Stopped payment on my compensation check

Question: I was recently denied boarding on an Alaska Airlines flight from Boise, Idaho to Sacramento. I was unable to check in early online, making me one of the last to check in at the airport.

I had to cancel an appointment and was rerouted through Portland. What should have been a half-hour stopover turned into a half day, and I arrived in Sacramento late in the evening.

Alaska Airlines wrote me a check at the airport for 200 percent of the amount of the original one-way ticket as compensation for the major inconvenience. Nice, right?

Not really. I’ve just found out that Alaska Airlines stopped payment on the check. My bank is charging me $7 for depositing it, too.

Needless to say, I’m absolutely furious with Alaska Airlines. Overbooking is a horrible practice. I can’t support a company that allows me to purchase something they don’t have to give. Is there anything you can do to get Alaska Airlines to make good on its promise? — Ashley Cates, Boise, Idaho

Answer: Yes, overbooking is a horrible practice. And once Alaska Airlines cut you a check, it should have honored it.

But should it have paid you for the denied boarding in the first place? According to Alaska Airlines’ contract of carriage — the legal agreement between you and the carrier — the answer is “yes”. It says that if you’re bumped from a flight, you’re owed 200 percent of the sum of the value of your remaining flight coupon to your next stopover, to a maximum of $800, or half that if the airline can arrange comparable air transportation.

You can read the whole contract here.

But hang on. Were you really denied boarding? You say you tried to check in online, and couldn’t, so you were one of the last passengers to check in at the airport. The cut-off time for domestic flights is 30 minutes before departure, meaning that you would lose your confirmed seats if you show up with less than half an hour before your flight leaves.

Is it possible that the airline stopped payment on its check because you missed your flight?

It doesn’t really matter. There are more appropriate ways of withdrawing a compensation offer. Alaska should have notified you and explained why it needed to stop payment on a check — not left it up to your bank to give you the bad news, along with a $7 penalty.

One way you might have avoided all of this is by showing up to the airport with plenty of time. After the airline stopped its payment, I would have sent a brief, polite e-mail to the airline, asking it to fix the problem.

I contacted Alaska Airlines on your behalf. A representative called you and explained that payments had inadvertently been stopped on an entire batch of checks. In other words, your compensation was legit, as far as the airline was concerned.

Alaska Airlines issued another check for $239 and a $50 voucher for a future ticket. It also offered to refund your bank fee.

(Photo: Pylon757/Flickr Creative Commons)

  • http://home.comcast.net/~chucklicht/ Charles Lichtenwalner

    I can’t help wondering what Ms. Cates did to contact Alaska Airlines for an explanation before contacting you. Seems a simple email or call to the airline might have solved the problem.

  • Kairho

    Although I don’t know the relative timing of the flights, receipt of check, deposit, and contact with Chris, I am surprised that Alaska was not proactive. At the least they should have written a letter of apology and enclosed a replacement check as soon as they realized their error.

  • Joe Farrell

    What Alaska did violates Washington and Federal law. You cannot stop payment on a draft without a legally valid reason. No matter what Alaska did, you need to tell them you have a policy of a $50 fee for returned checks. As a consumer you are not subject to banking limits on overdrafts and bad checks. The explanation of ooops, we stopped payment on a whole bunch of checks subjects them to even more liability for having a business practice which violates consumer protection statutes. . . .

  • Carver

    @Joe

    I doubt if that’s correct. I checked with the National Check fraud center and they specifically stated that

    “Stopped payment on a check – a check which was dishonored because payment was stopped, and not because of insufficient funds, may not be prosecuted criminally. ”

    Which is consistent with my understanding that generally stopping payment on a check is only a criminal act if you intended to defraud the payee, e.g. didn’t have the funds to cover the check, writing a check with the intent to stop payment, etc.

    OF course, I am not a Washington State attorney.

  • Nobody

    Here’s another plausible scenario. Gate agent gave check to disgruntled passenger to move the problem to someone else. Someone else voids payment, following the fine print rules. Airline gets away with it 99% of the time except for when passenger gets Elliot to intervene. Airline PR tells Elliot line from the “check’s in the mail” manual that it was a glitch. Everyone is happy as a Democrat passing income redistribution legislation, except the other 99%.

    “Never go through the drive-thru. They always ****up the order on purpose. You don’t find out until you’re miles away from the ******* place. And there’s some ******** ******* back there, laughin his *** off. I told you–never go through the ****** drive-thru!”–Leo Getz LW2

    He wanted the tuna melt
    He choked on the chicken
    RIP
    Nobody was faster
    (laughing his *** off)

  • Simon

    Alaska / Horizon has a stellar reputation with customer service. Mistaker happen and screw ups occur, but if she had contacted Alaska – I am sure it would have been corrected without your intervention. Come on – Alaska Airlines is NOT Spirit Airlines – cut them some slack,

  • Jena

    I think it may have had to do more with the security measures on batched accounts payable checks. She may not have been the only one whose check was returned; others, possibly vendors may also have had the experience. There is something called “positive pay” that banks encourage businesses to sign up for. When the checks are processed, one step is to electronically send the check numbers and payees to the bank. If there was a glitch, it is possible that a portion of the batch did not transmit. Therefore, the check may have been returned. Outside of the accounting department, few of the airlines employees may have known. Just a guess.

  • http://yprny.com Horace Bryan

    Is there statues that require reason to accompany the stop-order? I argued with my bank for an hour as to why the bank could not tell me why NYC stopped a commission check to me. Should the bank be given the reason by law?