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’

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…

via annastills

Luxurious Hotel Lobby with Worker inside
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Turn off your card so you can avoid a cancellation fee? I can play the long-game

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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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Person Using a Laptop and Holding a Credit Card.
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