Last week, I wrote about a Department of Transportation (DOT) complaint that caught my eye, whereby a Virgin Atlantic Flying Club member reported transferring points to the program, then redeeming those points for a family member, and then having them arrive at the airport, only to find their ticket was canceled.
Continue reading: Virgin Atlantic Flying Club’s Fraud Department Needs To Chill
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
You tell 'em, Ben! I hate Gary Leff, but, like a broken clock right twice a day, he makes a good point that the optimal amount of fraud is not zero. False positives hurt your business more than you can measure because they also hurt your brand and lead to posts exactly like this.
On the broader point about "chilling," I've been told throughout my schooling that I need to chill and put down the Federal Rules of Evidence on a Friday night, but guess what. I'm now a $6MM/year equity partner and the losers who told me to chill are not making even $600,000/year. Not only do they not have money, they don't have social cachet.
I wonder if VS is having a huge problem with account hacks since they implemented the new two factor authentication. My FC account was hacked in early March with multiple same day redemptions from LHR to various places in Africa going unnoticed by VS. They may have problem and have "over corrected" in an effort to combat it.
Appreciate the follow up.
I’ll take this as a warning, and not book award tickets via VS for anyone not traveling with me.
Tbh, sounds like a typical over correction that often comes down from non technical executive management after an embarrassingly negative internal audit finding makes it to board meeting-level.
Not saying that's what is happening here. Just that it rhymes with similar counter productive knee-jerk policies i have seen at other companies.
You do need to chill, bro. There are things money can't buy. Bragging about your income out of nowhere continuously on an unrelated blog, probably says a lot.
I find this especially galling because if they wanted to, they could make rules (like some Asian carriers have) saying redemptions must be for those who share the last name of the accountholder or whatnot. I wouldn't like it, but it would preclude any such issues. Or say that redemptions must come at least 30 days after making an account, etc. etc.
There are plenty of options which aren't unilateral ticket canceling
I find it frustrating how so little has changed since being officially brought into SkyTeam. I was hoping to see an improved app (I know Delta's is terrible, but VS is even worse) and much easier cancellations/changes... but really nothing has changed. Still have to call the afterhours call center where barely anything can be accomplished.
Love the lounges and onboard experience, but everything else with VS is a headache.
I feel like I'm one of very few people here who appreciates Arps' sense of humor. Keep it coming, I say! It's more refreshing than the TD mocking.
When there is fraud involved, an airline would never give you specific information. And they should not - no companies should. That is one of the easiest ways for fraudsters to learn.
If an airline is 100% convinced that fraud is committed, it wants the fraudsters and all associates to be inconvenienced so giving advanced warning would be counterproductive.
This is the new brave world of bots, AI and software taking place of human beings. That entire process likely never saw a human eye and was all based upon "machine learning." The number of human beings actually tied to such non revenue/non profit activity is small. Usually grossly undertrained, underpaid and over stressed people that aren't paid enough to care what the bot did.
Truthfully, use your miles only for yourself.
Doubtful. Virgin's IT infrastructure is behind the times. If anyone starts deploying those kind of advance AI analyses it will surely be United.
"Truthfully, use your miles only for yourself."
Lol no thanks -- being able to make business class purchases for people who would never do that for themselves is a pretty nice gift, and it usually works out just fine. I think the biggest issue here is that the people in question never had personal flight activity with VS prior to making their "gift" award redemptions.
There was no fraud involved, hence the outrage. Nothing that was done here is against terms of service or even that usual.
Agree that this is doubtful.
Sounds more like someone in senior mgmt got embarrassed and decided to take charge of the situation in an overly simplified way.
A story that pre dates AI. That probably also happened when the pyramids were built.
I worked with a company that was so obsessed with preventing fraud that it caused more financial damage to itself by fighting that fraud than the value of that fraud. This will likely be the same case. Piss off hundreds of legit customers who could've kept bringing you money for every one actual fraud you prevented.
Ben can you give a little bit of background on how people actually do exploit airlines' FF programs, and why they can't put in place simple restrictions to prevent it? Is it transfers of miles happening? When is it actually fraud versus trying to make money off of the program versus people incorrectly caught out redeeming for the first time? It seems odd that the airline can't change policies or have better tools for stopping this kind of thing.
Airlines can do anything they want with their miles whenever they want. You don't own them.
Just ask anyone caught up in the AApocolypse back in '19 and '20.
Virgin as a UK airline is under UK261. This would considered a last minute denied. They are required to reroute the passenger or pay for their rerouting if they refuse to provide one and 520 Pound as compensation. I assumed those bookings are confirmed. All they have to do is to get a notarized letter from the account holder stating he/she made the booking for the passenger.
People (poorly) writing completely irrelevant fake shit, is amusing to you? That's the weirdest part of all.
Except that when they use them as legal consideration for entry into a contract of carriage, it becomes a lot more complex than "My miles, I can do what I want!"
Virgin Atlantic has a CEO who served as a tank commander in the IDF. Who has been part of the killing and genocide of the Palestinian people.
It should therefore come as no surprise he oversees a company that lacks a moral compass, gaslights its customers and falsely accusing them of fraud.
A month ago I transferred 20K miles to Turkish to buy a ticket for a refugee from the Moldova power blackout who had used up his 90 days in Italy and was headed to Istanbul to stay with friends there. When he tried to check in at Milan this morning, they would not allow him to board unless he told them the last four digits of my credit card number. I was asleep in the US, and my phone was turned off. The only recent contact from Turkish was a text to me, notice of change of seat assignment, a couple days ago. He was not able to check in online because they wanted to see his passport first.
So, no good deed goes unpunished. But it's not just Virgin Atlantic. At least I learned to stay away from Turkish. The ticket could not be booked online; the phone call to book it had taken 15 or 20 minutes. The call to customer service today took another 15 or 20 minutes, just to get them to change it to an open ticket (no flights available until Monday, they said; it's Easter, which I suppose makes a difference in Italy). They weren't interested in helping book another flight, they just wanted to help me file a complaint form.
In my experience they cancel a lot of last minute bookings, and also if you enter your name wrong on your cc.
Turkish will usually tell you when you book over the phone that the credit card will need to be shown at the airport.
You know that and I know that, however . . . wait, no, we don't know if fraud was involved. It likely was not but if it was fraud, it would look exactly like this, wouldn't it?
I completely understand why people are so upset and Virgin should give ample warning as soon as they detect the fraud, but the actual basis for cancelling the tickets seems reasonable. Brand new account, booking for someone else certainly looks like they might be selling their points or the points might be stolen.
That all makes tremendous sense.
Unfortunately it is much much more common to see anti-fraud actions and inactions driven almost solely by executives' emotional reactions to specific events.
The short version goes something like this:
I put up a website selling cheap last-minute airfare and aggressively advertise it. When someone books a flight, I either pay a Virgin Atlantic customer to book that flight, or I just log into a compromised account and book the flight. With a bit of luck, nobody notices until the flight has been taken. If somebody does notice, I vanish into the ether, and my customer is left holding the bag.
In my experience, it almost never matters whether the triggering event was true fraud or just consumer creativity.
It comes down to whether executive management expected it or not. And how embarrassed they got when others found out.
Hi @ImmortalSynn - what's weirder:
a) Being momentarily amused by @Arps's Andy Kaufman level of dedication to an absurdly over the top internet persona on OMaaT comments sections
b) Getting so upset about Arps's internet performance art that you take time to lash out at those who are amused
@Aric and as I am guessing you already know, that practice is extensive enough to potentially be a material number (I am intentionally not using specific number) on a quarterly basis for an airline that finds it was the most unlocked car in the parking lot.
Only a guess, but it has the feel of a situation where AML concerns may have been raised.
I was lucky enough not to get hit by that, but again I only used IIRC one (1) mailer sent to someone else and didn't churn the AA cards too aggressively. Only 360k miles or so over a 2 year period, and I'd used over half of them by the time of the AApocalypse.
@Ralph
So true, and not just re anti-fraud.
I was once given a hard time for an expense claim which included a flight I did not use (a business emergency meant the trip was delayed)
The fact that the unused ticket plus the one I did use totalled less than a flexible ticket would have cost was apparenlty irrelevant.
When I got to the staqge of writing and approving expense claims I did not repeat that mistaken logic.
Ben, your post reads so much like many of my posts over the past year! Just replace Virgin Atlantic with PC Optimum and you have the issues Canadians have been dealing with for well over a year with one of our largest shopping programs.
It's generally common knowledge to always have the card or a copy of the card that is used to pay for an airline ticket, especially internationally...... I think for the most part anything that is "pre-paid".
We made a booking on Virgin Atlantic in February for our family to fly next December. Is there any way to determine if we've been targeted by this beyond showing up at the airport and being denied boarding? This would really be an awful situation and I can't believe Virgin would put people through this, obviously could hurt their brand significantly.
Can you tell us if these cancellations are just for virgin flights or partner flights as well?
Alaska Airlines similar experience. Wife and I had already purchased flights. Later 2 friends decided to join when I offered to get the flights. They had points of their own so they bought the outbound flight to Dom Rep. I bought the return thru Alaska on American. No notification of any issue until they arrived at airport. Cost $1400 to get them home. Alaska fraud dept was horrible to deal with. In the end I don't mind them keeping a close eye on things, as long as there is communication and the opportunity to correct any suspicion before simply canceling or denying boarding.
Iberia is doing the same thing, although they do send and email informing about the cancellation, yet no explanation whatsoever.
The topic is loyalty programs. Would it be bad to ask accounts to demonstrate "loyalty" by redeeming at least x% of miles for the direct benefit of the account holder ?
Like first booking needs to include the account holder and subsequent bookings must include account holder for at least 1 in 10 tickets.
That, or airlines need to accept they are not really doing loyalty but minting currency, and secure their system accordingly. Will we have an American Airlines passport in the future or get salary paid in Sky Pesos ?
"Money can't buy you class." - Countess LuAnn de Lesseps.
There are probably a few contributors to this board who pay more capital gains tax than that every year. Bragging about money is bad manners, and immediately betrays you as nouveau riche. You should desist, or move to Dubai where people are impressed by vulgar declarations of wealth.
Most of my travel purchases these days are made by virtual cards, there's no physical card to show no matter how much I'd want to. It's stupid anyway - they can identify me using my passport, which is far more reliable than some credit card.
There is no genocide in Palestine, except the attempted genocide of Jews by Hamas.
I get it that frequent flyer fraud is a real issue.
But you would think the bare minimum an airline should do is reach out to the person they have suspicions of and get some context and then if the airline still thinks its fishy TELL the customer the ticket will be cancelled.
Didn’t know that! Thanks. Security will be good then. Even more reason for me to fly Virgin.
It's an interesting point. I looked again at 261 and I does place an obligation on the airline to notify you that your reservation has been cancelled. BUT denied boarding is permitted where your travel documentation is inadequate (which could be argued if your ticket breached the FFP conditions). So it's not as simple as it looks - but would be an angle.
Of course the other point is that the original story wasn't a flight to or from the UK. It was to the EU so 261 would apply, but many cases will be redemption which don't fall within scope.
I did this and was successful in getting the £520 per passenger EU261 compensation but not the account reinstated!
I am planning to transfer and book tickets for my kids/spuse (same last name)
Have you seen this happen with people with same last name ?
Opening a new account, transferring points and booking for someone else definitely looks a little suspicious but it also it is a very common chain of events that many people do legimitately.
Virgin seem to be acting like there is no possible way these bookings could be legitimate which is dumb.
Likewise affected and being stonewalled with impunity by Virgin after a no-notice cancellation and airport stranding. Ingredients for a class action here? Waivers, arbitration clauses in T&Cs can be invalidated when the company is clearly acting in bad faith..
Just as with Chase, the problem is the incentive structure for the leaders of the fraud team is such that recognition is earned by closing accounts . Chase progressively closed my personal and business accounts over a period of 13 years, always with the same non-answer response. If an airline did this to me I would sue on principal. I have the time and money to do so.
Chase insisted to CFPB they provided a reason, but what they gave was a range of possibilities ( “closed due to previous experience with a credit, investment, or other account”). At least I had CFPB to complain to b4 they were gutted.
My “ revenge” is succeeding in opening credit accounts once per year, quickly earning the bonus and transferring it out b4 Chase closes that account .
I also moved a 8 figure trust account from Chase Private and when questioned why, responded with the exact same language Chase provided me. I don’t think that succeeded in doing anything other than making me feel good.
@It's Cynical Corporate Math - Let's See How This Goes
That's not how Fight Club works.
1.You do not talk about Fight Club.
2.You do NOT talk about Fight Club.
The difference between Arps and Tim Dunn.
Arps is authentically a fake.
Tim Dunn is faking to look authentic.
That's not recommended practice for anti-fraud.
And might not even be allowed if concerns are AML related.
Right or wrong, the bias is to assume the perpetuator(s) are potentially organized crime or funding terrorism.
It's Virgin Atlantic's program so they can do what they wish. I don't know the entire story so can't really comment but this seems to have only started recently for some reason. Was it because of the dynamic pricing? Who knows. Perhaps VS needs to change its program and try to mirror ANA (where you can only redeem awards for yourself and family members.)
Virgin Atlantic should be boycotted by anyone with a moral compass.
Their CEO, Shai Weiss, was a commander in the IDF and committed war crimes and contributed to genocide against the Palestinian people.
Boycott Virgin Atlantic, and boycott all Virgin Group companies.
BDS, some wild allegations without evidence is contemptible.
Put up or shut up would be one’s best advice.
Esk, some contributors really get under your skin. Your obsession with TD will turn you old and grey before your years bro.
I’m happy to report that at least this didn’t happen to my wife who flew a VS transatlantic today. I booked her itinerary with points in my Virgin Atlantic account that I transferred from Amex (with a 30% bonus). So after reading this I was concerned her ticket would be affected. I checked my account and the reservation everyday and everything appeared to in order. Then yesterday she was able to check-in online and get her boarding pass, which was a good sign. I guess it must have helped that my VS account was opened since 2023 and that I had used it once before for a redemption for myself. Wife even got lucky that her plane got switched for the a330-900 neo with the newer upper class cabin (she was to flight the old a330 cabin). She had a great time at the LHR Clubhouse and a great flight!