Bitcoin Forum

I wanted everyone to be aware that you should not purchase any Airbaltic airline tickets if your going to pay in Bitcoin. I made 2 bookings one of them was few months ago and another one today. What happens is that after you pay it will give you reference number but it wont actually be activated and if you call/contact support they will say that you need to buy it again and they will say that they never received the bitcoin payment. I asked for refunds numerous times and they keep promising me a refund on the first booking i made, but after 2 months i still have not received my refund ! Most of the emails i send get ignored, if i call them the operators cant help me much. With second booking they havent even told me they would refund me sooo yea...

Anyways ill repeat DO NOT BUY WITH BTC ON AIRBALTIC

they can't say anything like that, there is a proof of your transaction, show them that, otherwise they are just taking advatage of the fact that bitcoin isn't regulated and that there isn't chargeback

they should be sued, but we all know it would be useless

Well i have sent all the transaction id's and such, but still they keep giving me promises and tell me to wait 20 days until i should contact them lol.
The phone operators only know that bitcoin is a way of transaction thats all they know, the one i called today kept rambling about the money coming back to the "bank" and that it takes time, when i told her at least 5 times i used bitcoin to pay. The operators have no idea what bitcoin is and how it works. They also said that my from finances department my refund was issued like 2 weeks ago, but it takes 20 days to reach me... I mean do they even know how bitcoin works?? I mean what kind of a reputable company uses a specific payment processor which they dont even know how it works.

Which payment processor do they use?

I'm thinking that if they use somebody like say for example CoinBase, that you should maybe try and contact the payment processor to see whether they can maybe assist you with taking it up with the airlines.

If that fails then all I can suggest is that you need to get hold of somebody higher up in the airlines financial department who actually knows and understand the payment processes. Just speaking to the public facing staff is not going to get you anywhere in my opinion.

Thanks for the heads up, I was actually looking into buying a air baltic ticket with btc

I'm curious, why did you make a second booking when you had problems with the first one which hasn't been refunded yet?
have they sent you a written confirmation that they would refund the first payment or was it just something the clueless person on the phone said?

Well i was assured i would get refund and i just thought it was a 1 time error thing, today i found out it was not.

Disappointed to hear this OP. I do feel for you, you probably need to speak to somebody in senior management, you're obviously not going to get any luck dealing with low paid office donkeys on customer service phone lines.

All I can suggest is if they continue to mess you around maybe it's worth threatening that you'll go to the media & expose them as extortionists/cheats/liars. It may work as no organisation likes to receive bad press.

Please add some blockchain support of your transactions there o proof sending them money so the community sees everything clear, what payment processor are they using is the biggest question!

They seem to be using Bitpay.

Here are the 2 transactions which they never refunded me.

https://blockchain.info/tx/e3d53d5f530be85bd1fdab718749f39e402a5da531e42908e999c760264a780c

https://blockchain.info/tx/0cfd49828314fc81aa0b853dada0c390f95185519543c1b187f3e203dfb33769

have you contacted bitpay?, it has happen to me that i used a wallet from an exchange once to pay for a service online and it took longer then the pay timer, to contact bitpay is your best bet since they handle the payment address you sent the btc to.

Everyone makes mistake. I have given second opportunities to service providers that failed me the first time, and at the second time they did great. Of course when they fail 2 times a row I start doubting it.

how they don't know what bitcoin is if they have set a payment option for that? are they for real...., i think this is a blatant lie, or they are trying to be really stupid

i think it could be explained because they were the first to accept bitcoin(22.07.2014), when the price was still higher, then they forgot to remove it, when the bitcoin price tanked, so basically they left the payment there but they are no using it anymore

May be you are the first customer, who buy their service with BTC  ;) Therefore they do not know what to do  ;D

I think contacting BitPay is a good idea. They are a serious business and, if they were the payment processor, they will have all the information needed to prove your case.

Thanks for the heads up.
Those kinda crooks are making me sick...

im sure the bitpay support would take care of it, they will trace where the bitcoin you send ended up and when was it feature on the company you paid payment address, i do not know if they re use address but i dont think they do is just wouldn't be proper.

Bitpay probably has the all records as well as the airline company. I think bitpay will make a sanction against them. If they don't give the money back, then they'll not pay their money  (probably from another customer) & refund to the user.

Thats a one of problems if a company that accept bitcoin in payment transaction didn't explain bitcoin to the employees there first. I think they don't have any idea about bitcoin system, and just told you to rebuy the ticket. Bitpay must make it clear since the airline using its payment service.

Is there an airline company which accepts BTC?
I used to believe the only way to get a flight ticket with BTC was via a broker, like Expedia in some countries.

I understand BTC is quite a challenge for an airline company, most of them don't even accept paypal.

sorry to hear that. good luck and let us know if they refund you or issue the tickets.

Does anyone know if there is a bitpay representative on bitcointalk?

Yes there is!
Last time I flew with them I saw the option to pay with Bitcoins and I was surprised. To pay by card it was 6€, but Bitcoin would have been "free" to transfer.

http://pcgeeks.bugs3.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/PayWithBitcoins_airbaltic-e1424083588757.jpg
(topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=957423.0))

Unfortunately (or well now maybe fortunately) I didn't have enough coins there and then to pay my tickets.

Free bitcoin processing? That is good! When they started accepting bitcoins, they had slapped on a  transaction fee, which was equal to credit cards.
Bitcoin users were not happy.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=707925.msg7998482#msg7998482

Oh wow, didn't know that.
The above picture is from February/March this year and as shows, no fee :)

However, now that I read with problems of not realizing/accepting payment I don' know how reliable this is. Even if there are no fees, if I can't pay because they won't accept it then its nonsense. "Hopefully" it was just an isolated case here.

you could always contact customer support before buying your tickets with bitcoin, just to make sure whos the payment processor and the payment gateway is running fine before sending any coins to them.

Of course, however I tend to buy tickets relatively late and want to secure them as soon as possible. If I have to wait 20 minutes on the phone just to find out if I can pay in BTC...Nevertheless, might try next time. Just to see what they say.

But see if the customer support doesn't even know what bitcoin is?  :D

I would like to state that airbaltic is still ignoring my emails and i still haven't got anything refunded.


Does anyone know how/where i can contact bitpay directly ?

Have you tried calling them? Ask for a supervisor directly who perhaps knows something. This is not fun, its real money missing there. They have to do something.

I know they have an email address in here:
https://bitpay.com/downloads/bitPayCustomerSupportGuide.pdf (https://bitpay.com/downloads/bitPayCustomerSupportGuide.pdf)
Unfortunately, no phone number.

Do you ever emailed to bitpay? Try this one https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en-us
Also I found this http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=225848718

Thanks for the info guys.

I have sent an email to bitpay, let's see what they say.

It seems like Airbaltic has received all the funds, but is denying to have received the bitcoins, here is confirmation from bitpay that they received the funds, but still keep telling me that the funds are not received.

https://i.gyazo.com/c89d7e53bbe78a27a4738329d59a8beb.png

Looks like they have sent a copy of this to airbaltic as well. You can try referring to this when you contact them next time! Ugly from them for denying the payment...When was/would have been the flight? :(

Yeah hopefully they can get in touch with them, no point in me sending them another email, since they keep ignoring 99% of them and i was still able to buy my flights via credit card, it just sucks how they make bitcoin payments available and then this happens. I mean what kind of a self respecting airline would treat their customers like this?

This is bad stuff if they denying the payment, I'm sure you can share your bad experience in their testimony like in their social media.

It could have been just bad luck with their employees no knowing what to do in this situations. Although it does raise some questions.

Any updates on the situation? Did they reply to you? Got your money back?

They have refunded me via bank transfer, the only reason they did it is because bitpay contacted them to do so.

I guess this is what happens if you put non tech-savy people in customer support at an airline  :-[ They are not yet used to cryptocurrency transactions, but in 20 years time you will be able to tell that you were probably one of the first ones to (try xD) buy a plane ticket with Bitcoins!

At least Bitpay was the good guy and took your side. The blockchain doesn't lie.

Good to know at least you got your money back!!

Luckily you got your money back. It is shame that AirBaltic has taken advantage of bitcoins. Now we know not to fly AirBaltic. You could try leaving a review on
http://www.airlinequality.com/airline-reviews/airbaltic/ (http://www.airlinequality.com/airline-reviews/airbaltic/) but it looks like they didn't really have that great of a reputation anyways