Scam Type
Credit Repair/Debt Relief Scam
Business Name Used
Reservations.com
Date Reported
October 26, 2023
Postal Code
01760
Total Dollars Lost
$ 0
Scam Description
I called a reservations number I found on google when looking for the Marriott. The man’s voice that answered was foreign and there were other voices in the background, both male and female, and it was a noisy call center. Usually you don’t hear other voices when you call hotel central reservations. I asked for two rooms at the hotel for a week next month. They said there were only two rooms left as I was initially just checking their availability. They couldn’t guarantee the rooms would be next to each other. Of course I then wanted to book right away. They got detailed with me about if they had the type of room and when I needed handicapped accessible, they discussed which one was handicapped and pretended to be confused at first which one I had said was handicapped, as if it mattered they got the right room for me. One was a one-bedroom; one a suite. So they started with the one-bedroom reservation, and only booked three nights. They said they wanted to book the other four nights separately to save me $175, but that I would still have the same room all seven nights. So I agreed to that two-part booking. They went ahead and gave me a confirmation number just for three nights and made me read it back. Then they said I got one number wrong and I communicated I’d corrected that. They made me give an extra phone number and tried to get the maiden name but I didn’t give it. Also wanted my middle initial, I didn’t give it. They did get all the codes on the credit card and my full home address. While I was on the phone with him, I saw a robocall attempting to call me from 385-374-0300 (I googled this, it is listed as a hotel reservation scam number). I did not answer it, my phone says it came from Lehi, Utah. I don’t get why a reservation scammer would call me when I’m already on a call with a scammer, but that is what happened. I was put on a brief hold and the music was exactly what you hear for hotels, they’d copied it either from Marriott or somewhere similar like Hyatt. I definitely recognized the music. I saw the three nights confirmation came in my email, so when he got back on the line, I said the booking was only for three nights, and he said it would take a minute do the remaining four nights, they had a computer problem to do the other nights because “the computer wasn’t letting him back in” and he would call me right back. So I was supposed to be able to book a week long, two different rooms, but so far all he’d one was one room for three nights. So, I called back after waiting a few minutes with no call back, and got someone else, a woman, and she said I would have to call the hotel directly to extend the reservation and put me on hold for a couple of minutes to get the number. She took so long, I was thinking of hanging up and just look up the number myself. Then she came back on and actually gave me the correct number for the hotel. I called the hotel directly and they did not have that 3 day reservation. I then called my credit card company and they said they did have a charge for the reservation and it was “pending”. I immediately canceled the credit card and the credit card company put that payment under dispute. I called the hotel back to proceed with reservations. I then made reservations with the hotel easily as they had plenty of rooms, were able to get me two rooms next to each other, and also the real room pricing was lower than the fraudulent center’s pricing. The hotel front desk person who booked me asked to see the email confirmation and I sent it to him. He said the email confirmation was not from the Marriott and he was going to forward it to corporate. We need to do better in keeping these scammers off google results!
