[dulcinea]

I have just bought a ticket with Lanchile airlines which used to be a good company but lately is not so good. I bought the ticket on their website US version with my debit card from my bank. Lanchile says if you buy on their website they give you a disocunt so they did but after that I see that I had a charge of 11 us dollars on my bank statemtne. contact the bank and the bank had nothing to do with it.

It seems that Lanchile processes their tickets in sweden listen to this one, so I was charged 11 dollars for international purchase. The debit card is visa, of course visa says they do not charge becuase it is a service they offer the bank.

So I called Lanchile again and now they want me to send them my bank statement and reservation code to initiate an investigation, I mean what kind of company would make you do that, with all the insecurity, due to the great amount of identity theft there is.

How can one be sure or when to buy on line, I guess you cannot buy on line but I believe the same thing would have happenned if I had bought the ticket by phone. I have done these purchases before and never had this problem. But agian Lanchile is not the ocmpany it used ot be . I flew Lan in 2007 being disable I had to beg for a wheel chair and for help, because they had the old stair to enter the plane, I could hardly manage with my bad leg and carryon and then begged for help. Theplanes are old and the service has come down abruptly.
Not to say that lately their customer service the way they treat people , they are not certainly friendly.

[PHXFlyer]

Hello dulcinea. I did a "test booking" on Lan's USA website for a round-trip ticket from Santiago, Cile to Lima, Peru. I indicated I was using a USA issued Visa card. At the bottom of the screen where one enters the credit/debit card information, the following hyperlink appears with a box you must check to confirm:

I have read and agree to the Purchase Conditions regarding the ticket I have selected.

If you click on the hyperlink to display the Purchase Conditions the following is stated:

VISA, MasterCard, Diners Club and American Express purchases are authorized online by Transbank S.A. Final confirmation is sent within 24 hours to the e-mail provided by the customer at the moment of purchase. If following this time period you have not received a confirmation, please contact our Call Center and provide the reservation code given at the moment of purchase.

It looks like your complaint is actually with Transbank S.A. since they are the processing agent. Once your debit card information was transmitted to them Lan had no control over where Transbank actually processed the charge for payment.