A scam I was unaware of

I wasn't going to put this on my blog.  It certainly doesn't fit the tone of my posts.  But if it alerts someone else, then it will be worthwhile.

Recently, I drove to my annual cousins' reunion down South.  The first night I was in a Hampton Inn in Kentucky.  At 3:30 am, my phone rang and woke me from a dead sleep.  A "friendly" male voice on the line apologized for disturbing me.  He explained the hotel computer had crashed and they had lost all their registration information and "I just need some information from you."

"Can't this wait until the morning?" I asked in a not too pleasant voice.

"No, I'm awfully sorry, but we need this information now."  He asked for the credit card information I used to pay for the room.

When I continued to resist, he became more assertive.  I was told if I could not come to the front desk right then, he would send Security to my room to escort me.

THAT is when I hung up!  I would have hung up much sooner had I not been asleep when the phone rang.

The next morning I checked with the front desk.  They told me they would never call my room at such an hour.  But the more disturbing piece of information was when they told me the call had to have come from inside.  It is not possible for someone outside the hotel to call directly to a guest's room.  A guest who overheard me talking to the desk said she had heard of this type of thing.

No real harm was done, other than disturbing my sleep.  If this man's motive was to get me to leave my hotel room at that hour, he failed.

When I travel, I will smile and say hello to anyone who I have eye contact with.  But beyond that, I don't get involved with strangers, no matter how "safe" they may appear.