[CQ-Contest] Crowne Plaza Credit Card transaction

[w5ov at w5ov.com]

It's not a "fictitious" charge - it's actually called an "Authorize Only"
or "AUTH" transaction (as I recall from my time at Citibank) to verify
that the card is valid, and it can take a charge of up to a certain
amount.  All hotels do this to make sure that they will get paid at the
end of your stay.  Many retailers do this now too.  Authorize your card,
then later charge for the actual amount when they ship your order.

73,

Bob W5OV


On Fri, May 26, 2017 11:53 am, 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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