Credit card scammed after using booking.com

Nasqueron

Scotbot said:

Olinda99 said:

As above - the £0 transactions are to verify the card is real, active etc

In which case the name on the transaction should be booking.com or the hotel

It may eventually be, it may not. Not all firms have their exact name on the payment, some may have a parent group or a payment processor or update it when they charge. I have a couple of fuel fills, one is Tesco Petrol, one is MORR <place name> which happens to be a Morrison's fuel station

A scammer is more likely to put through a small amount to check the card has credit and is active, ready to take a big hit, vs a £0 verification

Scotbot

Voyager2002 said:

Scotbot said:

Voyager2002 said:

A transaction for no money sounds like an authorisation, quite probably by the owner of the hotels.

I emailed the hotels to ask if they had made the transaction but received no reply. Surely  the transaction should have the name of the hotel if they had done it or at least been from a Spanish account 

The hotels would not have known: the owner of the hotels might be anywhere, and an intermediary company might have bought a block of rooms from the owner to resell and was now verifying that they could collect payment if you failed to pay as scheduled.

Or, of course,. it might have been a scammer.

I contacted the hotel because that was the response from the booking.com 'help centre'. One of the reasons for using booking.com was that I thought they processed the payments. Clearly not

Scotbot

Nasqueron said:

Scotbot said:

Olinda99 said:

As above - the £0 transactions are to verify the card is real, active etc

In which case the name on the transaction should be booking.com or the hotel

It may eventually be, it may not. Not all firms have their exact name on the payment, some may have a parent group or a payment processor or update it when they charge. I have a couple of fuel fills, one is Tesco Petrol, one is MORR <place name> which happens to be a Morrison's fuel station

A scammer is more likely to put through a small amount to check the card has credit and is active, ready to take a big hit, vs a £0 verification

Both hotels are part of large chains but this transaction was not made by the parent group.

It wasn't me that caught this one it was the credit card company so they must have programmed the algorithm to  look for zero card transactions.

Nasqueron

Scotbot said:

Nasqueron said:

Scotbot said:

Olinda99 said:

As above - the £0 transactions are to verify the card is real, active etc

In which case the name on the transaction should be booking.com or the hotel

It may eventually be, it may not. Not all firms have their exact name on the payment, some may have a parent group or a payment processor or update it when they charge. I have a couple of fuel fills, one is Tesco Petrol, one is MORR <place name> which happens to be a Morrison's fuel station

A scammer is more likely to put through a small amount to check the card has credit and is active, ready to take a big hit, vs a £0 verification

Both hotels are part of large chains but this transaction was not made by the parent group.

It wasn't me that caught this one it was the credit card company so they must have programmed the algorithm to  look for zero card transactions.

Their algorithms look for unusual spending like a different country, not just £0 verification/hold transactions that are confirming the card is genuine. Even big firms can use external payment processers

Scotbot

Something about the transaction triggered the algorithm to freeze my card. It did come from Switzerland