Post US Visa Revocation - Online payment (P1004) and other woes while rebooking tickets at Changi
TL; DR - expect P1004 while booking SIA tickets using US cards. Have other payment methods from other countries available
I wane to share what happened after my 82-year-old mother-in-law was denied boarding by Singapore Airlines at Changi. She was travelling Bengaluru → Singapore → Seattle on SQ511/SQ028. My wife and son were accompanying her. See more details at https://www.reddit.com/r/nri/s/weWcXcgs4S
After arriving in Singapore, my mother-in-law was denied boarding on SQ028. We were only told verbally that boarding had been denied. We received no written denied-boarding notice or explanation.
We were told to contact the U.S. Embassy. After several attempts to reach the appropriate U.S. consulates (in Singapore, India) and CBP in the US, we eventually concluded that we could not resolve the visa issue and decided to head back to India. Only Singapore consulate had a human answer our call. But they deferred to new Delhi which was the consulate which issued the visa. Delhi was not available as it was non business hours. CBP had a long IVR message playing and we couldn't reach a human.
SIA's online payment system repeatedly gave us P1004 when we tried to buy replacement tickets
This is the part I particularly want other travellers to know about.
While we were stranded in Singapore, we were offered no help from the agents to rebook all tickets. They asked us to do it only ourselves using phone support. Which would have been fine had it worked. While on call, the customer service rep would create a booking and ask us to pay online. However, online payment at SIA website repeatedly produced error P1004 when we tried to pay by credit card. These same cards worked when we returned to India and we were able to buy tickets via Qatar (so that my son and wife could get back to Seattle)
We also tried a Visa card issued in India. That card had a separate online transaction-limit problem. We attempted to resolve that with the issuing bank but were ultimately unsuccessful.
The customer support rep we were working with wouldn't allow us to try cards from others based in the US as the cardholder would have to be physically present at Changi or another airport where Singapore Airlines has a presence. This was not possible as our other contact in the US weren't near an airport with SIA presence.
Eventually, we decided to use kayak to book the tickets. Unfortunately, those websites also didn't accept our credit cards. Eventually, we had to find someone living in Singapore who could purchase the SIA tickets for us!
Once the onward tickets were cancelled, the transit hotel at Changi was not offered/available because the tickets had been cancelled.This was particularly difficult because we had an 82-year-old woman and a child travelling together.
We were also initially told that our baggage had been removed from the Seattle flight and that someone would need to clear immigration and retrieve it from baggage claim. Later, thankfully, the officials helped us transfer the baggage.