Smartfares.com Credit card billed for reservation cancelation but not when actually trying to pay Internet

I booked tickets using this website and shortly after I received an email that the tickets were reserved but that my credit card was rejected somehow. 

After checking with my bank I found out that the paymebt did not go through because smartfares.com was requesting (as part of the transaction) some confidential account information. My bank was not going to let this payment through as it was violating their security protocols so I called the support line from smartfares.com in an attempt to find a way to pay for my tickets. After the company representative told me that there is nothing he can do for me and that I need to tell my bank to allow the payment I kept asking if there is realy no other way I can wire in the money. When I offered to exchange credit cards the guy told me tha this is indeed possible and the way to do this is to call them and give them my creditcard details...over the phone...like I am ever going to do that.

Anyway...long story short, I did not have a way to finalize the payment so I just bought my tickets from another site thinking that if smartfares.com was not able to get the money for the tickets they will just cancel my reservation. A couple of days later I get a phonecall from them informing me that I will be charged 50$ cancelation fee as if it was my choice to cancel. Of course when it came to withdrawing this 50$ from my account there were no problems with the bank anymore.