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- Aug 21, 2011
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I recently made a booking with Copa Airlines on their website. This is the Star Alliance airline based in Panama. It's a fairly simple one-way Economy booking with a stopover in PTY.
I received an email after completing the payment that my booking was processing and that I should receive a ticket within a few hours. Instead, a few hours later I got this:
I called Copa Airlines, and after waiting on hold to speak to somebody they told me that their internal ticketing department had rejected my booking because they thought it was fraudulent or something. Not really sure why.
They told me to send an email to the above address with a copy of my ID/passport and most recent statement for the credit card I used for the payment, which I did.
The following day, I hadn't heard anything further and still didn't have a ticket, so called Copa Airlines again. On that call, the lady spent 30 minutes (unsuccessfully) trying to get through to the right department and eventually the call disconnected.
I tried calling again. This time, they told me that the booking was cancelled and that I would need to make a new one. I did this over the phone and it took around an hour as the price had also changed, and the lady had to manually adjust the price to honour the amount I originally was supposed to pay. It was a pretty tedious process with lots of long waits on hold, and several details in the final booking were incorrect (e.g. contact phone numbers), but in the end I got a ticket.
While on the phone, I asked what would happen if I tried to make a new booking on their website using the same credit card. They told me it would probably be rejected again.
I can't stand airlines (or any businesses) that waste their customers' time like this. This was unfortunately a terrible booking experience and I'll be using a travel agent if I need to book any more flights with Copa Airlines.
I received an email after completing the payment that my booking was processing and that I should receive a ticket within a few hours. Instead, a few hours later I got this:
I called Copa Airlines, and after waiting on hold to speak to somebody they told me that their internal ticketing department had rejected my booking because they thought it was fraudulent or something. Not really sure why.
They told me to send an email to the above address with a copy of my ID/passport and most recent statement for the credit card I used for the payment, which I did.
The following day, I hadn't heard anything further and still didn't have a ticket, so called Copa Airlines again. On that call, the lady spent 30 minutes (unsuccessfully) trying to get through to the right department and eventually the call disconnected.
I tried calling again. This time, they told me that the booking was cancelled and that I would need to make a new one. I did this over the phone and it took around an hour as the price had also changed, and the lady had to manually adjust the price to honour the amount I originally was supposed to pay. It was a pretty tedious process with lots of long waits on hold, and several details in the final booking were incorrect (e.g. contact phone numbers), but in the end I got a ticket.
While on the phone, I asked what would happen if I tried to make a new booking on their website using the same credit card. They told me it would probably be rejected again.
I can't stand airlines (or any businesses) that waste their customers' time like this. This was unfortunately a terrible booking experience and I'll be using a travel agent if I need to book any more flights with Copa Airlines.
