I fully agree it’s sometimes a self created issue(although payment processors screw stuff up all the time as well so depending on the flow it might not be) but it’s not one that is their responsibility to resolve, they have canceled the transaction on their end, its on the payment processor to realize this and give the money back.
The only responsibility they have in this is investigating the issue on their end(which considering that trying again sometimes fixes it it may not even be on their end) to fix the payment flow, there’s no further obligation to the customer. They can’t give back money they don’t have, what ends up happening is like what the above described where the company takes a financial loss due to someone elses problem. Our old SOP for wireless deposits in the store I was at(we did a lot of second party contracting with Verizon and ATT) was informing the customer that the transaction has been cancelled/returned and should appear in the next 5-7 business days. If they complained we would state if they need the money sooner they could try contacting the payment provider, but it was out of our hands at this point. Us providing them money would end up giving the customer back the money twice, which was in no circumstance going to happen.
You could make the argument that it’s good customer service but like… at the end of the day, theres no obligation and the company needs to run. It’s a price analysis. Will giving this credit eventually give a net profit on this customer? At a potential $2600 loss unless they are a frequent flyer I’m guessing no.
I felt bad for customers that did a credit check for a phone, just to have it fail during processing, because it likely would fail the next retry due to a recent credit check, but we were out of options at that point, the store didn’t have a local payment scheme to set the customer up on, and they couldn’t just make it work without fully eating the cost of the device, which also the company wouldn’t be willing to do. It sucks for both parties.
that type of holding system with a flight ticket? those have a departure date that may or may not be after the release window. yea that type of policy would never fly at an airline, it would only work with flights scheduled more than 2 or 3 weeks out otherwise you might as well make the flight free because once service is rendered it becomes a lot harder to extract the money they still had not received.
It’s also creating a scenario where seats are booked without proof of payment, which puts the company at risk of those seats not selling if payment never goes through and also requires a system being in place that allows such a thing, which is also man hours for coding and design that is unlikely to exist. “Sorry there is an issue with the payment, please provide an alternative payment” is way more of an adequate response for this type of situation. As long as they are actually filing a ticket for them to investigate the issue.
I’m firm with the opinion that the agent and Manager screwed up here allowing the call to last that long, it was clear the issue was not on their end(or at the very least resolvable by them) and should have terminated. I agree with some form of credit being issued (definitely not a free flight and a bunch of credit, but some form of credit), but it was strictly due to the length of the call since that is where the company failed here, not because of the fact they tried twice.
note: edits were clarification of what i meant.