Delta Trips Up Legitimate Passenger Not Allowed to Check-In Overseas

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.