Austman

The warnings that I showed in my last posting, are displayed before you can even select a flight. Did it not show in your case?

IC6A

Mr. Dave Noble,

I agree with you that we have to follow the rules. But the rules QF set up is unfair. At modern day of age, the travel we do often involve with tickets issued in foreign ports and booked online directly with the carrier. QF should try their best to assisst passengers and make procedure more customer friendly and easy to use.

I personally agree that we need higher security method involved with credit cards. However I think as one frequent traveller, booking a Eticket for myself, I should be given the respect as customer first. I would agree that if somebody use third party credit card they should be able to get authorization and double check the payer's credit card to make sure it is geniune. If I pay myself, I should be treated at the level that no fraud suspision against myself. Why we all become suspects of credit card fraud when we use it? That is unfair and not good level of customer service, especially to the elite level of travellers.

QF should review its policy. They should allow people pay by themselves to have their credit cards checked at check-in counters where the first leg of such ticket originated rather than flying around the global to just to have our little plastic card verified because QF is afraid their best customers are the criminals of credit card fraud. They should give alternative way of @Office Visit@ to be more productive and user friendly, such as email scanned copy, fax...etc as minimum improvement.

The QF credit card verification is a JOKE. Such a policy is treating everyone who booked through QF Asia networks as criminals at first place!

Again Mr Dave Noble, I agree with you when we deal with authorities or companies certain rule should be followed. My argument is, there is better way to serve customer. If the rules is causing distress and disruption to customers, QF should review if better practise could be adapted. If CI, Korean, CX/KA and other Asia carriers can give customer assuance, why not QF?

AnonymousCoward

There have been threads in this forum of other airlines that do this. Unfortunately, if you book a fare, say, 6 months in advance, and you have your CC cancelled due to fraud, or you throw it away because it's expired, or you cancel your card (and have it cut up at the bank) then you have a problem when you get to the check in counter!

Seems like a reasonable alternative. But, you do then run the risk of a malicious employee gaining your CC number, CCV, expiry date, name etc - enough to "skim" your card...

It may be a requirement of their payments acquirer...

Alternatively, if you look at a lot of online stores *even here in Australia* - if you don't provide a scan of your card (or provide proof in person) they simply will not ship to you. And if you have an overseas billing address, you can't even pay at all! And Australia isn't China.

m320au

Yes, it did show that message - but it gave me no alternative choice.

I was logged into qantas.com.au, not qantas.cn. Had the website come up with a message saying "You have the option of making this security requirement go away by agreeing to pay additional fuel surcharges, please click here if you would like to do so" I might have clicked.

Neither did it suggest that the security requirement would also go away if I elected to pay an additional 2,500 air miles.

I'm not attempting to make a case that the airline has breached it's own policy, clearly it hasn't. I'm making a case that such a policy is clearly unethical and obviously a thinly veiled fuel surcharge honeypot operating under the guise preventing credit card fraud.

If credit card fraud were truly the issue, the problem would immediately go away after opening my account and seeing the same credit card has successfully booked and flown 6 RTW sectors totalling 30,000 miles in the 30 days prior to making the booking without issue. So would the fact the same card has been used regularly over 3 years without incident. Even despite all that, offering for the card to be validated in Sydney or London, or on departure, would also satisfy the criteria.

Instead, there's an attitude of 'pay more or get bent'. When articulated under such flimsy and inexplicable conditions, it represents nothing more than a customer service stench.

IC6A

Yes we discussed that for quite a while now. not every airline is enforcing this measure. Many airlines are switching to give you a warning but still issue the ticket for you and warn you that you need to take your credit card with you when you travel.

It is equivalent chance for the employee who do phisically verify your card to be malicious. So why veryifying at all?

There is still online stores do accept foreign credit card without so called verifying. How do they do that? Yes, Visa VeriSign and Mastercard SecureCode. QF should install Visa VeriSign and MasterCard SecureCode for their Asian offices to prevent credit card fraud rather than asking customers to flying around the globe to physically verifying the plastic.

serfty

As a contrast. I recently purchased two tickets from CX using the .hk site. One was ex TPE and the other ex HKG.

For verication I simply need to present my CC along with the booking reference at any Cathay Pacific office, worldwide.

I'm going to try this in TBIT on Monday. (I was going to try at MEL last week, however they were closed when I went though).

kangela

Well said IC6A, hear hear! I am afraid we seem to apologize for QF's bad policies rather than urge them to be more customer-centric.

What use are my QFF points if I am unable to plan a trip using a revenue ticket that gets me into BKK and then get an award for the trip home to SYD at the lowest available cost and with minimal inconvenience to me?

Aus_Mal

Can't you just present the CC at check-in? That was my understanding of how Cathay works with E-Tickets (If they were paper, you would have to collect them and present CC at that time).

In fact, here's the standard Cathay text on the confirmation email:

and the text if you look at your booking online:

Dave Noble

You can. You just have to book through the office of a country where the credit card fraud prevention measures allow it. I doubt v much that Qantas sat down and tried to think of a way to increase their work for fun

It is the airline's policy, the OP has not been picked on ... if not liking the way the scheme operates then there are other schemes out there, including schemes from airlines that do not charge fuel surcharges where such problems would be moot anyway

The complaint about the service provided by the telephone sales is unreasonable imo. They have provided exactly the service that they should. They agreed to issue the ticket in the UK and correctly informed him that he would have to pay the taxes applicable for a ticket issued in the UK and pay the assisted award booking fee for doing an assisted booking. How is that bad service ?

Dave

kangela

Tsk-tsk.This is exactly what I mean about apologizing for QF, Dave. Unless of course you are QF Management, in which case, I would implore you to address the poor policy and benchmark with best practice customer-service policies that other airlines seem to follow rather than suggesting that I join another scheme. As a (more frequent) customer on QF, I don't like the said policy and am making a suggestion (to QF) improve their customer service.

If we don't have customers (like the OP) venting their frustrations and then finding that they are not alone, giving some feedback to the company, we would have autocratic service-providers with cutomer-service that gets poorer and poorer.

And, as a matter of interest, I find it difficult to see that the policy is a "credit card fraud prevention" measure of QF when its own subsidiary, JQ, permits me to purchase a one-way ticket BKK-SYD in Thai BHT using my overseas registered credit card.

catper33

We have experienced a similar problem with Credit Card verification - presenting in person whilst booking a flight to originate from a country we were not going to be until the day of the flight - with a different airline. Luckily for us we did get it ressolved at what we thought was going to cost us more, but for some unknown reasaon the porice went down!!!??

The verification policy is not one solely within qantas and alternative choices exist to get ticketed albeit ones that most of the time people don't like as it increases the price.

Tablet2009

This has been suggested once too often. And some have indeed looked elsewhere and are enjoying the shift

Dave Noble

I am a more frequent traveller on Qantas and I can accept that schemes have rules and the customer service agents are not providing bad service when they do exactly what they should ( as per the OP's rant ) . I also do not believe that Qantas has put rules in place for credit cards for the sole purpose of making life difficult. I tend to go with the theory that they are complying with card company policies that protect them against fraud. Different countries are likely to have different policies
That Jetstar may have different policies is irrelevent since it is a different company

Dave

Dave Noble

Indeed. There are other options. QFF is far from being the best scheme in the world imo

Dave

m320au

No, but I wonder if the same could be said about never sitting down to work out a way of increasing fuel tax revenue by exploiting an issue that most people wouldn't bother to probe or be able to understand. Far be it from airline managers to think of such a scheme in the past .. (BA / VS?)

What a refreshing customer service model that would be if it was ever employed by management. One where policy ruled supreme over both logic, loyalty and even moral correctness. "Here's your indefensible sandwich Mr Plat, eat it - oh, you don't like it - perhaps you'd like to fly with someone else?". I wonder why CX don't have such a policy, even for their standard economy pax.

I think the word "should" is a bit of a stretch - it implies a moral correctness. "Are told" is probably more accurate -

So - perhaps I need to admit my complaint is not about an individual rep after all - Perhaps it's about a bigger problem. Here's hoping it's not. I'd hate to think Qantas was becoming tired or arrogant.