As simple as effective, as a scam is being spread in hotels in US. It is so simple it would have no difficulty in seeing the day in Paris and in France.
Today, like many industries in tourism, a credit card is required by most hotels in Paris and everywhere to guarantee your reservation. This is to ensure that you will not no-show and also to protect themselves against unscrupulous customers who are accustomed to leave the hotel without paying (there are a lot more than you might think) .
Starting from this very common practice and return to the manners, bad people will proceed as follows: they call the hotel and ask to speak to the House No. 203, for example, that proved to be room 203 rooms. Once you’ve hang up, the caller pretends to be the hotel reception and thanks to a well-honed speech tells you he has a concern in relation to your credit card number, that has been poorly transcribed (all the excuses can be invoked). And then, quite simply, false receptionist asks you to give your card number, taking care to ask the security code, this one is required for any remote operation of the card. How to protect against this practice? The solution is as simple as the scam : go down at the front desk to make sure it is the hotel that contacted you and do not give your credit card number by phone to a person posing as what it is not.
