Hotel guest cancels card to avoid paying cancellation fee after not showing up for reservation, clerk charges card every day until it goes through: ‘I can play the long-game’

Author image for Bar Mor Hazut
Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
Feb 19, 2026 7:00 PM EST

You can run, but you can't hide…

We've all made purchases we instantly regretted but couldn't really take back. Like when you buy a meal at your local Taco Bell, even though you know it will give you a stomachache the second you're done eating. You already bought it, and you're not getting your money back.

Or are you?

Some purchases are way too big to accept as a loss, and many would try to avoid paying them, at whatever cost. One trick that is apparently popular when it comes to canceling hotel reservations is canceling the card they used when they made the reservation. This way, even if the guest doesn't show up at all, when the hotel attempts to charge, nothing happens.

Before you write it down as an easy trick to use when you are booking your next vacation, maybe read the story below to find out how some hotels manage to still get what they are owed from guests who never show up. 

This hotel clerk saw that one of their guests never checked it, and protocol states that after a certain hour, the hotel is allowed to charge the guest for the room using the card they put in for this case exactly. Only, when the clerk went to charge the guest's debit card, they were notified that the card did not have the funds to make the transaction.

Since this is not the first time this happened to the hotel or the clerk working there, they decided to play the long game. The clerk knew that at some point, this guest would want to use their debit card again, and to do so, they would have to transfer money to that card. All the clerk needed was some patience, and they would get the hotel the money the guest owes for booking a room. This led the clerk to attempt to charge the card every single day, for months, until one day they finally got what they worked so hard for.

Not only that, but they also got a phone call from the guest, who was surprised to find a charge from a hotel they never even visited…

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  • Luxurious Hotel Lobby with Worker inside
    via annastills

    Luxurious Hotel Lobby with Worker inside

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • Turn off your card so you can avoid a cancellation fee? I can play the long-game

    If there is one thing that I hate (and is sadly becoming a pretty big issue), it's people who decide they rather turn off or pull all their funds from their card to avoid a cancellation fee (which is usually the first night if a no-show).
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  • Now, while this is usually a "whatever" situation, it's a huge problem for third- party bookings, especially from a certain third-party conglomerate.
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  • This one certain third- party site changes their business date over super early compared to where my hotel is located, AND they have a policy that the hotel can only cancel a booking on their portal the day of or earlier.
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  • The issue with this is when we check-in the no-shows at \~3am when we change our system's business date over, it's already been many hours past that third-party's business date, so it flags the reservation as "checked in" on their portal.
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  • This wouldn't be too much of an issue if there wasn't a commission fee that we need to pay per
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  • And to make things worse, the few times I tried to call their customer service to get it cancelled/waved, they rejected it & essentially blamed us for not taking care of it earlier.
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  • I got sick of it, especially when we got to the point it was happening at least once every 1-2 weeks.
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  • So I (being a manager) put a rule in place that any reservations that come from that third- party conglomerate will need to have at least authorization taken right away, no matter if it is a PrePay Virtual Card or just a standard hold.
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  • The logic: by doing so, we can do one of the following 1.) We ensure we have some payment before the person even gets the chance to try to pull a fast-one 2.) If it declines, we have ample time to take care of it.
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  • Obviously, if the guest decided they would want to change their card, we would de-authorize the hold & put a new hold on the new card (and the funds get put back no later than 24hrs later, even with debit cards) Some guests naturally didn't like that, but most understood after we explained it after they said something.
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  • Now for the actual story. This particular day, I was doing a half- overnight (11pm- 3am) on a slow weekday so I can take care of accounting stuff.
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  • Person Using a Laptop and Holding a Credit Card.
    via Karola G

    Person Using a Laptop and Holding a Credit Card.

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • When I came in, we had one more person checking in. No big deal. Midnight comes around and I went to go authorize the reservation (it's my personal policy to authorize all cards at midnight for anyone who has yet to show up).
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  • I look at the reservation and didn't realize it was from that 3rd Party. The policy | created must've slipped my mind at the time.
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  • Of course, the card declined & I couldn't cancel on the portal, so we were losing well over $30 because of the stupid commission.
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  • Since I didn't want to deal with the third-party & knew they would reject it, I noticed that the card declined for "insufficient funds." That was actually the best case as that meant that the card was not terminated & there was a higher chance that was a debit card (and one thing I learned is if people rely on a debit card, they won't get a new card if there is no reason to).
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  • So for a week straight, I kept trying to authorize the card. Tried lower amounts of payment to at least get something (like 1/4 the total), kept declining, kept saying insufficient funds.
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  • I kept doing this for a month, once a week trying for some sort of amount I then went on vacation for two and a half weeks.
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  • The day I got back, I tried the card again for just the commission amount, and to my surprise, it went through.
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  • Feeling excited, I tried the remaining amount, AND IT ALL WENT THROUGH!! This guy thought we gave up and started to put money back on their card.
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  • But of course, that was their demise. About a week later, I get a call from someone asking if we did a charge.
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  • I asked their name and it was the person. I wanted to gloat so badly, but I kept my cool.
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  • He was not mad, he just asked if we were the hotel that did this charge.
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  • I said yes & explained that it was a no-show charge for his reservation almost two months prior.
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  • He said "oh, okay" in an almost disappointed tone and hung up. From his tone, I could tell he tried to cheat the system and lost.
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  • Inquisitive-Carrot "Hotels hate this one trick!"
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  • Jdawger_ Original Poster's Reply HAHA. This half-reminded me of another story I told before (I think). Our policy is if you "no-show & CC declines," it's an automatic "Do Not Rent" (with a relatively easy way to get off it). That happened with someone, and then they decided to come a month later. When I said they were on the DNR list because of our policy, they flat out said "everyone turns off their card to avoid a cancellation fee" like it was no big deal. They didn't expect a hotel to ban the
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  • pakrat1967 I'm gonna play devil's advocate here and say that maybe his card was compromised and someone else booked the room just to see if the card worked. Sometimes banks will "transfer" a charge from the old card to the new card. Normally only if it's like a monthly auto payment, but since you attempted to charge the card so many times. The bank may have decided to charge the new card.
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  • Jdawger_ Original Poster's Reply While I see what you mean, you do know how rare that is, right? People don't just make random reservations with someone else's card and not show up. People who steal other's cards would want to gain something out of it, especially if it's something they can get quickly. In terms of hotels, they either try to use the card and say someone else will check in, or just hope that the FDA doesn't see the name on the card when they show up. None of this drain money for t
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  • RoyallyOakie "Hi customer. I want to play game." In your very best Jigsaw voice.
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  • KrazyKatz42 Unfortunately there's so many more hotels out there who pretty much only try the card a couple of times (if that) and just write it off. That's why so many try it on. My old place I would do what you did. Keep trying it at random, and did get quite a few to go through eventually.
    via Jdawger_

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