In message , at 12:57:18 on
Wed, 27 May 2009, DevilsPGD remarked:
I can understand why there is greater risk when the ticket is paid for
by a third party - but when the Credit Card is in the same name as the
passenger, why are Easyjet cancelling those tickets too?

My guess? It's more profitable to see who shows up at the airport then
attempt to bill them higher rates (and otherwise resell the seat) then
to attempt to contact people and identify whether a transaction is
fraudulent or not.

They don't have to start working out if the transaction is fraudulent,
they could just cancel the ticket and *tell the customer* there was a
problem with the card. To also not refund the payment is rubbing salt in
the wound, and strikes me as an extremely dubious practice.

(Of course, we should also be asking where the false "card declined"
messages are coming from. I have experienced this several times
recently, but for flights/train-tickete at the time of ordering so I
simply used a different card; but one long-standing CC monthly charge
was falsely bumped[1], and a phone company cut me off!)

[1] Phone company says it was declined, Card Company say they were (a)
never asked and (b) have in any event never declined any transaction on
that card.

"Card Declined" is sometimes used as a catch-all for other errors,

I know - that's why I put it in quotes.

or where the merchant account's fraud system detected something
suspicious and declined the transaction (although not the specific
card) before even talking to the issuing bank.

But putting the blame on the banks is disingenuous.

Also, one time this happened to me it was a monthly telephone payment
that had gone through OK for several years. Then suddenly bounced for no
reason that anyone could discover (they almost lost my business over it,
and I ended up talking to the MD about it).

Unfortunately, it's not in a company's best interests to return the
exact error message received, doing so actually encourages fraudsters to
use said company's services to validate credit cards. For example, if I
have a credit card number, name, billing address, phone number and CVV2
but know that one piece of information is wrong, a merchant that will
tell me which piece if wrong is invaluable.

Yes, but when all those things are OK, it's frustrating for the genuine
customer to be told the card has been declined when he knows it's not an
issue with his credit limit.
--
Roland Perry