Late 2016 - LATAM Chile booking question (from outside Chile)

[eeuunikkeiexpat]

Supposedly attempting to make a booking on the LATAM Chile site from outside Chile now fails at the payment step and using TOR does not get around it.

Can any forumites verify this?

[papageno]

Supposedly attempting to make a booking on the LATAM Chile site from outside Chile now fails at the payment step and using TOR does not get around it.

Can any forumites verify this?

Why not try Kayak, Justfly, etc? They often have equal or lower prices than booking directly with LATAM.

[eeuunikkeiexpat]

I need to preface this back about five years or so ago.

(1) The Chile LAN/LATAM site offers the lowest fare buckets for Chile domestic flights sometimes more than half the price of the buckets offered on their "international" sites.
(2) Before giving up about five years ago, LAN tried to discourage people booking these fare buckets from outside of Chile with various ways from auto redirects to a scary warning message that the ticket must be purchased within Chile.
(3) I was one of the fiercest critics of this LAN rob the foreigner stance and helped people get around it. One way was to use TOR.
(4) According to the recent posts on FlyerTalk, third party sites also cannot access these lowest fare buckets and I always recommend that people avoid using third party sites because of the problems that occur due to schedule changes and IRROPS situations (try contacting those third party sites when you are stuck at some foreign airport and LATAM won't help because they are not the "travel agent" who sold the tickets).
(5) So LAN gave up but fast forward to late 2016 and it seems LATAM has found a way where even TOR does not work and has implemented it.

[passport]

I was able to buy a domestic flight ticket at the Chile price last week. Tried Tor first as per your earlier reco but it did not work. I'm pretty sure that I finally used Chrome incognito, even though it says the merchant can see the buyer's origin. I went to latam.com, selected Chile as my location and was able to pay with a USA credit card.

[eeuunikkeiexpat]

Thanks passport.

Anyone else want to try Chrome's Incognito?

I tunneled in using Hotspot Shield and ran into the same payment page crapout in Safari that the US FlyerTalker recently related.

[susiedillon]

So now I am about to give up on my trip to Colombia! I have been trying for the last few hours to PAY for the selected flights online via the LAN websites in both Chile and in Canada with absolutely no luck at all. After in-putting all requested info re- dates, flights, personal info and credit cards, the site kept trying to re-direct me, and then failing in even that task. I have used several different Canadian credit cards, all with the same result. I even called their help line in Canada - and that was a bust too. No answer! Is there any hope that I might one day loll on a beach in Cartagena? Please advise if you have any solution.

[susiedillon]

Sorry, forgot to mention that I am trying to do this from inside Chile - not afuera!

[FrankPintor]

I have more or less given up on airline pages to buy tickets, at least in LatAm... never works for me, there's always some problem at the last step , or some card verification by some inept uncontactable local company which is unable to process payments with foreign cards.

If you're lucky, your failed payment attempts may have generated reservation numbers which you can't see, but an agent could find for you. I just go to the airline offices, and pay the $30 or whatever fee to get my ticket now. It sucks, but Cartagena is worth it I post on TripAdvisor occasionally, I recommended some places to stay and to see while there.

[admin]

yea, I'll second the 'Cartagena is worth it'. I keep trying new places around Latin America and the Caribbean for vacation, and still keep comparing them to Cartagena. Especially the small islands off the coast (Pirate Island resort). Where else can you eat lobster cheaper than hamburgers?

[T_ROBO]

So now I am about to give up on my trip to Colombia! I have been trying for the last few hours to PAY for the selected flights online via the LAN websites in both Chile and in Canada with absolutely no luck at all. After in-putting all requested info re- dates, flights, personal info and credit cards, the site kept trying to re-direct me, and then failing in even that task. I have used several different Canadian credit cards, all with the same result. I even called their help line in Canada - and that was a bust too. No answer! Is there any hope that I might one day loll on a beach in Cartagena? Please advise if you have any solution.

I had similar experience with American Airlines website, but immediately discovered, that the AA US site only accepts US credit card. One quick and dirty way to work around it is to buy the same ticket in a third party site like Travelocity where they accept almost every type of payment, and then add the reservation to one's individual account at the airlines website. American Airlines has a Chilean site, and we can call them (the AA Chilean support) to pay for reservation made with the US website (there is a small fee for this cross system).
TP

[eeuunikkeiexpat]

In the past, the Chile LAN site has accepted international cards with very little issues (usually "security"). Maybe LATAM has made some changes?

susiedillon, did you already try Chrome Incognito?

[john]

In the past, the Chile LAN site has accepted international cards with very little issues (usually "security"). Maybe LATAM has made some changes?

susiedillon, did you already try Chrome Incognito?

If LATAM made such changes they must have occurred within the past few weeks. I booked a flight to Isla de Pascua on December 1st using my Capital One credit card.