Unfortunately due to the increasing fraud from the merchant, there has been a massive amount of unsettled travel purchase disputes.  Which has put any sort of travel purchase, even through a travel agency, into a high risk category.  Related reasons include high volume sales, the occasion of chargebacks or refunds, and outside fraud (fraud resulting from the purchaser).

Being a “booking agent” or travel agent has a lot of risks associated with it that an outsider of the business wouldn’t suspect.  When someone books a reservation that is non-refundable, they choose not show up, and then call their credit card company and perform a chargeback.  If someone has a bad experience, for example, a delayed flight or bad service; rather than go through the necessary process it is easier for them to just conduct a chargeback and receive their funds.  What travelers do not realize is that most times people purchase travel insurance that will cover a lot of costs associated with their lack of satisfaction.  The time to get their funds is longer, so if they have knowledge of it, they choose not to use it.

The travel agent or booking agent tends to take the brunt of the hit from the chargebacks.  Once it is processed, they have usually already received the funds and paid the appropriate parties.  If they have not, the merchant provider has to make up the insufficient funds.  Included in the return of the payment can be an additional fee of up to $50, depending on the bank.  If a small merchant receives an unanticipated chargeback for a significant amount, this could leave him or her in a situation where they are unable to cover checks or payments that had already been issued.  This is where the determination to classify a travel company as high risk stems from.

Some people do not realize the actual list of reasons why a chargeback can occur, and there are people that abuse them.  You may think, just because someone didn’t get their expectations met doesn’t entail them to their money back, but in fact this can qualify as the product not being what was described or promised, or card holder not being satisfied with product or services.  This is a legitimate reason for a chargeback.  Also included is failure to get cardholder’s signature, this alone leaves an endless list of possibilities, resulting in so many companies being classified as high risk.

There needs to be some responsibility on the card holder, and the issuing bank to follow through with why these chargebacks are occurring.  To confirm the validity, and put some ownership back on the purchaser.  According to these terms a person could “never be satisfied” and always be issued a refund.  These terms are pretty generic and run the same with most major credit card companies.  At what point do the card holders themselves be accountable for fraud, for misleading the credit card companies?  It usually ends up being the legitimate situation that gets denied, due to over use of these provisionary clauses.