Hate it though, just like you Marc, that they advertise with flights starting from RMB 3000 (at the time I booked) when the actual price is almost double that.

Furthermore I don’t understand why KLM is flying with ‘old’ 747′s from Shanghai and with their newest 777′s from Chengdu. They are so far behind other airlines in terms of service in my opinion.

It’s time indeed for more competition on the direct route between Shanghai and Amsterdam.

However, I’m sorry to say that my card was not blocked, it just gave the message that the details were incorrect. I did not keep on trying until the card would be blocked, and I used the card the next morning without any problem to book a ticket online through another vendor. On Twitter I learned that KLM had problems with its payment provider. Had KLM provided other payment options (like when booking a ticket from Holland) it would have been easy to solve, but they did not.

And even if it had been a Chinese IP problem like you suggest, it would mean that no foreigner credit card holder would be able to book a ticket from China. That would be a major screw-up for KLM, especially considering that other airlines don’t have that problem.

Conclusion is simple for me and does not change: KLM is the one who made mistakes.

Sorry, but you did not understand that the IP problem is not a KLM problem. Your card was blocked by a credit-card auth.because of the chinese IP. Why else? A technical problem? No! Sure your father had no chance to book as he was using the same, blocked card and as most credit-card auth. need 24 to 48h to umblock. Now clear?

I don

@anonymous 5:43pm Enjoying playing the role of the Devil’s Advocate again? Surprised you cannot see the problems with the airline, did you actually read the post and understand the problem? Half your comment is about the fact that my credit card did not work because I am in China and your solution for that. As you can see from the post my parents tried to input my card details as well and there it also did not work, so it has actually nothing to do with a Chinese IP address. By the way, I normally have no trouble paying online at US or European sites with a credit card from an IP address in China, I do it all the time.

But that was not the point of the article. For me it’s all about being customer and service oriented, that’s missing at many big companies. They got away with it for a long time, but the Internet is changing that. Maybe your expectations are different from mine, but if a customer tries to buy your product and he/she does not succeed you have a problem as a company. If I would run a company like KLM I would make sure the customer is #1 and listening to him/her would be my #1 priority. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and learn from that. It’s not so difficult to make the booking process better and easier to use: most other airlines I fly with don’t have these problems when using their sites from China. So yes, it is a KLM problem and I hope they will try to solve it soon.

@Paul will give Expedia a try next time, never used them.

I fly between Shanghai and Amsterdam every week and the klm site sucks. Try to use expedia.com next time. Prices are same or slightly cheaper than booking directy with klm.

Cheers,

Paul Jongeling

Sorry but I am a bit laughing now. Second time you bash a airline and second time I cannot see any problems by the airline.

No question, the credit-card auth. companies in europe or the us are rejecting a lot of payments if, by IP, they are from china. For sure!

To solve that problem, my wife do love internet shopping in the US, I used VPN Services like Swissvpn or Witopia as the IP would change. But step-by-step a lot of these credit-card-auth. companies also rejected payments like that, they blocked VPN IPs or complete VPN IP blocks. To talk about service. Still most of the shops my wife uses in the US do not deliver to foreign countries. Do they all not need money? KLM is not special in that. If their credit-card auth. company rejected the payment, it is ever a result of security. So please no worries about that.

Not only european goverments are target of typical chinese spam and hacking tools. Payments systems are targets too. I am investor of such a payment system and can tell you a lot of bad stories. Min. 70 percent of all attacks coming from chinese mainland. NO of the what is called “third payment solution companies” is writing down how much they loose coz of this, but believe me, you will wonder how much it is. The company I invest in is working with 17 full time, high educated software engineers from the US and Europa to work against all of these daily attacks. And there is no light at the end uf tunnel.

Funny story. To solve my, no, have to say mostly me wifes IP problem I ( was tired to see that she was very unhappy weekly ) tried to book my first own, private VPN Server at a huge webhosting comp. in germany. Yes, the payment did not work for that. I called them as the CEO is a very old friend, he did not really remember me but I still had his number. All he did is to confirm that the payment problem is a result of my chinese IP adress and/or my VPN adress I used during the booking precedure. No way for my to pay. So I changed and chagned an the 4th hoster worked. Until 2 years now my wife is fine with the internet shopping. And I tried to KLM website 10 minutes ago. Very fast, no error, but sure, I did not try to pay – I am sure it will work as I never had problems in the past 2 years.

Some shops are asking me for a chinese credit-card holder. That also sometimes worked if my own card is not working. Seems that if you are outside you homecountry you are a kind of alien from mars, or china is mars? We cannot change that, but KLM also cannot change it.

About the Error 500. Mostly it is a security reason. To solve that error KLM may delete the .htaccess file on their server. No, for sure they wont to that. Say thank you to the great firewall technology, to the slow internet and to the millions of spammers and hackers, but it is not a KLM problem!

About the booking from PVG to Europe and back. Similar problems, not fair prices at several of the airlines. KLM is no alone!

The only thing I don