So yesterday morning I open my e-mail and see a hotel reservation confirmation at the Ramada Boston for this weekend…reservation was in my name.
I have no plans to go to Boston and I don’t really know anyone in Boston. I certainly did not make this reservation. i called the hotel immediately.
They had not run the credit card. The reservation was made on a Mastercard – the hotel gave me the last 4 digits of the card, it did not match to my account.
I cancelled the reservation and called MasterCard. They seemed puzzled as well but they searched their database and did not find any other accounts in my name.
I subscribe to LifeLock, so I get regular credit reports and they monitor my credit for new accounts, etc and I have not seen anything untoward on any credit reports.
One of my later thoughts was that someone else with my name had made this reservation and some sort of error on their part sent the confirm to one of my e-mail accounts, the e-mail account I received the confirmation at is simple ..firstnamelastname@aol.com. It is the account I would typically give to a hotel when making a reservation.
But then I remembered that when I talked to the hotel they confirmed my zip code and phone number.
My next thought went to something dumb I may have done last weekend, I think I accidently threw out some twenty year old receipts without shredding them first. But I went back into my records and the last 4 digits of the credit card number used to make the reservation doesn’t match any credit card I have ever had.
Then I thought maybe my info is in their system and there was a wierd glitch. But although I do stay at lots of hotels for work I can’t remember ever staying at a Ramada.
So, any ideas…I’m really puzzled out. maybe someone I know is using my name for an affair… but the reservation was for three people.
I remember being innocent like this.
That was my thought exactly.
Well if what happened to me happens to you, then be prepared for a whole bunch of odd stuff like that.
For about 2 months I was getting all these phone calls about ‘my donation’ to these various school funds around the country. Used my name, my home phone and my address—but NOT my credit card or email. Or they would have some small thing shipped to my home (luckily I was able to catch the UPS guy and refuse it).
Basically what was happening is that this person would make a $50 donation to some school, then if it went through they knew that the stolen credit card they held was still good and they would then run it up. What would happen though is that on occasion the school would send a confirming email and it would bounce back and thus I would get the call asking me about the email address.
This happened for like a dozen different universities around the country. When I called them back, NONE of them had the same credit card, and luckily none of them had my credit card. Just my home address and phone number and my name. The email wasn’t mine–but it was my name4x4@ yahoo.com which was closed by the time the universities emailed.
Monitored my credit stuff for like 6 months, never saw anything out of the ordinary. Hasn’t impacted my credit as they didn’t have my number–but it gave me a good scare for a bit.
Now I do think this was a direct result of my credit card number being stolen or compromised. I was on vacation in Hawaii about a month earlier–and while there I happened to check online and there was a charge for $3000 to a hotel in Berlin, Germany for 6 months later. I immediately called the credit card company, and they cancelled the card and issued me a new one and eventually it turned out that someone used my card number and name to secure a hotel there. When I got the paperwork it was clear it wasn’t my signature and basically what the thieves were after was a $300 fee for the ‘booking agent’ that they asked the hotel to wire back.
But I think my name and address were tied to this card and it made the crook circuit until they determined it was no longer feasible to use my name or phone number. They couldn’t use my card number, but they could use my name.
I was super paranoid for awhile, but nothing was ever compromised that I could tell and it has been over a year now. good luck–hope my story didn’t spook you!
Another possibility.
Do you have some kind of frequent customer account with Ramada?
Maybe someone with the same name made a reservation, and it was tied to
the wrong account number. The address/email could be coming from the membership not the credit card.
No. In fact, I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out the last time I stayed at a Ramada Inn and I’m kind of drawing a blank…I maybe stayed in one in Indiana about 10 years ago maybe…I know it was a old hotel renovated by one to the chains but I can’t remember which one. Aside from that I just seem never to be at a Ramada…although I’ve stayed at most other chains.
However the e-mail did have a “rewards number” attached, but it was from the hotel not the rewards program and it was definitely an official hotel reservation confirmation, my offical “cancellation” was in an identical format.
I would be curious to find out who “owned” the card that was used for the reservation but since they only gave me the last 4 numbers I can’t. It is posible that MasterCard pursued it further with the hotel but I wouldn’t be in the loop on that.