Comment by alister | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alister | Hacker News Reader

Brazil's major airline, TAM, has a nice little trick of their own to fend off the OP's advice.

Even if you use TAM's Brazilian portal where you have to navigate in Portuguese, and even if you use it from within Brazil, you won't get the Brazilian price. As a foreigner, you'll have to pay up to 50% more.

What's their little trick? They demand that you enter your CPF number, a Brazilian national identity number, to buy from the Brazilian portal for exactly the same ticket. And you can't make one up, or use the CPF number of a Brazilian friend, because they query a government database to verify that the CPF number matches the purchaser's name.

It's discussed in more detail here:

http://brazilsense.com/index.php?title=Booking_a_domestic_fl...

The CPF number, by the way, is absolutely not a government requirement. Anyone can buy a ticket at a travel agency in Brazil or at the airport without a CPF number. This is either the height of incompetent website design by TAM, or more likely, their price discrimination technique to charge more from foreigners.

In case it's helpful: anyone can get a CPF. You don't have to be Brazilian, or even live in Brazil. From what I remember, you go to the Brazilian consulate, fill out a form, pay a small fee. (Foreigners need a CPF to do various things, basically to enter into any kind of binding legal agreement, IIRC.)

Not that you're probably going to go to all the trouble for a cheaper ticket or two, of course.

Back in 2002, in Argentina, I had a similar problem (I was living in Brazil at the time). I purchased flight online in Spanish while in Buenos Aires and got a great price relative to the price quoted on the English version. However, when I went to pick up the ticket, I was told that I was given the wrong price and that the price I paid was only for Argentine nationals. They basically wouldn't let me get my ticket unless I paid the original price.

I don't remember the exact figures but it was something like $60 for Argentinians and $200 for foreigners.

Well, at least they were being upfront about it...

After I bought my ticket. There was nothing on the site that said "This price is for Argentine nationals only". I was absolutely livid when I was in the office where I had to pick up the ticket. IIRC I told them that they deserved the banking crisis meltdown for commerce shenanigans like the one they were pulling (this was about one year after those events).

You can get around this, the CPF is required only for card payments. If you pay with Paypal you don't need a CPF.

From the link

> Get a Brazilian friend to buy the ticket online on your behalf using his Brazilian credit card and CPF number. Note that a CPF number is demanded from the purchaser when booking online, but passengers can leave the CPF field empty.

Making this into an on-line market (matching Brazilians and foreigners for mutual profit) sounds like a business opportunity.

How would that work? If I understand correctly the CPF number needs to match the passenger details. So someone else could buy the ticket for you, but then the ticket is in their name.

Now you only need to match your name with a brazilian with the same name. This assumes the airline doesn't require an ID card with that same CPF to board.

Wouldn't that essentially be identity theft?

No, the linked article[1] says, "a CPF number is demanded from the purchaser when booking online, but passengers can leave the CPF field empty".

I can confirm that that's how it works. The CPF number is needed from the person buying the ticket, not the person travelling.

Nevertheless, I don't see such a brokering business being very profitable. The main problems are (a) the customer doesn't care about the extra cost because his/her company is paying or (b) he doesn't even realize he's being suckered because he used the English-language TAM website and didn't realize Brazilians get a better price.

[1] http://brazilsense.com/index.php?title=Booking_a_domestic_fl...

Also, getting a CPF isn't impossible if you're a foreigner. I have one, and there are sites and blogs that deal with Brazil and business/travel topics which explain how to get one.

The real problem for me was paying with my US bank card (w/ Visa or Mastercard symbol). Because this wasn't allowed, I had to travel to the airport and pay in person on several occassions.

Airlines could do this even more straightforwardly by requiring passport details as part of the booking process, and then applying an additional surcharge to anyone wishing to fly on foreign passports, assuming such practices were legal under local law.

In 2009 Vietnam Airlines had an amusingly low-tech way of preventing foreigners from using their English-speaking call-centre for advance bookings: requiring people to physically turn up in their local office to collect the ticket within a week. (Their Singaporean sales agency also required my physical presence, but actually sold me a cheaper ticket)

They already do this in Peru, for example.

Say you are in Lima and want to buy a plane ticket to Arequipa. If you have a South American ID ("DNI"), you pay a very cheap rate. If not, you pay the regular USD rate.

I recall a long time ago when I lived in Canada, I could sometimes buy cheap airfare if I used the American Travelocity site instead of the Canadian one. At one point, it stopped working because they "updated" the final price after I entered my credit card information, as that stated my residence/billing info was in Canada.

I'm going to keep that in mind next time I buy on TAM. I had no idea about this. I'm Brazilian, have a CPF number, but have been living in the United States for over 20 years. I did think that airline prices were unusually high between Brazilian cities when I looked online to buy tickets during the world cup.

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