Cannot use Cr Card online because I live in a flat???

JeanTheWidow

I have been trying to book my chosen holiday from the Cooperative Travel Website. It kept stalling at the payment page. I rang Cooperative Travel (3 numbers, 6 people) I am told that the reason it will not take my payment is because I LIVE IN A FLAT! Has anyone else heard this? I have lived in flats for the last 5 yrs and NEVER before had a problem.

Fruit_and_Nut_Case

Sounds a bit crazy. Are they saying that they refuse to do business with someone in a flat or is it that their website is not set up to accept address details which include flat numbers? Either way it seems bad business.

dzug1

Sounds like either they are not set up to or do not know how to enter your address in a format acceptable to the CC companies

JeanTheWidow

My address comes up when I enter my postcode. I have booked a previous holiday on this site with the same card from this address. As I look around London now they are only building flats - about half of Londoners live in flats. I can buy on the phone, but the website will NOT take payment from people in flats - the Cooperative representative says it is the BANKS not them. I am completely at a loss.

JeanTheWidow

Been on to my Cr Card supplier who say it is rubbish, so back to the Cooperative - yet another number and 2 more people, finally they admit it is their web-site, not the banks. Cannot explain why it accepted my earlier booking. Had to make the booking on the phone. Why do I spend money on a PC and Broadband if I have to go back in time?

psstoverere

I had trouble too with the co-op with a similar thing, i live in a flat and my address starts 14 blah blah, i had to put my address as flat 14 blah blah before it would accept it, no idea why as it just has 14 on the address look up but wouldnt accept it, after manually typing in flat 14 it went through no problem

redpete

I suspect that the problem is that your address is held in one format in one place and another format in another place, the transaction fails because the addresses don't match. Living in a flat might be the cause of the address formats being different but I'm sure living in a flat is not the reason it failed.

InsideInsurance

It will be a problem with the AVS (Address Verification System) counter fraud mechanism.

The system doesnt actually really check the address it just checks the numerical parts of it. There are two options for merchants they can do partial AVS which does just the post code or you can do full AVS that checks both "house" number and postcode.

If we take an address:
6 Axium Apartments
48 Sparkes Close
Bromley
BR1 1DP

For partial checking they send the number 11 and its a simple check.

For full though you have the issue of having both 6 and 48, which do you send? Do you concatenate them and send it as 648? You may find with some addresses the way of entering it can vary, so some may drop the 48 from the address as its superfluous, in Scotland you can often find flats can be designated as 3-L and 3-R (ie left and right when there are two flats on a floor) or 3-1 and 3-2 so again you have problems.

It isnt just flats that are the problem though, if your home has a name and a number some people may drop the number but then AVS fails if their bank does store the number.

A few clients I've worked for dropped to partial AVS due to the large volume of people declined due to how addresses are entered. You'll also find it more common that systems wont allow you to enter the address but simply the postcode and then pick the address as if everyone did this then everytime the address would be as Royal Mail say it should be and so AVS would be passed. Of cause not every company wants to pay the price charged for the PAF file and not everyone agrees its right to stop people typing in addresses - I couldnt order from Dominos after moving to a new build as they hadnt updated their PAF file and so didnt find my address and didnt allow me to manually type it.

JeanTheWidow

That's a very detailed explanation INSIDE INSURANCE, thank you. Still find it curious that the same site had accepted me and my address a short while earlier to book my May holiday.

Maestro.

I can't get broadband because none of the companies that I called can suss out my address, and when I applied for council tax it initially turned out my neighbour and I were trying to pay for the same address. I do feel your pain...

I will be putting on a brave face and trying to get broadband again soon, I think...

InsideInsurance

There are a number of possible explanations but it would all be speculative, presumably it stalled once you had actually been transferred to the TravelTek website to actually make the payment and had put all your card details etc in?

The most obvious are that either you entered you address slightly differently or that TravelTek have multiple servers and they arent all configured identically (it does happen) or given it you are saying it hung rather than came back as a decline then it could just be a problem with the servers or their payment gateways servers or anyone else in the supply chain.