credit card fraud

Most likely breach of contract. Call centre people are paid on commission or by incentives. They are not lawyers. They say and do dumb things.

A bit of research will probably find some plausible claim of violation of European or consumer law.

But the point is to get their attention, not to win in court: to settle. A demand for arbitration can do that, if there is an arbitration clause. But Small Claims is free, and an amenable forum. For the credit card outfit it's also a nuisance, even if an arbitration clause excludes customer access to it in principle.

This is the reality. Live with it.

But there is nothing to settle. With breach of contract you can only sue for damages, but you cannot if you have suffered no loss. The position is that the card company claim their customer owes them for the air tickets, and the customer denies it. There is no problem until the company sue him for payment.

Or were you thinking about suing for compensation for irritation caused, and for unwarranted blackening of credit record?

It doesn't matter. He knows where their kids go to school.

I once put a collection letter, unopened, through the mail box of the in-house lawyer of a company that was giving me grief.

Never heard from that company again.

The law is supposed to provide a forum to settle disputes so we don't take the law into our own hands. Once you start citing legalese to say there is no basis for relief, you invite violence. And not just the kind that killed Edouard Stern

The latter would have to go to the high court, and is only for the very rich.

The threat of it can still work. Diners Club once lost a manual payment I made and hassled me for months before giving up. When I got rejected for a bank account, I found they had marked it as default. I produced a copy of the cheque and the paying in slip stub to them and pointed out that they had plainly libelled me. They grovelled like mad and gave me a load of free reward points and a free sub for a couple of years.

I assumed then and still do that if you have copper bottomed proof of having paid, and of their having falsely stated to a credit agency that you had not, they are so bang to rights they haven't a leg to stand on. They settled the instant this was pointed out.

In message id on Wed, 02 Mar

I buy tickets for other passengers regularly over the net via my credit card. The card is not required at check in. I do not have access to the passengers' passports. Even the code that is generated at time of purchase is not necessary at check in.

Well not really mailed to the valid card address. We travelled on BasiqAir last summer and bought tickets from them over the internet. They are a ticketless airline. All they do is send you an email giving you the booking reference.

So probably no help at all, BasiqAir should have a note of the email address to which the confirming email was sent.

and since when has an email address been useful for anything?

If the airline never had sight of the card and did not dispatch a tangible item to the cardholder's address then wrt the contract between themselve and the credit company, the airline are liable for the loss. The airline probably take this risk on because they aren't selling a tangible item and the increase in efficiency from not delivering tickets is more than the loss from extra fraud.

But this doesn't help the OP, as he has had no dealings with the airline he has no reason to sort this out. His problem is that the credit card company don't seem to be honering their responsibility in dealing with a fraudlent charge. AIUI there is no three month deadline for dealing with this (it is criminal event where criminal statute of limitations applies) and they should not be giving him the brush-off.

tim