Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire New (to me) hotel scam

I am on the road and staying in a Hampton Inn. Around 6:30 this morning my hotel phone rang. The first thing I thought of was some sort of emergency. The voice on the other end (foreign accent) claims he is the hotel assistant manager and that the hotel has suffered a complete computer shutdown and federal law requires them to record the name and address of each guest. I am still half asleep and tell them I think this is ridiculous, but he assures me his general manager has told him he must call each guest and hand record the information in order to follow federal law. I think it is more because if people check out they want to make sure they get paid. I grudgingly and half asleep give him my name and address. He then asks me when I checked in. I told him, and confirmed in my mind this was about money and not following federal law. Then he asked me for my credit card number I used to check in with. By now I was awake and my red light warning went off. I told him I would come down to the front desk later and give it to him. He said there was a long line at the desk and would be about a 30-minute wait and I could save some time by just giving him the number now. I told him I would come down personally. Well I got up and started to take a shower but changed my mind and went back to bed. Later that morning,after getting dressed, i went down to the front desk and said I was there to give them my credit card. The little girl had no idea what I was talking about. I asked if they had suffered a computer failure and they said no. The assistant manager came out and I explained what had happened with the call to my room, and he said this had happened before. It was a scam with someone calling from another room and trying to get name, address, and credit card number. Beware.

Thanks for the heads-up. These little foreign fuggers with their "home businesses" are starting to become tiresome.

I'll bet that scam works on many.

Thanks for the info.

Thanks, good info, appreciate it.

Thanks for the heads-up!

Amazing. One more reason NOT to talk to anybody before 8am.

Hadn't heard of this one. Thanks for the heads-up!

1234 5678 9012 3456 would be the card number I gave them.

fargin scammers kill them all

The libs call it diversity.

Does the motel's front desk normally keep track of room to room call history? It would be nice to pass along a suspect name to the local LEOs if possible.

Thanks for the heads up.
If I get a call like that, I will invite the prick to my room!
I hope I'm on the top floor.

JD338

This. If this thing happens to you, immediately call the police. If the idiot is actually calling from the hotel, the front desk can tell the police where the call came from. But this only works in higher end hotels. Average to lower end hotels usually don't have such systems.

This is a VERY old scam that has resurfaced in the last couple years from what I gather. Very common in places that have year round international tourism.

The hotel phone systems have room to room block that have be turned off at the front desk. I would bet they know where that call came from.