seat38a

US credit cards do not have pins. Pin numbers are only for cash advance on CC's.

COSPILOT

Incredibly relevant. My card was in my pocket when I got an alert from Chase that my card was being used at a Best Buy in Dayton, Ohio, while I'm having coffee in my house on a Sunday morning in Colorado Same conversation, card present, chip and all... You are so quick to assume the hotel is at fault, and that either staff or someone else decided to compromise the card, but return it, and also not take anything else of value. You are asking for this to be treated like a federal crime as though someone was killed. I have no clue how mine was compromised, it could have been days before, it could have been months before and finally sold on the dark web. You are stuck on it happening in Brazil, therefore it must have happened at the hotel that night, and demanding the hotel waste hours investigating for something that didn't impact you or them, meanwhile they have 100 calls a day for the normal complaints to deal with as well.

Team, priority 1, some guest thinks a card was compromised. Drop everything and get to the bottom of this asap. But boss, we have 25 rooms with AC not working, a robbery outback and a drunk that passed out in the bar. Nope, focus on the zero evidence credit card issue.

WMTribe84

WMTribe84

Happy

You may not be from USA. Chip Credit Cards issued by US banks do NOT need any entry of PIN. In fact, NONE of the Chip Credit Cards I current own, from 4 major banks, has a PIN.

For that matter I am used to get a strange look from the wait staff when dining in Europe and the handheld device was brought to the table for payment. Once they realize it is US card, they all know what to do. Never ever required to punch a PIN because there is NONE.

Even Chip Debit Card does not need PIN to function because it can be used as a Credit Card.

To OP

My friend and his wife went to Europe last Spring - during the trip his wife's Chase Ink Preferred card which was locked in a drawer AT HOME, had over $2500 fraudulent charges went thru, incl some were used for Uber. They did not know because they did not set up Alerts on the card - it was used only ONCE to pay Fed Estimate Tax online before their trip (so to meet the minimum spend for the 80K sigh up bonus).

My friend found that out only when they received the statement. It took 3 billing cycles to clear that up - The first Chase rep on the phone kept saying, it was not possible because it was a Chip Card... Well, he should, and anyone who questions why a Chip card can still suffer fraudulent charges, should do a little bit of Googling....

Not to mention that all chip cards issued by the MAJOR US banks, do not function at all like the Chip Cards around the world - meaning they do not need any PIN to function, and the transaction priority is set accordingly.

On top of that, here in US, at almost ALL retailers, when a chip card does not function after 3 tries, the POS would then allow it used as a swipe card - and Voila, the transaction goes thru.

For those who are more itnerested, they can google why Chip Cards do not mean absolute safety, also if they want to learn about how the US-issued chip cards function - the Credit Card thread has a very long thread discussed the US Chip Cards - how they different from the world's, and how the transactions would go thru with these cards.

OP. you have to think back hard on any possibility where and when, the girlfriend's card is ever used inadvertently, given your statement of the card is not used for months before this trip - it can be safely ruled out the fraudulent charge is not stemmed from prior breach.

COSPILOT

In my early days of frequent travel I thought like you, now after decades of travel its kind of rare and I've modified my expectations. For major trips, my wife actually makes an effort to communicate with staff, and much to my shock they respond. I haven't tried in maybe 5 years? What is funny is that I'm the one with status, she is a nobody. However they always seem to like her. Twice now we have walked into a hotel with me as the status person, but they greet my wife. Kind of cool actually to see that happen and makes up for me being gone so much for about 30 seconds. We came back late at the Westin in Florence, they promptly greeted my wife by name, and demanded I show ID to even enter the property. You can see why my standards have lowered. In fairness she is much better looking than me, and in foreign countries she fits in, while I look like me at home.

geoshina

Brazil is second country with most fraudulent cc card. It only loses to .. guess where? USA. Yeap...

I don't think it was someone that broke into your room and tried to make a charge. Why, you might wonder?

In Brazil, if you are going to make a purchase in any brazilian online store (or MercadoPago, which is kinda like Paypal), you need to have your CPF (kinda like Social Security Number) , birth date and the card address in order for the transaction to go thru. If you don't have these informations correct, the payment will not even go thru. The fact that someone tried to use MercadoPago with a foreign card pretty much says that the bandit might have had all your information in order to try to use it.

My card have a 6 digit pin number and I can count the amount of times I had to use it whenever I went to the US. 2 times out of a hundred.....

catocony

OP, did your girlfriend walk outside the hotel with the card in her pocket? If so, it's quite possible that she was pickpocketed and had the card skimmed and then quickly pickpocketed a second time to get the card back. Carioca thieves can't count to eleven since they run out of fingers at ten, but they have the lightest fingers on the planet.

OP, the fact that you were in a nice hotel just means you were in a nice hotel in Rio. Carioca rules still apply. Yeah, you paid for a pretty nice bed and hopefully a view of the beach and not a view of the atrium. Other than that, it's Rio.

Look at it this way - you ended up not getting robbed on the credit card, but you were probably overcharged on half of your restaurant bills, with the bread basket/coivert scam, the mystery soup, the mystery coffee, the double-tip scam, etc. NEVER USE A CREDIT CARD AT ANY RESTAURANT IN RIO.

Also, don't eat anything like meatballs or shredded meats like in soups and stews. The picanha that a guy ordered for lunch and didn't finish was reused to make meatballs and such for dinner. Also, the nuns collecting donations aren't nuns, the guys selling suntan lotion on the beach are really selling skin creme with food coloring in reused suntan lotion bottles, the shrimp served on skewers on the street came out of some restaurant's trash can and if any guy ever asks you what time it is, run away as fast as you can because you're about to get mugged.

Nhilar

I have extensively traveled the world, in South America it is universally useful to have a local friend/buisness associate help you avoid such pitfalls as the above mentioned.

My universal complaint about my traveling compatriots (USA) is that they fail to recognize much of the world is considerably more dangerous than the United States..and not always in obvious and direct ways.

Kacee

lol, I travel extensively and >95% of the places I go are exponentially safer than my hometown of Oakland. The only real exceptions in the past 5+ years being Mexico and Cali, Colombia.

IME most Americans are unnecessarily paranoid about personal safety in foreign countries.

EuropeanPete

That's odd, because Americans are known around the world for being convinced that some suburb of Luxembourg is going to be super dangerous when they've just avoided a series of mass shootings in their home state (obviously a stereotype, but one with lots and lots and lots of examples). I mean, there's 30 countries where people live longer than in the US despite their healthcare systems having only a fraction of the funding and so much of the leading research and technology comes from US research.

PS Slightly amusingly to me, but not to her, the same thing just happened to my mother with a card she used twice at IAH while on a 4 hour transit to the US but that she otherwise hadn't used in 6 months.

SacTownGuy

I would simply cancel the credit card, get a new card, and wouldn't think more about it.

Life is too short to worry about what some hotel in an almost 3rd world country may or may not do.

Happy

I just want to say I have a friend whose wife is Brazilian who is a very successful plastic surgeon. They live in NYC. They do NOT go to Brazil unless there are family obligations such as weddings etc. When they go, there are always someone from the wife's family come to the airport to fetch them. The wife told me members of her big family get robbed in the city even in their own neighborhood that deemed to be the safest in the city every now and then. So being locals do not really protect them.

diburning

So what you really want is a non-answer from the hotel management so that you can feel better about yourself?

Finkface

My Barclay chip card asks for a pin when used outside of the US. There are several cards that do. In fact, I used it just this week in Canada and I had to use the pin. There are some (few, I admit) true chip and pin US cards.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/31356368-post11.html

But we are getting way OT. Again, card present doesn’t not mean the chip present. See below. Cards can be cloned and compromised in so many ways and the rings that run these operations are very skilled. I don’t think this happened the way the OP thinks. Much more likely a cloned or compromised card. I think blaming the hotel is a bit unfair.