new credit card - hotel reservations made with old one. What happens?
 

My credit card was 'compromised' last month and Capital One sent me a new one. But before that happened I made numerous hotel reservations for travel later this spring and summer using the number on my old card. I'm worried that a hotel might check the cc number sometime between now and when I stay and find that number is no longer good and cancel my reservation. Do hotels typically do that? Obviously I could contact each hotel but there are ten of them so I'd rather not if I don't have to. I did call Capital One and they didn't know, she said I'd have to check with the merchant.

Since credit cards are getting 'compromised' all the time these days and cards being replaced I'm thinking other people must have had this issue. Anyone know the answer?

This just happened to me last month. I would go ahead a email the hotels and notify them of a change of c/c guarantee.

Several years ago this happened to me. Arrived at hotel in St Thomas to find they cancelled reservation the day before when they checked card. I'd contact them just to be sure.

IME hotels do not wait to check whether or not the CC used is valid. Sometimes they will even attempt an authorization of some small amount.

If it makes you feel more secure you should REPLY to all those emails from the hotels which I am assuming you saved somewhere and state that the credit card number has changed.

Contact your hotels asap. Don't burden them with unnecessary words. Inform them that your credit card info used to secure the confirmation has changed. Give them the new confirmation number, and ask them to send you confirmation that all is OK. When I offer credit card info to a hotel in Europe, I send a FAX.

I had similar experience to Judy--arrived in Paris to find that my reservation (made over 6 months in advance) had been "cancelled" but the kind owner had "held" the room for a few hours, we were early, all was ok. (And she had tried to contact us a week ahead, but we were already traveling abroad with limited email access and missed it--with the phones we have now, we would probably have gotten the notice.)

So in the future, should this ever happen to us again (increasingly likely to have cards compromised, we find--be grateful for diligence of CC companies and banks who seem to flag stuff for us pretty reliably), we will definitely give new info to any and every place we'd used old card to reserve anything.

Yes, it's a hassle, but less than having your card used for tons of fraud and less than if you get to a place and have no reservation (which I think is pretty likely).

Have a great trip, anyway!

It is a PITA with reservations made with hotels using emails and FAXes or primitive online reservation sites. Hotels can decide what to do when they preauthorize the card and discover it is no longer valid. They can honor the booking, give you a chance to correct, or cancel and tell you sorry. I think the time is of the essence. It is a snap with reservations made at bookings sites like booking.com. I just had to do this and between booking.com and the starwood sites, I swapped CC info in less than 5 min per hotel.

......When I offer credit card info to a hotel in Europe, I send a FAX......

Using a fax is less secure than email. And, second, transmission is not the risk, it is what happens after it is in the hands of the hotel clerk. That is the risk and it doesn't make any difference if he got it via fax, email, or phone.

fmpden, I'm not here to educate you on security. IMO, you don't know what you're talking about. A simple Google search will prove that. But, frankly, I don't really care what you do with your credit card information.

The hotel will attempt authorization per the cancellation policy. If the cancellation policy is 48 hours before arrival then the hotel will charge the CC then. If the CC bounces you are out of luck and at the mercy of the merchant.

I just returned from Florence where I had made hotel reservations using booking.com. The hotel charged my CC as stated and in accordance with their cancellation policy. I had the same situation (Capital One as well). The hotel owner held my reservation because "you are an American and Americans are typically very good about honoring their reservations". Go figure...

2 possibilities :
- you prepaid your room with the old CC - no prob.
- you gave the card in order to reserve the room - the you can be sure 99% that the hotel will check your CC a few days before your arrival - the card will be checked as not ok, so reservation will be cancelled.

So contact your hotel - or booking.com or hotels.com if you booked via themselves, or modify your reservation online : find your reservation, modify it online by inputing your new CC number.

Ps : You still have faxes in the US ? long time I haven't seen one... I threw mine away 5 years ago at least.

>>IME hotels do not wait to check whether or not the CC used is valid. Sometimes they will even attempt an authorization of some small amount.<<

Sure, they usually check when one books -- but there are LOTS of times they also access the credit card later on.

Just last Fall for example -- my Kyoto hotel verified my cc at time of booking, but also took a one night's deposit 30 days prior to my arrival.

My London flat took the deposit at time of booking, and the final payment 6 weeks out.

If my cc had been changed in either case they could have cancelled my booking.

I just booked a flat in Edinburgh for August -- they took the deposit and will take the balance in June.

Contact the hotels!

I've never had any problems when that has happened, the CC company just transfer charges from the old to new number, it is transparent. You can't use it for a new charge, but the old ones work. I don't think I've ever had a hotel do what you are suggesting the problem would be, they either charge it right away or not at all, you charge when you leave.

But why not contact the hotel, it doesn't hurt to try, I don't see the downside of contacting them.

Some reading material for less intelligent on this board:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why...-still-a-thing

http://fortune.com/2013/05/15/why-th...efuses-to-die/

http://www.savvy-business-correspond...nessFaxes.html

Legal test of electronic signatures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_signature

I love the way you present things...

I read the first 2 links and found nothing interesting.
First link says banks like to have signed material... Sure, a fax has to have been sent but a photcopy could be what has been faxed - better proof than a scan ? and hackers. Yes, very probable that hackers will go into the PC's of the hotels we make reservatoins with.
Second link is just void of any info.

Now a question : I send a fax to a hotel : how can I know that somebody will retrieve it immediately or that it can stay hours for anybody going by to pick it up or copy it ?
A mail arrives in a mailbox that is normally not accesible to everyone. IF you fear hackers, send the mail in two parts, to make your paranoia go down one level.

Ah, if only I could be as intelligent as you are !

Less intelligent cuts both ways. If you don't understand internet security that is fine. And if YOU want to continue to use a fax, that is fine. Others may not want to but they can make that decision.

Maybe the difference is between Italy, which NYCFS knows a lot better than I do, and France and Belgium, which you and I know better. IME, no one in France has used or answered a fax for about 5-7 years, but perhaps in Italy they are still common.

At any rate, to make things short and sweet and not worry about getting written replies, I just pick up the phone and call when I have an issue like this, whether it's one hotel or 10.

Christina: >>I've never had any problems when that has happened, the CC company just transfer charges from the old to new number, it is transparent.<<


That is true of charges you made and are IN THE PIPELINE when the cc is cancelled/replaced. But it would not apply for any new charges <u>after</u> the cc was cancelled. So as in the three (actual - not hypothetical) examples I provided -- the new charges would be denied since the account does not exist!


>>they either charge it right away or not at all, you charge when you leave.<<

Sometimes yes, sometime no . . .

Faxes are disappearing here in Italy as well, but not as fast as elsewhere, because internet penetration is still comparatively low.

I've always considered faxes to be inherently insecure. I've seen what used to happen to faxes sent to my husband's studio. They often sat for hours in the fax tray. After the secretary read them, she left them sitting on her desk, sometimes for days. When they were thrown out, they were rarely shredded.

The same is true of snail mail, of course. Anything on paper is only as secure as the procedure for handling the document.

I prefer to use booking.com for my hotel reservations. If I have to change credit cards, I can change it in just one place. Nothing is 100% secure, but I trust booking.com more than some of the jerry-rigged reservation systems used by some hotel web sites.

Call the hotels. Why worry?

The hotel will attempt authorization per the cancellation policy.

We already know that generalization is faulty.

Calling on the phone? Why, when an email gives you, and them, a written record that can be traced. And what happens when they don't answer the phone and all that?

If you call you can ask for a follow up email. Lots of smaller hotels in Italy don't ever respond to email, and if you call you don't have to put cc info in an email.

This is one reason I try to use booking.com.

I will only stay in a hotel if one of my favorite rooms is available. In order to secure the room I want, I always book with and speak directly to the hotel. I have no use for internet booking sites. That service is for the ordinary masses. That is not my style of travel.

Many hotels around the world (the issue is not country specific), particularly boutique hotels and specialty properties, require specific credit card information to confirm a reservation. If you don't wish to provide this information, you can find a hotel that does not require it or book your stay another way.

The manner in which you choose to "transmit" your credit card info is your decision. No transmission method is 100% safe, but there is plenty of security information available on the internet, from reliable sources, to guide you through the "safest" options.

When it comes to financial security, I would never trust an anonymous poster on the internet, especially someone whose husband worked in a sloppily run business.

'Ordinary masses. '

I must buy my communist pass.
You are an unsufferable Snob, you fool.

Sloppily run business is a nice one too.
Coming from someone who says she made good money selling pics of herself.
What kind of pics actually ?

NYCFood Snob, so you never stay anywhere you have never stayed before?

What if you go to a new place?

I am happily one of the masses. I book on booking, and then I call the hotel, or sometimes email the hotel, to discuss what room I will have. Since we favor small ( less than 20 room) hotels, this has yielded great results. Best of both worlds.
And no, it is not true that the worst rooms are kept for booking.com.

Oh sheesh - can't ask a simple question anymore without it degenerating into a cat fight.

Anyway...... thanks to those of you who actually answered my question. I knew I really needed to deal with it, I was just kind of in denial that maybe it wouldn't be a problem. But definitely better safe than sorry.

So - I am so glad most of the reservations were on booking.com. It was very easy to just go to 'manage my booking' (from my bookings list where everything was all in one place) and hit 'change my credit card details'. Then I got immediate confirmation emails. It took about 15 minutes to do the 12 reservations through them. It took a lot longer for the 5 that were not through them - and I only got one confirmation so far, so may end up taking even longer as I might need to call.

But yes, booking.com is the way to go for ease when something like this comes up.

<i><font color=#555555>"NYCFood Snob, so you never stay anywhere you have never stayed before? What if you go to a new place?"</font></i>

Of course I stay in new places. Sometimes I travel specifically to experience and photograph a new property. Almost every hotel that is worthy of attention has "special" rooms, and certain members of the hotel staff know which rooms these are. All one has to do is pose the right questions to the right person.

Hotels are in the "service" industry. You often get service if you are willing to pay for it. But the vast majority of people who come to this board to chat and contest are looking for steep discounts, or any discount. You are not likely to secure one of the "special" rooms by booking through some subsidiary of Priceline. Great service doesn't work that way.

<i><font color=#555555>"But yes, booking.com is the way to go for ease when something like this comes up."</font></i>

There is no way I would trust a middle-man to confirm a change in credit cards with any of my hotel confirmations. But, based on experience, I don't trust most middle-men.

I am not looking for discounts, just not my nature. I do like the convenience of booking.com though and have never had a problem with them.

I also find wonderful rooms through my combo approach, especially for the very small , mid priced places we favor, where if you book through the hotel you have to pay by wire transfers, especially in rural places in Italy, and where large deposits are required. Since we tend to make hotel reservations way ahead( all our places for our sept trip to Puglia and Rome have been booked for months) this ties up money for a long time.

There is not only one right way to do things.

<i><font color=#555555>"There is not only one right way to do things."</font></i>

I totally agree with that, which is why I don't lecture people on how to travel. I simply share my personal approach, based on decades of experience and a particular style. Readers are free to do what they want with the info. I have no personal investment, whatsoever, in any travel decision a stranger makes on this board.

Somehow your sharing of personal experience often sounds exactly like a lecture.
But I will try to take you at your word that it is not.

<i><font color=#555555>"Somehow your sharing of personal experience often sounds exactly like a lecture."</font></i>

No one can hear the sound of my voice on this board. Rock solid experience of a unique nature, conviction, and years of learning from one's mistakes; they tend to sound strong when expressed in the written word.

Denigrating the ordinary masses is also the fruit of a unique nature ? What kind of nature is that ?

Just pay attention to what you write and it may 'sound' better.