Problem: After entering credit card information, the page gets redirected a couple of times and you are brought back to the credit card information form with a big error in red saying something to the tune of “Payment form could not be verified”.
Solution: The problem is occurring because you are not providing ‘state’ in your billing address. Obviously you are not providing your ‘state’ because there is no field for that. In order for your billing address to be complete, you must provide the ‘state’. Below is my trick to do that:
Tested in Browser: Firefox 54.0.1
Example address: 123 Simple Street, A11, Dayton, Ohio 12345
Enter it like this:
Street: 123 Simple Street, A11
Street 2: Dayton
City: Ohio
Country: United States of America
Postal Code: 12345
Once you fill it this way, the payment processing will proceed to the next step of verification through sms or email verification.
NOTE: The comma (,) in first line is a MUST. You are using Street 2 field to provide city and the city field to provide ‘state’.
NOTE: PIA call center and complaint center were of zero help. They had no idea what I was talking about and that their form is missing ‘state’ field. Told me that their system can figure out ‘state’ from IP address. Lol! Also kept blaming my card and my computer.
Once again had to do a PIA web ticket purchase. There is still no mention of “State” field while entering payment information which is critical for US issued card authorization. Having encountered this issue before, I used the city field to enter state info, for example, “Dayton, Ohio”.
Now there is a new problem called “3-D secure” credit card authorization. I had not heard of this term before, nor my US bank’s customer service rep had. After banging my head for an hour I realized most US cards are NOT 3-D secure so I was stuck.
I found a way around it though which I want to share. I got in touch with the “fraud” department of my bank and explained them the situation. They had a way to short circuit the authorization as it is taking place live. So I re-submitted the credit card details and they got it through all the while being on the phone with me.
This could be on purpose so people are forced to go to 3rd party sites/agents to purchase PIA tickets which charge at least 15% premium per ticket.
I just had a terrible experience with PIA’s web ticketing once again. It was related to the 3DS authorization which I’ve explained in my previous post. I tried to obtain the 3DS authorization for 2 days and failed. Talked to my bank almost 10 times, tried different browsers, etc. but nothing worked. Then I called PIA’s call center and they casually told me that their payment system was down for sometime. I was furious! Not because the system was down but because they hid it and didn’t put up a notice on their website saving customers easily avoidable stress. More and more it seems like a headless chicken from a customer’s point of view.
Eventually, I figured out that the payment system in their Android app was still working which I eventually used to purchase the ticket. So if you get stuck in a similar situation, try their Android app. I leave judgement to the reader, but following is how the web app looks like:
We experienced same thing, trying from Canada.
In the end we bought from travel agent who issued ticket, and it was cheaper than online PIA webfare. (economy, YYZ to ISB)
