seawolf

Took about two weeks to get my money back from GCS. I had to follow up three times.

CanuckFlyHigh

It makes no sense why these GC re-sale companys are still selling Hyatt GC's when they know this is an issue? I even saw one site advertising the hyatt discount as a banner on its home page.

cdancer20

Probably because they are still making a good profit off the ones that are working. I'm personally at like 80-90% success so the profits may outweigh the risk for the company.

creativeguess1

Well. Here's my opinion

Everyone on FT comes here to look for "the deal". I used to get GCs for Hyatt at 15 percent off. Always available. Then someone posted a "hey everybody. Go here. Save 15 percent". Greeeeeeeeat. Well. They dried up, and clearly, everyone on FT knows who that 3rd party seller is. Posting EVERY thought someone has on FT, I would say beware, you might have just given up your savings

Anyway. I dipped my feet into the water with another 3rd party seller last Tuesday. Gift card spread. What a joke. I was buying at 26 percent discount and my 2 percent on my cc. I bought 2 at 500$ on Thursday. Look at the brains on Brad!!!! (I thought). 28 percent discount. Club closed on weekend. Restaurant breakfast for 4. Great rate. Gawd. I'm DA MAN!!!! Working on diamond 2017. Chasing the promo..... I'm calculating about 56 points per dollar not including the breakfast! Add on top club opened on Friday night and due to big convention lounge open on Saturday (rare. Maybe 3 times a year here) still gave the 2500 points without asking!!!

Anyway. Bought cards on Tuesday. Checked balances on Wednesday. Good to go! Go to check out Saturday. Balances 0 on both. Then. I'm going to sound like a bigger idiot than was actually the case, but Saturday as I'm checking out I kinda pulled the "I'm DIAMOND. Do you know who I am????" (I really didn't". I basically told the guy. This isn't a Hyatt problem. Or you know, it's a ME problem

So as I left, called gift card spread. Talked to someone. Can I call you back in an hour? I said yes. You promise you'll call me back? Yes. Never got a call back. Got an email. "Due to issues with your GCs. We have refunded your order. No replacement. No apology. No "we value you as a client....."

My point being. If your buying off of eBay or a third party site. This is not a Hyatt problem. This is a you problem. You (me), us. Are sucked in by the huge savings. Make sure your credit card company is STRONG if needing help to resolve and know that if you've seen this forum on FT with Hyatt. Buyer Beware


"Greed. Is GOOD". -Gordon Gekko

Wish you luck on the third party sites. GC spread has 1000's currently listed. At 27 percent.

Even with this disaster last weekend. Bought a eCard off of eBay this week. Shows up via email. For say X. Well it's X plus 64.22. What's the odds I have a huge problem THIS weekend?

seawolf

Sounds like they refunded fairly quickly. It look me several weeks for a refund from GCS.

I would not recommend buying Hyatt GCs unless you are willing to use it up immediately.

jpdx

The problem is that there's HUGE fraud going on, and it's in large part due to Hyatt's incompetence. These egiftcards have absolutely no security. Buy five $50 cards, and you're practically guaranteed to work out the algorithm. Hyatt should proactively contact those who bought legitimate cards and offer to exchange them for either physical cards, or cards with proper security features.

For anyone buying egifctards from the re-sellers or ebay, know that there's a good chance that you're buying a stolen (progressed) product. The merchants will usually refund drained cards quickly, so the odds are minimal that you're out your money, but if you do this on any appreciable scale, you WILL run into problems with drained cards. More importantly, perhaps, there's a good chance that the card you're buying is actually someone else's card, so even if it works for your payment, it's not exactly a nice/ethical/legal thing to do, and (even though we haven't seen any reports of this), I wonder if Hyatt ever tracks down who uses the stolen cards and takes action?

cdancer20

Honestly, it seems like Hyatt doesn't even care. If they did, then it they would have fixed this issue immediately. However, I would assume that the person that uses the "stolen" GC wouldn't necessarily get in trouble since there would be records back to that your purchased them. The seller should be liable.

I agree with you though about how the number is easy to generate. It seems like only the last 6-8 numbers on each Hyatt GC is different. No randomness and most of them don't have pins to further stop the "guessing game"

Brituchenite

I received an email from CardCAsh apologizing for the 'error' and refunding me for the 4 gift cards that had a zero balance.

Interestingly, those four all had the last four digits starting with a '2'. The 6 that had a balance, all started with a '4'.

Anyway, I shall keep checking them every couple of days until I use them.

seawolf

GCS listing two Hyatt cards with face value of $2,000 a piece. Anybody willing to take the plunge?

United747

Haha, I bet they're both zeroed out.

Renard

At this point if Hyatt doesn't know they have a BIG problem with this gift card situation, then it really makes me wonder about Hyatt I'm afraid.

United747

I don't think there is anything on the website about it. Its sad that this thread is one of the few places with info on the breach.

Brituchenite

Cardcash refunded my payment for the 4 dud cards. So far, others are still intact.

seawolf

Hyatt does know they have a problem. This is why they removed the online balance check functionality as well as having you hit a random number when checking balance by phone. They need to change the algorithm they are using to generate gift card numbers. That appears to have been compromised thus hackers can guess the valid gift card numbers from the invalid ones.

Ctrix65513

Seems most of the gift card resellers have now removed Hyatt cards from there website/out of stock. 2 days ago plenty where listed.