Alitalia canceling “free” tickets

Yesterday, I posted about an amazing deal with Alitalia where a likely fare mistake has been turned into a confirmed one. Hours after I posted the deal, Alitalia had disabled the promo code for the Japanese version of their website. Now, there are confirmed messages from other frequent travelers on FlyerTalk that have confirmed that their free tickets have been cancelled. Alitalia has sent the following message:

Our anti-fraud systems have suspended transactions with credit cards or I.P addresses from countries other than the site where the reservation was created. For all uncommitted transactions, the system has sent an email to the address used for the reservation. Please try again taking advantage of the discount of 25% off by using the code shown in the e-coupon facebook page.

A lot of people aren’t happy about it, but when it comes to these kind of fare mistakes where flights are $0, it’s not unheard of or insane considering the huge loss the airline would be taking on. The 25% off discount code works still though, apparently.