For the second time in a month now I've had somewhat arbitrary-looking charge amounts show up on my corporate AMEX prior to an upcoming hotel stay at a given property. The interesting thing about these charges is that they have a Folio number associated with them but do not have any specific stay information or reservation number associated with them.

The first of these was at a DTree in NJ and the second was at the Palmer House. In both cases, I was told that these were "pre-authorizations for incidentals" and would "clear from my Amex account a few days after check-out".

There are a couple of things about this that are puzzling to me:

First, these amounts showed up as *charges* on my AMEX, not as authorizations. They were added to my statement under "recent activity". When I challenged the desk agents about this, I was told that they were only authorizations and that this was "normal". I disagree.

Secondly, this has now happened multiple times at different properties, and I'm concerned that there is a trend among properties to pre-charge the credit card on file for incidentals. Even if the intent is to pre-authorize and not actually *charge*, I still have a problem with the "PRE" part of the equation. If the rate reserved does not require any deposits, then is it OK for the hotel to actually authorize and/or charge my card prior to my arrival for incidentals?

I'm fully aware of the differences between card authorizations vs. charges, and in these cases the properties in question actually charged my card and didn't just authorize.

Brettzky