Secure your fare
 

Hope someone can help explain this:

I booked tickets on swiss.com, selected "Secure your fare" (which is available when flying on Swiss metal only), and paid the small fee of approx €27 using a debit card that I only use for smaller online purchases, and thus only have a very small balance available. I've been charged the €27, but not the actual fare.

Now, I decided not to confirm the booking within the 48 hours deadline, and thought all was OK as per the desciption in the attached screenshot. 12 hours after the deadline for either confirming or automatic cancellation, I get an email from Swiss with booking number and e-tickets with pdf's attached. Booking status is confirmed/open for use. Seats can be selected and the booking number can be viewed on swiss.com.

Free tickets? How can this happen? What to do?
And no, I haven't called the airline yet...

Swiss "Secure your fare"
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...1f6432606d.jpg

I'm thinking this might be some kind of serious glitch in their booking system, where unpaid ,bookings are being ticketed.
As I don't dare to try to use these tickets and risk getting stuck where it will be expensive to get back home, I will try to call them after the weekend.

What would you do?

Hypothetically.

I probably wouldn't post on a message board.

I probably would delete those messages if I had 😊

If ticketed you are good to go. Leave it as it is. I'm sure LX will contact you if there is a problem.

You don't have to......

Not sure I would even try.. too many consequences, and I don't want to end up paying for something that I didn't confim.

I called them on Monday. The customer service agent said that the reservation would expire by itself within 24-48 hours. Today , Wednesday, I discover that I have been charged the full amount.
I've lodged a complaint with the card issuer, and also tried calling Swiss again on my local number. A customer service agent that handles Asia/Pacific picked up the phone after 50 minutes, and was unable to help or explain what has happened. Told me to send an email via their website instead, which I have.

Note to self: NEVER book tickets on Swiss again. There is absolutely NO help to be had in situations like this.

The feature seems to be thoroughly messed up: I recently used it to secure tickets for a group of 5 at about EUR 2.850 (on the Swiss website for Germany). Failed to make a screenshot of course, and the confirmation e-mail helpfully confirmed that I have now secured the price, but did not actually mention the price. When I confirmed the booking (within the time window), it suddenly showed a price in CHF that was about EUR 300 higher.

After I finally got through to the Swiss hotline, they were entirely unhelpful ("this is online only, nothing we can do about it"); same for the Swiss technical helpline. All I could do is submit a complaint on the Swiss site, which I did. Four weeks ago. No reaction of course.

I spent a few hours this morning calling Swiss, finally got in touch with a customer service agent who at first insisted that I had logged on and confirmed the booking (which I had not), and that they could do nothing. The agent sent me the booking confirmation via email, which I had never received until now. I made a point of that and insisted (quite sternly, I must admit) that the booking never had been confirmed by me, and I requested a full refund. Short story, I got placed on hold. After some time the agent could inform me that there had been an error on their part, and the booking would be cancelled and fully refunded. I received confirmation of this via email while I had the agent on the phone. The refund itself takes up to 21 business days to process, but hopefully it will happen quickly.

The one thing that I have learned now is that I will never use "hold your fare" features again. Those features seem designed to benefit the airline instead of the customer. In any case, lessons have been learned! A credit card will be used for all bookings, which will be fully flexible from now on

I would absolutely suggest that you call again and don't give up until the issue has been resolved.

Yes, in fact, all features are designed like that.

When you said, "using a debit card that I only use for smaller online purchases, and thus only have a very small balance available" I guessed that this debit card would not have the funds to support a full ticket purchase. But apparently, the "very small balance" was still sufficient to cover an airline ticket purchase? Or did this purchase overdraft your account?

It was just enough to cover the service fee for the "Secure your fare" option.
Could be the Visa part of the debit card that has been used by Swiss?
I honestly don't know, but it should never have happened in the first place since the reservation was never confirmed.

Secure your fare option seems to be more tricky that stated and I wouldn't use it in the future.
Last year I booked a ticket with this option. The link to confirm the reservation wasn't initially working. I finally managed to activate the link, the reservation seemed all validated : I was contacted 6 days after by swiss asking me to fill a credit card authorization form for them to process the payment. It took a few more days for the tickets to be edited and the reservation active on the website (before that the booking reference didn't allow to manage anything in the booking).
The payment process was long and not reassuring.