[CQ-Contest] Crowne Plaza Credit Card transaction

[Ria Jairam]

yep this is the pre authorization and lots of places do it. Hotels may
place a hold as well to cover incidentals.

Ria
N2RJ
On Fri, May 26, 2017 at 2:41 PM <ac0w at charter.net> wrote:

> Apparently you don't travel a lot. A lot of hotels will do a
> fictitious charge to the credit card to confirm the credit card is
> good. At some point during your stay a cancellation of the charge will
> be issued, which you will never see. None of these charges show up on
> your monthly statement.
> Most times this comes through under some other name and not the name
> of the Hotel, such as the name of the hotel management group or in
> this case the name of the chain. Crowne Plaza is part of the IHG chain
> of hotels. The charge is typically for some value greater than one
> night stay.
> For some reason the way the transaction is run it typical shows as
> card not present despite them swiping the card at check-in.
> My practice when I get notified of the charge such as this after
> checking into the hotel is to check the name to make sure it makes
> sense for the hotel I check into. Many times the name of the
> management group is in the lobby somewhere. But a quick search on the
> web quickly gives me the answer I need.
> BillAC0W
>
>  Message: 5
>  Date: Fri, 26 May 2017 06:02:12 -0400
>  From: jpescatore at aol.com
>  To: CQ-Contest at CONTESTING.COM
>  Subject: [CQ-Contest] Dayton Crown Plaza Credit Card flaw
>  Message-ID:
>  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
>  Here's what happened - it happened to me and I work in Internet
> security:
>
>  The Intercontinental Hotel Group (parent of Holiday Inn, Crowne
> Plaza, etc) was hacked back in February and continuing through April.
> Over 1,100 of its hotels were impacted. If you are interested, details
> here:
>
> http://www.computerworld.com/article/3190175/security/1-175-hotels-listed-in-payment-card-breach-of-holiday-inn-parent-company.html
>  />
>
>  I checked in to the Crowne Plaza on Friday afternoon. Later that day
> I got a potential fraud alert from Mastercard that a "card not
> present" charge of $377 was made to my card by something called IHG. I
> checked online, my charges that day for gas and for the hotel I stayed
> on on Thursday night were there and legit - and there was an IHG
> charge of $377.
>
>  When I checked in, they physically swiped my card so it should *not*
> have shown up as card not present, and I didn't immediately connect
> IHG to Crowne Plaza. I called Mastercard, they connected me to the
> fraud folks and I asked "Do you show more information about IHG?" they
> said no. So, I said that must be a fraudulent charge and they
> cancelled that card and are sending me a new one.
>
>  I went down to the desk to tell them I would switch the charges to
> another card and they said "Yes, we are having a lot of that because
> of the hack." Bells went off in my head, but too late to stop the card
> from being cancelled. The clerk said "let me check the list of
> disputed charges, because the system will shut your room card access
> off." I'd come down quickly enough, wasn't on that list but it was
> several pages long.
>
>  Because of the hack and exposure, IHG apparently was centrally
> processing card swipes until they could validate that all impacted
> hotels had cleaned up there local systems. So, the charge showed up as
> "card not present" - I have no idea why it showed up when I checked
> in, as on business travel it usually shows up on checkout.
>
>  When I was checking in, two hams sharing a room came down and said
> their room cards didn't work. They might have had the disputed charge
> thing cancel happen to them, don't know.
>
>  Advice: no reason to worry about fraud to your card from your Dayton
> stay, but if you stayed in any of the 1,100 hotels between February
> and April and haven't been contacted, good idea to at least check your
> credit records if not change that card number.
>
>  73 John K3TN
>
>
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