It’s a pretty elaborate scam, but there’s variations out there that you may have seen – and fallen for. The simplest comes in the form of someone calling your hotel room number remotely, and claiming there was a problem with your credit card and asking what the number is again, writing it down, to charge fraudulent things to it later.
In this clip from The Real hustle, the con artists use a little more of a dramatic approach to get the same results, and hundreds of people fall for this trick every year.
Tip: If someone calls your room asking for information, tell them that you’ll be happy to provide the information at the front desk, in person. Never provide personal information like that over the phone.
Jamie Larounis is an avid traveler, blogger and miles/points educator. Traveling well over 100,000 miles a year and staying in hotels for over 100 nights, he leverages miles, points and other deals to fly in first class cabins, and stay in 5-star hotels. The Forward Cabin shares his experiences, musings, reviews, tips, tricks, resources and industry news with you, the fellow traveler.
When I worked for Starwood, we weren’t allowed to say the room number out loud, for this exact reason.
Happened to me and luckily I did not fall for it and went down to the front desk to check. Apparently the jerks were calling and just asking for room numbers and were transferred by the desk. They called my room back while I was standing at the front desk and said they were my brother and there was an emergency as I had just told the front desk to hold all calls.