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The Brisbane case |
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It started with a phone call . The caller enquired about a return ticket from Brisbane to Los Angeles. Happy with the quote given by one of our consultants he ask to go ahead with the booking and than sent several e mail messages and made a number of additional phone calls. Eventually he sent as email attachment a picture of a passport and Visa credit card. The credit card payment was approved by Visa totalling A$ 2000.- +. The passenger name was the same as in the passport and credit card. Not expecting any fool play the consultant issued the Qantas ticket (Non refundable) and emailed it to the “apparent client” So far so good but a few days later the client called again thanking the consultant for the good service and requested to make another booking for a friend travelling from Lagos to Paris. Just co incidentally she mentioned this “new client” to the manager and thereby trigger the alarm bells.
At first the manager called Visa and ask that the cardholder should be contacted to verify the he is aware off and initiated this transaction. However Visa refused and just for the record the manager ask Visa to sent a letter to verify that there will be no charge back. Naturally Visa does not do such a thing.
Anyway as next step the Qantas ticket was voided and the consultant sent a message to the supposed to be cardholder advising that there is a problem with Visa and requesting that payment is made by other means e.g. Bank transfer, Western Union etc. But never heard from the person again.
The next problem was to convince Qantas to refund the ticket which was voided before the flight date. Qantas proofed to be reluctant to refund the ticket and was requesting a letter from Visa verifying that is was purchased in a fraudulent transaction. Visa refused to issue such a letter at this stage. Qantas argued that the passenger just wanted to get a refund on a non-refundable ticket.
A few weeks later finally Visa sent a letter advising that the cardholder disputes this transaction and required proof that the agent was dealing with the cardholder . This letter was forwarded to Qantas who finally refunded the ticket about 6 weeks later. Visa was also stalled for 4 weeks with the same argument that Qantas had that the cardholder was aware that is was a non-refundable ticket and after all the agent had a copy of the cardholders Visa card and passport. So in the end first Visa charged back and the agent was out of pocket for about 2 weeks before the Qantas refund came in.
So apparently to be save the cardholder must be present in the office , present a live signature and the agent slips the credit car in the machine. Not sure what will happen if a cloned credit card is presented and gets approved at first.
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