so why does the hotel keep canceling my keycards?
 

I'm staying at a prepaid hotel room and I've given my card for "incidentals."

Every time I leave the room and go, then come back, the keycards don't work. Then it's down the elevator and I have to get new keycards.

Why are they canceling my keycards? What's the hotelish reason?

Any insight appreciated.

I'm sure you look pretty dodgy, and they want to keep an eye on you. ;)

Some keycard systems are sensitive, just having the card next to a cellphone will make it unusable. I find this highly annoying. The prox type keys don't have this problem.

I had this happen 5 times during a 3 day stay last year. Not a happy camper.

Sometimes if you keep them in a wallet stacked with other CCs they get de-magnetized. Or so says night shift desk clerk Bill.

I kept two keycards today, and one was in a separate pocket and nothing else much was in it.

So where should you keep these sensitive keycards ;)

Not near anything else. Shirt pocket is where I usually keep mine. I've seen ladies use some creative places.

so why does the hotel keep canceling my keycards?
 

I keep them between dollar bills in my wallet.

Common problem.

I usually request two. One I keep in the car. One I keep in my back pocket (I'm a women so my wallet is in my bag).

The above is usually sufficient. But I did once have a door lock completely die on me. The front desk couldn't reprogram it when their little machine. I ended up waiting in the lobby for an hour while they called a maintainable guy back in from home. He already had to take off the lock. Another time the hotel's entire lock system was malfunctioning. Apparently it didn't know the real time. So one employee had to go plug in to every door lock to reprogram them.

so why does the hotel keep canceling my keycards?
 

Don't use the hotel key card sleeve (most of the time)

cell phone + room key = voided key

I had this problem when I had a Blackberry, I would always forget to keep them separate and and would need a new key everynight. A lot of new phones still have magnets in them for various reasons.

LOL, I get three, car, pants pocket, shirt pocket

this happens so often it can make one quite annoyed

that took a while for OMNI to get to this point :D

I have not seen more than 2 key card issues in a hotel stay and usually shirt pocket is a safe place.

I usually just put them in my wallet. One or twice a year, one gets demagnetized. But it doesn't happen often enough to force me to change my behavior.

If it ever happened twice in one stay, I suppose I'd go to a different pocket for the card.

People always warn me about putting key cards near anything (who knew they were so delicate!). I've had a problem maybe once ever.

If I am travelling for business, with meetings in the hotel or close by I rarely take a purse with me (too cumbersome) and instead keep the hotel key along with a credit card and my phone in a small phone wallet. 80% of the time it is fine, the other 20% it demagnetizes the card. Guess there is a variety of quality among hotel key cards.