The Whole Story:

You are tired from your journey and just checked into a hotel. It’s standard practice to give a hotel your credit card to the clerk at check in so that the hotel can be protected by any charges to your room that don’t get reported or inventoried after you have checked out of that room such as; drinks in the fridge or snacks left in the room to be charged to your room. We know that if there were any charges that didn’t make sense or match up to your knowledge then the hotel would make the clerk accountable due to their taking of your credit card information upon check in. A call comes from the front desk after you’ve been settled in. The “clerk” asks you for your information because of something going wrong with the card you provided. Giving in, you tell them your information such as; the credit card number, the three-digit code on the back, expiration date, your address, and your phone number. The caller sounded polite, professional and apologetic. Really, they’re a fraud who picked a random hotel, a random room number, called the front desk and asked to speak to whomever was occupying the room. The desk connected them to your room and a few minutes later, they got your information.

What should have been done:

• We all know to never give out our personal information over the phone or to someone we don’t know since we were kids, it’s the whole “stranger danger” thing we were all taught but upgraded. Receiving a call asking for your personal information in the evening when you are supposed to be relaxing and resting from your journey is red flag number one. There is no business that would call in the evening to ask for that kind of information, and they wouldn’t proceed to ask for all of it over the phone (unless you know the number and it’s trusted). What should have been done was going down to the front desk and asking to sort all the information out in person. Surely, if there was an issue they wouldn’t have a problem with sorting it out there and then.
• If you did fall for the scheme, call about the incident and report it. See what can be done about the issue and if there are any more precautions for your credit card (the chip reader)
• If you didn’t fall for the scheme and still feel it was suspicious, go down to the front desk and report it. Tell them that the call didn’t seem legit and you wish for people not to be transferred to call to your room. If anyone needed to reach you then they would call the phone you answer the most…your cell phone.