Bizarre experience trying to book with Copa Airlines

[tinyworld]

I'm having a similar issue. I (American) tried booking a flight today for my mother-in-law and her daughters (Jamaicans) to Panama and then onward to Cancun. After booking I received an email saying that the tickets will be processed within 6 hours.... of course it wasn't... I called Customer Service and actually got through very quickly. The agent explained to me that the purchase was rejected because it was flagged for possible fraud since an American card was used for Jamaican passengers.

In this case... the flagging does make sense because there is a huge rise in scamming, particularly in Jamaica, so I can understand why it would be flagged. Similar to what you all have been saying, the agent told me I just need to submit ID of the cardholder and the passengers, and then provide some sort of bank statement. Normally this would scream scam, but I can understand why it would be necessary in this situation.... thoughts? Will it be safe to submit a bank statement?

Scamming might be a problem for the airlines, but why do the OTA agencies manage it and COPA airlines is a nightmare experience? I tried last week to book my return flights with COPA, same problems as before. When I tried to pay with credit cards, I tried two different ones, it failed three times. Messages were only, "...failed due to unknown error...". No charges occurred. I gave up on COPA and booked on another airline despite a less favorable route.

 

[loobeeloo95]

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.

What phone number did you have? I am experiencing a similar issue and cant find an Australian number to contact them on..