Air Deccan

Not sure if this has been discussed before, but why is it no longer possible for foreigners to purchase their tickets online and pay with credit card?

diplomacy

Due to large scale fraud.

What does it mean?

There were too many cases of online bookings being made with stolen credit card numbers. This affected not only Air Deccan but the other domestic airlines in India.

yup, my card from the USA stoppped working too.

For how long will it be like this?

diplomacy

No idea whether it's permanent or temporary?

diplomacy

This is really strange.

If someone buys something from a shop with a stolen card, they are away out the door.

If they buy an air ticket, they have to turn up at the airport, where they could easily be met by a policeman.

So except for (what I recently learned here is called) walk-up flights, it seems either a high-risk crime, or crazy that law-enforcement is not taking care of it.

Nick it need not be a stolen card, when you hand over your card to any establishment the person can always note down the last three digits and rest of the digits are any way in the charge slip copy. So using this info one can buy tickets. Kingfisher lost crores of rupees this way. By the time the card holder comes to know of these fraudulant transactions the thief has already flown.

Not really. When a customer makes a purchase with a credit card at a bricks and mortar store, the retailer is bound by the terms of the merchant agreement to compare the signature on the card with that on the signed receipt. If he has any doubt he has a right to decline the transaction. When a customer makes a purchase at an e-store, there can be no signature verification by the e-tailer, only a verification of the CVV number which is far easier to manipulate as comapred to someones signature. The e-tailer has no way to verify the identity of the customer who is making the online purchase.

The websites in India who refuse to accept credit cards issued overseas are not unique by any means. The largest Canadian electronics and computer hardware e-store accepts credit cards issued only in Canada or the US. The same is true for many other e-commerce sites.

A few months ago I placed an order for some Hindi DVD movies at an e-tailer based in India. This web store had the cheapest prices for these particular DVD titles. The owner of this store emailed me back immediately to request that I fax him a monthly statement of my credit card bill to verify my identity. I refused to do so as I considered this to be an invasion of my privacy. The owner replied apologetically that he had no choice in this matter because this condition had been imposed because of the massive losses that his store had suffered. Although I sympathized with his predicament I decided to cancel the order that I had placed.

These days the credit card companies call up on the telephone number provided at the time of application to confirm an online transaction. I booked tickets on Kingfisher and Air Deccan last week. Both the times I got a call from HDFC Bank asking me confirm whether I had booked the tickets.

In other words, it is possible to purchase a ticket online using a foreign credit card?

diplomacy

One of my friends has not had any success recently, including at Air Deccan. He has a Citibank card from USA. However, there may be enough inconsistency in the policies or procdures for exceptions to occur.

Himmat01 is using a credit card issued by HDFC which is an Indian bank.

All web sites say that Indian cards are OK. Any problem with those does not reflect any new restriction, just routine inefficiency of their system.