When you submit a payment online through your credit card, a request (A) will be sent to the bank to verify if your account has the sufficient credit. If yes, bank will issue a ‘sufficient credit’ request (B) back and finally you will be directed to a success page (C).
Link A, B and C can be down for many reasons including Internet Connection problem, delaying, etc. It creates real panic when any of them is down, and it was happening to my sister last two days. She was booking a flight ticket online through KLM Royal Dutch airlines…
A great front-end but lack of info when thing goes wrong
1. She tried many different cards and frustrated over the re-entering of booking information.
2. She got a confirmation finally, but another email later that said application not confirmed.
3. She called KLM and was asked to check with Credit Card company and both sides are telling different stories in the end.
Link A or B is down. Apparently, KLM didn’t receive the sufficient credit request. So the transaction is floating. KLM system is not full proof! No friendly notes / instruction to guide panic customers when link A, B or C is down.
Be the first to leave a comment here, i am the “victim” for the floating transaction. If the airline company does not take any appropriate action to solve the problems, it will definitely lose its competitive advantage even in the short run, due to the powerful word of mouth effect.
The front-end user experience for KLM website is great, except that they should also improve the payment back-end process.
KLM manage to solve the problem by asking my sister to pay at the airport finally :)