Veteran consumer reporter Herb Weisbaum, known as the ConsumerMan, recently was coming back from a vacation in London with his wife when they had difficulty checking in for the Delta flight home.
The check-in kiosk at Heathrow airport asked him to swipe the credit card with which he purchased the tickets. Being a cautious international traveler, Herb left most of his credit cards at home including the one used to buy the tickets.
A Delta supervisor said she could not issue boarding passes without his card to help prevent credit card fraud. Having a passport was not good enough. He was given several options, one worse than the next:
Buy two new tickets for about $6,000,
Somehow get a picture of the card used to purchase the tickets, or
Have someone go to his hometown airport in Seattle with his card.
Herb decided to call his next door neighbor at 3 a.m. Seattle time, give him instructions on how to get into his house, and have him text a picture of the credit card to London.
Why in the world were passengers like my friend not explicitly told they needed to fly with the credit card that was used to purchase the tickets? A Delta spokesperson pointed to a link on the Delta website:
*MOUSE PRINT:
“To safeguard against credit/debit card fraud, the purchaser may have to show us the credit/debit card along with a valid photo ID. The time varies based on the billing address of the credit/debit card or the country of travel. If the purchaser is not traveling, they can show us their credit/debit card and ID at an airport ticket counter or another ticket office location, whichever is most convenient.”
Poking around online, MrConsumer found complaints dating back as many as 14 years about Delta’s surprise policy.
One would hope by now the airline would have figured out how to better communicate this unexpected and potentially costly policy to customers. What do you think?
You can read Herb’s full story here.
Wow-This is a terrible policy as most people leave many cards at home. This can happen to everyone that travels. Thanks for raising the issue.
Lina… Imagine if your family got stranded in Italy!
That makes no sense. It’s not like it costs them anything to tell their passengers about the policy.
Nowhere in the Delta Airlines International Contract of Carriage, does the contract condition issuance of a boarding pass, on presentment the credit card used to purchase a ticket. Therefore, this omission constitutes nondisclosure, which can form a foundation to invalidate a contract. That said, since Delta is insured against losses due to credit card fraud, the credit card presentment demand is less a fraud-prevention measure, but more a security-related measure held over from previous years, when malicious actors often paid for the tickets of passengers whose purposes and intents aboard, were criminal in nature. At the end of the day, in order to avoid such issues, it is wise for passengers to carry at least a copy of all instruments used in the purchase of even domestic transportation, and preferably, the instrument itself. Delta, if they wish to have their Contract of Carriage held up under legal challenge, will place their unwritten condition in their Contract of Carriage, and will display it prominently on the screen where passengers purchase their tickets, with words substantially in the form of “In order to receive a boarding pass, the credit card used to purchase tickets, must be physically presented at time of check-in.”
Why in the hell don’t we all now be required to go get a chip implanted in our forehead with all the necessary identification details along with a new security key type guaranteeing no one can ever steal or substitute my identity. Then we can be scanned for correct identification.
But that’s the hell of it. They HAD *multiple* forms of identification. ID wasn’t actually an issue other than Delta’s policy made it so.
I wonder if they would have been asked to show their card if they would check in at the counter instead of the kiosk?
What happens if you purchase tickets for your children to come visit you?
Here’s a way that this scenario could be made even worse:
If Mr. Weisbam had instead decided to purchase return tickets for his family on an alternative airline (surely a reasonable reaction given Delta’s unreasonable policies), Delta’s computers could have flagged his round trip tickets as used fraudulently (so-called “throwaway ticketing”) and imposed further sanctions, including denying a refund or even billing Mr. Weisbaum in those instances where a discounted round trip fare is less than a one-way ticket, depending on Delta’s detailed contracts of carriage.
It is hard not to imagine that Delta’s antiquated and unreasonable credit card surprise requirements have been left in place at least in part because they can serve as a profit opportunity for the airline.
At least some consumers have been warned/
This is ridiculous, especially in light of the history of complaints about this practice. I do, however, take a picture of both sides of my cards and store them in a locked file on my Notes app. I don’t think I would bother taking a photo of cards I did not intend to bring with me though, and would then be in the same position as Mr. Weisbaum.
What a horrible thing to put a customer through. This information needs to be front and center on the purchase page/agreement. To spring this on a traveler is inflicting undue stress. The airline companies should be ashamed of themselves for not taking better care of their customers.