Hotel bookings made with Card that has been cancelled and re-issued with a new number

[Ken1]

On Good Friday I received a Fraud Protection alert email from American Express regarding my Platinum Charge card, telling me that "For your security, we regularly monitor accounts for possible fraudulent activity. Below are the details of an attempted charge:" It was a $100 charge for officeworks.com.au and was not approved. I phoned them to tell them it wasn't my charge and while speaking to them I logged in to my account and saw that a $50 charge, also from Officeworks, had also gone through the day before so they have reversed that charge for me.

They immediately cancelled my card and I received a replacement on Thursday. We are doing a trip to Europe, Canada and the USA in July using a 280K One World Award and have used this card number when confirming a lot of bookings. I have updated the card information in my Hertz profile and for two hotel bookings I made through booking.com .

I also have bookings made directly with other hotels. Should I contact all of them before the trip to let them know that the card number has been changed? I would think that when I make a hotel booking and give them the card details they would check that the number is valid at the time. Would hotels then check that card number a few days before arrival or just wait until we arrive and present the card? I do not want to put card details into an email although I could possibly just tell them that only the last two numbers of the card number have changed along with the expiry date and give them those details to update the details they already have on file.

I would appreciate comments from others who may have been in a similar situation.

 

[opusman]

Re: Hotel bookings made with Card that has been cancelled and re-issued with a new nu

Unless your bookings are pre-paid the hotels should have no cause to "test" the card number unless you actually no-show. You can give them your new card on check-in.

 

[Pushka]

Re: Hotel bookings made with Card that has been cancelled and re-issued with a new nu

I had this experience and contacted all the hotels prior. Sometimes they do a test charge a few days prior.

 

[Ken1]

Re: Hotel bookings made with Card that has been cancelled and re-issued with a new nu

Thanks to you both for your replies.

I've decided to play it safe and phone the hotels with the new card number to be sure there are no problems anywhere when we arrive in case any did a test charge a few days prior and then cancelled the reservation on us when it failed.

 

[JohnK]

Re: Hotel bookings made with Card that has been cancelled and re-issued with a new nu

Same thing happened to me and I was in Thailand at the time.

Phone calls, sms and email received Good Friday that someone was trying to use Amex Platinum credit card for Officeworks online the day before on 24 March. SMS is useless as when I replied the same SMS was sent back to me a few minutes later. Logged into account and notice 2 charges on 22 March for $100 and $50.

Called Amex who reversed the transactions and cancelled my card. Now have a new credit card.

Would be interesting to see if there was a pattern there. My unusual transactions were an Agoda UK charge the week before and I also used it to top up the Family Talk/Greek City phone card.

 

[Ken1]

Re: Hotel bookings made with Card that has been cancelled and re-issued with a new nu

I only use the Amex card for travel, overseas and restaurant charges and I didn't have anything unusual on the card before this. Something about the Officeworks online transactions has obviously triggered the possibility of it being a fraudulent transaction for them to not approve it and contact me and you as well John. It would be interesting to know how many other people were also affected and how they got our card numbers.

 

[Pushka]

Re: Hotel bookings made with Card that has been cancelled and re-issued with a new nu

I only use the Amex card for travel, overseas and restaurant charges and I didn't have anything unusual on the card before this. Something about the Officeworks online transactions has obviously triggered the possibility of it being a fraudulent transaction for them to not approve it and contact me and you as well John. It would be interesting to know how many other people were also affected and how they got our card numbers.

Its interesting. What tripped my card was a purchase from a Linen shop in Australia delivered to a different address. While frustrating I was impressed. Did I mention this happened while we were waiting at the airport to leave? Panic!

 

[JohnK]

Re: Hotel bookings made with Card that has been cancelled and re-issued with a new nu

Something about the Officeworks online transactions has obviously triggered the possibility of it being a fraudulent transaction for them to not approve it and contact me and you as well John. It would be interesting to know how many other people were also affected and how they got our card numbers.

Interesting how the transactions on 22 March got through but transactions on 24 March were blocked.

Have they somehow detected the same IP address used for all transactions? Would Officeworks pass the IP address to Amex as part of the transaction?

And we must have some common merchant for our credit cards to be compromised?