to check that your bank is not blocking transaction in Indonesia.

If you still can’t, you may use Ctrip. You can book lionair and no credit card issue. I use them fairly often and never get issue

mikew99

None of my U.S.-based credit cards worked to purchase tickets on the Lion Air site, so that might suggest a problem with Canadian credit cards, too. In my case, after searching for alternatives, I found that tiket.com did not work with my cards, but nusatrip.com did. I have used nustrip successfully to purchase tickets on both Lion Air and Wings Air. In both cases, my credit card was charged by nusatrip, and I was then able to pull up my reservation on the Lion Air Web site.

I don't have experience with eDreams, but there are several ways to look up your reservation on the Lion Air Web site. Make sure you provide the Lion AIr record locator (not the eDreams booking number). You might need to try several variations of your name (for example, appending your middle name to your first name without spaces) to get it to work.

BobFF68

Lion Air Group IT system is crap, impossibility of using non-Indonesian credit cards on their web sites it is a known issue. You can safely use one of the most popular Indonesian OTA below, they have a quite decent customer service in case something goes wrong, just choose one you like more, sometime their fares are even slightly better than booking directly. Really no advantage on booking directly on Lion Air, in case of cancel/refund lion air will be able to refund only through local bank transfer or reaching their city offices, with OTA they can refund through the credit card used during booking.

Tiket.com
Traveloka
Nusatrip

I'm using them to buy domestic tickets and so far no issues.

dvs7310

Definitely stay away from eDreams, I know people personally who have been stung by them.

When my spouse and I went to Bali last year we used Nusatrip with no problem for Citilink one way and Lion air the return direction. I forget what credit card we used, was either American or Japanese, most likely American one for the insurance benefit.


Ctrip would have the same problem as other foreign OTAs for domestic Indonesia flights, usually the prices are much lower on the Indonesian sites.

For on the ground use we had no problems with credit cards (US & Japanese) except that the convenience store would not accept a PIN from my PayPal debit card, I had to get them to print a signature slip every time I used it.

jeffrocowboy

Similarly to the OP I have found issues with using my New Zealand credit card to book flights within Asia (the Philippines in my instance). However, when payment fails, I ring the bank and the 'fraud' team unblocks my card so it can be used for a short period.

IluvSQ

I was able to use a Canadian credit once on Batik Air ( sister company to Lionair) - every other time ( about 8 times) the Canadian cards were rejected.
I now use Nusatrip.com for booking these.

walkingtall

I would suggest you use either nusatrip.com or tiket.com both Indonesia website and they work well

Penguinmoon

I live is Indonesia and often use Nusa and tiket if I'm using my US card. Both have been good, even with cancelled flights and refunds.

hotpopcorn

I recently booked thai lion which is same. I signed up for line pay and used Canadian cc. Already was using line chat. So just made sense.


Never book lcc via third party

MECindylou

Hi all,

Hopping on this thread to say that, when I look up fares on the Batik site, I get (approx) USD $115 PP OW CGK to SOQ. On Traveloca the same flight is USD $231.18 and Nusatrip is USD $225.56. Considering I'm trying to book RT for 2 pax, it's quite a savings to book direct, but I'm losing years off my life trying to make that happen. One of their info pages says, "Now you can book your flight with Batik Air and you have many convenient Epayment options; all you need is your booking code and the payment code. Book anywhere and pay online using a VISA or MasterCard.

After I booked direct with them (and subsequently CC was denied), I got emails with PNR record locators and another "booking code" number. (I got two because we tried paying for the same itinerary again with another CC.) So I have PNR numbers (if the space hasn't been cancelled).

Between this and attempting to book SQ's award space, I'm ripping my hair out!

BobFF68

Not sure how it ended up, after few hours from booking if payment is not confirmed the booking will be canceled automatically. Quite unusual to see such big difference between official site and 3rd party as they normally have the same prices, unless there was a special promo fare or a system error. Anyway can be they only accept local credit cards or they simply reject cards from certain geo areas. I do not see many options other than going through travel agent.

MECindylou

Hi all,

I wanted to let you know the ending of the story...I had planned to save AMEX points for use on SQ, but had trouble confirming Saver Award space, so bought the return in cash (not that bad at $2447 PP OW REPJFK, at least compared to some business class fares), so had a bunch of AMEX points at hand, so I transferred to DL FF and used 22,000 PP OW CGKSOQ on GA, which was a pretty decent deal, considering the price with Traveloca was $230-ish PP. So I avoided the issue!

Thx!

deadlock

Just an idea - try booking on www.malindoair.com instead of Batik Air.

Malindo air used to the Malaysian sister company of Batik Air (but has since itself been renamed to Batik Air). The websites still look different though, and I'd hazard a guess that their payment processing is a lot friendlier to non-ID cards than on Batik Air's site (though I'd expect similar, if not identical, prices to those found on Batik Air).

I don't know if this will work for sure, but it's worth a try.