[pinburgh] Warning about a scam at Westin

General
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Folks
Just a heads up. Yesterday we had a blizzare event happen at the westin.

We are staying at the westin. Yesterday we had breakfast in the room it was all fine. I went off to the tourney and my wife was in the room - she gets a phone call on the hotel phone from someone in the hotel who knows who she is, knows what we had for breakfast and they claim that rather than charging us $50.66 (yes I know - silly money for breakfast!) they accidentally charged us 506.60 and they want her credit card details so they can refund it. My wife gave them the her credit card details (not the one the hotel have on file’) (which she feels very stupid for doing now) and didn’t think anything of it until not even thirty minutes later our bank is on the phone asking a number of questions for about some transactions totaling about $1500 that were clearly fraudulent fortunately the bank automatically declined them all and locked the card - after round 2 I went to see the hotel at lunch time and they were very good about it and agreed it was a very strange and something they needed to investigate, They since have given us a hotel credit and are still investigating. But I just wanted to pass this on and remind people to be vigilant. I have no doubt that this was an inside job at the hotel and made sure their general manager got that message but even so never give your details out.

Neil.

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That sucks! So sorry that happened to you :slightly_frowning_face:

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Thanks for the heads up!

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just a follow up to this. There was 4 transactions one for ~1000 US dollars that was stopped, three transactions to JPAY - which apparently is the system used to transfer money to inmates in prison. WTF do inmates need money for? We got a load of documentation; that documentation shows the postal code from my home address which would have been obtained from the hotel! JPAY are disputing our dispute. Westin’s response has been wholly inadequate and I won’t be staying there again and recommend nobody does. My bank was going to charge me for these three charges (about 300USD) but when I pointed out this was to pay money into a prison they felt that there may be a criminal link! “May be a criminal link” oh how we laughed!

Cheers,
Neil.

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Commissary

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Many prisons in the US are for profit privately owned and operated. They charge for everything they can get away with. Sometimes even toilet paper.

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This same scam was attempted on friends of ours staying at a fancy hotel in Berkeley a few weeks ago.

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Common scam. Restaurant/hotel employee sells the data to the scammer. The best way to handle it is to tell them you’ll come down to the front desk to handle it. Never do it over the phone.

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