David GerardDo not stay at a Hyatt hotel. They're running fake "smoking detectors" specifically as a revenue-generating scheme and arbitrarily fining guests $500.
Martin Seeger@davidgerard How does this work?
Don’t you have to sign off the amount when you pay with your credit card?
I would just refuse to pay and let them sue… Does this work differently in the U.S.?
R@masek They probably have an amount of money pre-authorized on the card you shown during check-in
@davidgerard
@davidgerard
@foo__ The per-authorization is also for a specific sum. I know what rate I booked. I allow them to make the pre-auth about 50$ higher but no more. A too high pre-auth would trigger a lot of red flags for me.
Kevin Karhan 
@masek @foo__ @davidgerard not just you, but any payment pricessor and card issuer would decline that without additional authorization!
Karsten Johansson@masek @davidgerard Have you used a hotel before? You pretty much always pay with credit card, and that info is taken before you are even given a room.
And as they don't know that you'll even leave on time, eat at the hotel restaurant, drink some Pepsi or eat $15 bag of Doritos from the bar, catch up a bit on educational porn, they have no idea what your charges will be until after you check out and assess the room. They totally have free reign over the final dollar that gets charged to your card.
And any dispute is a civil matter. You could just pay it, negotiate it, or take it to court.
PhreakByte@ksaj @davidgerard I spend about 100 nights per year in hotels.
But those are all in Europe and that is why I ask. For this scam to work, there must be something different in the U.S. or the people make serious mistakes.
When I check into a hotel, they make a pre-authorisation of my CC. This is usually the sum for the booked stay plus some reserve for food or drinks. Usual the extra is about 50$. This pre-auth is acknowledged by me through entering the PIN.
I would expect everyone to pay attention to the sum pre-auth'ed. I do not allow them more than ~50$ extra. That way they cannot slap extra charges without me entering the PIN again.
I had hotels trying this. But every time I refused to pre-auth such a sum, they corrected it.
If they refuse, you should not stay there as it is a clear indicator of them wanting to do something fishy.
So I see two possibilities:
People don't look at what they pre-auth. That is a serious mistake.
The hotel has other ways to slap charges on a CC in the U.S.
Garrett Wollman@masek @ksaj @davidgerard Hotels typically take a *much* higher damage reserve authorization, often as much as three nights' room charge or $500, and nobody looks at the card terminal when they tap their card (assuming the hotel has even upgraded to contactless which many haven't). Credit networks do not use PINs here (PIN implies debit network, but many debit cards allow both) for card-present transactions. Since the hold is so large nobody ever uses a debit card for hospitality.