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Home / Travel

Family loses $9K in hotel room service scam

Sarah Pollok
By Sarah Pollok
Multimedia Journalist·NZ Herald·
28 Apr, 2022 08:08 PM3 mins to read

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The family's holiday was ruined after losing more than $9250. Photo / Pexels

The family's holiday was ruined after losing more than $9250. Photo / Pexels

Hotel room service is often overpriced and expensive, but one family ended up losing more than $9200 after ordering food to their room.

Even worse, they didn't get to eat a single bite of it.

Ali Koca took to TikTok to warn his 1.8 million followers about the scam often experienced at hotels.

"This family was staying in a hotel, and they decided to order room service using the father's debit card," he explained.

Koca, a Toronto content creator, shared the family's story in a video that now has more than 1.9 million views. While he has the background of a Holiday Inn behind him, it is not clear what hotel the event happened at.

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Koca explained that after calling the phone number on what the family thought was a hotel room service line, they placed their order and provided the dad's card details.

"They waited over an hour and a half, and no food got delivered," Koca said. "So the father called the front desk to ask where his order was, but they told him they never got an order from his room."

Concerned, the man checked his bank account online and found "more than US$6000 ($9300) of his money had just been withdrawn in the last hour and a half", claimed Koca.

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Showing the hotel's actual bill of fare, Koca revealed that the room service menu they ordered from had been slipped under the door.

"This scam isn't that uncommon," he added.

"Scammers will slip a fake room service menu under your door, hoping you'll order from it. And once you give them your debit card info, they can log into your account and take out all the money they want."

Viewers who worked in the industry said they had also seen this happen countless times.

"Yesss! this is so true! I worked at a front desk and it happens so often. Never order from those flyers!!!! They're usually pizza flyers," one commenter said.

"They should never ask for card info when you order room service, it just comes when you order it and it's added into the bill after," another insisted.

As for how you can avoid being bled dry by this trick, Koca had some advice.

"The best way to combat this scam is to call the front desk before you order your food, and ask them to confirm that the menu you're ordering from is the right one," he said.

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