anyone had their Velocity account hacked?

[danielt25]

hi, just noticed unauthorised redemptions on my velocity account. Anyone else noticed anything similar?

 

[ozstamps]

Not here. Pretty dumb of that person to book hotels .. the cops waiting to talk to him on arrival might be interesting!

 

[danielt25]

Not here. Pretty dumb of that person to book hotels .. the cops waiting to talk to him on arrival might be interesting!

I called up Velocity Hotels and reported the fraud. Luckily Velocity Hotels Support are open on Sunday. They are contacting the hotel direct and advising the person checking in to self pay their stay. Turns out the stay was for 27-29 March, under my name but under a different email address.

 

[dk4]

My account mysteriously locked up one time, after too many failed entry attempts (not done by me)... i put it down to my name and ff number being printed so clearly on my velocity bag tags.

 

[Saab34]

change your password.

That’s why I never leave a boarding pass laying around. Anyone with the PNR can login and see full details. I guess they could call up and say the email they have on the account is not valid anymore and make a new one. Not sure if that loophole had been closed

 

[henrus]

They are contacting the hotel direct and advising the person checking in to self pay their stay. Turns out the stay was for 27-29 March, under my name but under a different email address.

This is one story I'd love a follow up on but I suspect we'll never know and given it's in Bali I suspect VA will never get an answer either.

Mind you something doesn't add up with the prices and I'd almost be tempted to suggest the hotel is in on it.

288400 points were used for a hotel that costs AU$33 per night on booking.com meanwhile on the Velocity hotels site (powered by Ascenda) it costs 60,000 points per night. Other hotels in Bali are a normal price in terms of ~15,000 points on the Velocity hotels website gets you something around $60-100 per night so this one seems overly inflated basically on purpose.

 

[Happy Dude]

I once had MH flights booked with my AUS credit card in Ringgits. I too thought "that's stupid, they had a name for the tix or if the tix were cancelled for a refund they'll get name/details then". There must be some other way to wash the points/money.

 

[henrus]

There must be some other way to wash the points/money.

Normally gift cards are the go to as if they can be used quickly then very hard to track back however I believe Velocity has switched to all physical gift cards so they can be mailed out to the address on file.

 

[Mr H]

Mind you something doesn't add up with the prices and I'd almost be tempted to suggest the hotel is in on it.

288400 points were used for a hotel that costs AU$33 per night on booking.com meanwhile on the Velocity hotels site (powered by Ascenda) it costs 60,000 points per night. Other hotels in Bali are a normal price in terms of ~15,000 points on the Velocity hotels website gets you something around $60-100 per night so this one seems overly inflated basically on purpose.

View attachment 273822

Breakfast is very good value, but.

 

[tomlee1986]

havent had that happened here - besides i dont have many points there anyway

 

[Brittany]

I had my Agoda account hacked once and bookings at high end hotels in Beijing were booked and billed to my account but in someone else’s name. In hindsight, there were emails sent with confirmation but it was all in Chinese so I thought it was a phishing scam and didn’t pay any attention. Fully refunded by Agoda and they had a few days before the final check in at the Waldorf so I don’t know if they involved police or not. The breach came from Agoda’s end with a bunch of emails and passwords taken, but not the card details, so all they could do was bill my account for hotel bookings. They just said “change your password” and that was it.

 

[DC3]

… there were emails sent with confirmation but it was all in Chinese ….

 

[danielt25]

Update:

Advised Velocity Frequent Flyer of unauthorised points redemption on 28/3/22 (following day after redemption - VFF closed on Sunday). They froze my account and said they would investigate it, but it would take 30 business days. Still able to credit flights to frozen account. Just not able to redeem points or use my travel bank. Over the past month Velocity Hotels (Ascenda) advised they were still trying to get the Hotel to refund the points back. Eventually told me they contacted Velocity Frequent Flyer and VFF would deal with it.

Received email on 27 April from Velocity Frequent Flyer advising me to:
1. Lodge a Cyber Crime Report to Australian Cyber Security Center
2. Provide a statutory declaration regarding unauthorised points redemption
3. Setup new VFF account to migrate over to new account

Points have now been credited back.