Carlson Wagonlit Travel said a campaign it launched against invalid Airline Debit Memos (ADMs) has been a “roaring success.”
Mr Steve Savage, CWT's UK commercial director, wrote to airlines in December threatening to charge persistent offenders £50 for each invalid claim.
He said: “From our point of view it has gone very well. We have had many discussions with airlines with many disagreeing with our stance.
“But when we checked out the January figures and the numbers of ADM received in the last quarter of 2004, we found there was a remarkable decrease in invalid ones so they seem to have got the message.
“So it has been incredibly successful, a roaring success from our point of view. We shall be doing the same exercise on the number of ADMs for February and March to see if the figures are still down.
“This has also enabled us to look at our own in-house way of dealing with ADMs and we have gone back to some suppliers and talked about ways of receiving and dealing with ADMs and we have identified a number of solutions to the problems.
“I might have been painted a villain in this but it has been a roaring success.”
Mr Savage acted after the number of invalid ADMs began increasing. Some, he said, were up to 13 months old and were for sums of up to £4,000.
It often meant that hours were spent examining archived files only to find out that the ADM was invalid.
Few airlines formally replied to Mr Savage's letter but many, as he hoped, have discussed the problem with him.