Oh, You Poor, Naïve Woman

I work for a hotel in pre-arrival/prior reservations. I’m not at the hotel itself; I’m in a call center a few miles away.

Caller: “I’m concerned about credit card fraud; I just got an email about a stay at your hotel, but I don’t have anything planned.”

For security purposes, I can’t just reveal details about the order, but I ask her to confirm the details she has. Her husband has a relatively common name, so she thinks maybe it is just that someone selected the wrong profile, but she says they have had a credit card fraud incident in the past.

Me: “Can you please confirm the email, phone, and billing address in the email?”

She does, and she also tells me the address of the person who stole their card before. All the information is her husband’s work address except for the email, which is hers. The last four digits of the card are not any that she knows offhand, but she does say she doesn’t know her husband’s work cards.

The more we talk, the more it looks like her husband booked everything under his work information except for the email, and then, when he checked in with a second adult and upgraded the room to a king suite, the system pulled her email because they’d stayed there together in the past.

My support team advises me to just tell her it isn’t any of the last four digits she gave us and it’s a case of the wrong profile. I do so.

Caller: “Okay, thanks for checking. My husband is out of town on business until the nineteenth, so I know it’s not him.”

The room was set to be checked out on the nineteenth. I really wanted to tell her, “Call your husband to make sure he doesn’t see suspicious activity on his company cards and let him know why you’re asking. I’m sure he’ll understand.”