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Over the summer, I made a super bone-headed mistake: I checked out of a hotel and left medicine and more than $3,000 in Mastercard gift cards in my hotel room safe. Worse yet, I left the safe unlocked. It was a moment of massive stupidity that caused some stress, but I wanted to share the story for several reasons: first, because it is more entertaining in hindsight than it was in the moment; second, as a cautionary tale about the risks of manufactured spending; third, as a kudos to the hotel for their help in getting things resolved; and fourth, for some quick explanation of my strategy in getting my gift cards back. We all make mistakes, but I don’t recommend trying this at home.
I spent a glorious week this past summer at the Grand Hotel Victoria, a Small Luxury Hotel of the World in Menaggio, Italy (on the shores of Lake Como) that is bookable using World of Hyatt points. This is a very high-end property (base rooms often start around ~$1,500-$2,000 per night during high season). I’d stayed at the same hotel for a night during the summer of 2022 and loved it enough that I made plans to return for 5 nights this year (at the end of June 2023). It was even better the second time around. You can read about it here: A return to the Hyatt / SLH Grand Hotel Victoria, a dream within a dream.
Not included in that review was a rookie mistake I had made that hadn’t yet been resolved before publication: On the morning of check out from that stay, I left medicine, used boarding passes, a backup wallet with a few credit cards, and $3,200 in Mastercard gift cards in my hotel room safe. And I left it unlocked. I hadn’t included this story in the review both because it was my mistake and seemed unrelated to the review and because I posted the review a couple of days after check out during my summer MSC cruise, which as you will see was too soon for me to have had the full story.
No, I don’t normally make a habit of bringing gift cards to hotels and certainly not on trips abroad. In this case, there had been a Staples deal for fee-free Mastercard gift cards just a few days before the trip. My wife and I each bought the maximum of eight $200 gift cards, which means sixteen total gift cards loaded with $200 each ($3,200 in total Mastercard gift cards). If you’re not sure why we’d be purchasing all of those Mastercard Gift Cards, see our Manufactured Spending Complete Guide.
I had the cards in my backpack intending to use them on the way to the airport to leave for the trip and I just ran out of time. We had driven a one-way rental car to the airport, so my only option at that point was to bring the cards. When we arrived at the Grand Hotel Victoria, the unopened Mastercard gift cards went straight into the safe, sitting directly on top of the purchase receipts for those gift cards. That was mistake #1: I shouldn’t have put the receipts and the cards together. I also probably should have taken a picture of the receipts for my own records in case I needed to file a police report.
The morning of check-out, we drove 3 hours to the port in Genoa for our 10-night MSC cruise. As soon as we were pulling in to the city of Genoa to return the rental car, it hit me that I had forgotten to empty out the safe. My heart sunk. I had gone into the safe the night before departure but had left everything in the safe figuring that I would take it all out the next morning when I took the medicine. We got to Genoa and I realized that I had forgotten to take the medicine and that’s when it hit me that it was still in the safe….along with the $3,200 in gift cards. As we were in the car and needed to navigate to rental car return, I first emailed the hotel to let them know that I had left items in the safe (including the room number and an exact list of what I’d left in the safe).
As soon as we stopped driving, I called the Grand Hotel Victoria and explained the situation. We hadn’t made any stops other than one for gas, so it had been just over 3 hours since I checked out and it was still ahead of the hotel’s check-in time, so I thought that there was a chance that the room was empty and that it possibly may not have been cleaned yet — maybe everything was still in the safe. The hotel said they would call me back.
When the hotel called me back shortly thereafter, I had some difficulty understanding the person who called. I couldn’t ascertain exactly what (if anything?) they had found, but she asked me to email the hotel again so they could get my shipping information.
I emailed the hotel and received a reply within 15 minutes saying “We confirm receipt of your e-mail and you will be contacted as soon as possible and inform about the shipment”. I received an email a little while later saying:
Dear Mr Reyes,Thank you for your e-mail.We are glad to inform you that we use L’Host for this type of shipment.In order to organize the shipment, may we kindly ask your itinerary for the following days?We remain at your complete disposal for any further information.Kindest regards,
I didn’t love the lack of specificity regarding what “the shipment” included, but by this point I had called and explained my concern about the Mastercard gift cards and I had noted them in my email. I hadn’t shared the exact quantity (unsure it was wise to highlight that). The hotel hadn’t confirmed exactly what they found, but they knew what I expected, so I ran with the assumption that what they knew I expected matched what they were sending me.
You can make a good guess as to what’s coming next.
L’Host is an independent entity that contracts its lost and found services to hotels. I had a reservation for one night at the Hyatt Regency in Nice, France after the cruise, so I paid L’Host for the cost of shipping the stuff to Nice (the ~$30 shipping fee seemed totally fair to me given that this was 100% my mistake).
When I got to the Hyatt Regency Nice and got the package, I opened it up (and I video recorded the process). In the package was my medicine, some boarding passes we must have thrown in the safe, a small wallet of credit cards, and the Staples receipts for $3,200 in Mastercard gift cards. I’m sure you’ve noticed what was missing from that sentence in just the same way that I noticed it in real-time: my $3,200 in gift cards was not in the package.
My heart of course sunk for the second time over this. While I had prepared myself for the possibility of this being a very expensive mistake, the hope of skating out of it unscathed had me set up for disappointment anew.
I obviously had the immediate emotional reaction of shock / anger / assumption that the cards had been stolen. That quickly morphed into confusion: what kind of gift card thief would steal the gift cards but not take the gift card receipts? (The answer occurred to me later: one who doesn’t realize that Staples sells Mastercard gift cards). Still, the idea of the cards being stolen just didn’t make sense to me. At a hotel where regular rooms often cost $1500 to $1800 per night or more (and fancier rooms only get more expensive), I imagine a thief would be overwhelmed with temptation and not last long on staff. But I could totally see things getting disorganized and separated and a pile of Mastercard gift cards getting misplaced.
I wrote an email to the hotel letting them know that I had received the package with many of the contents of the safe, but not the gift cards. I reached out explaining that there had been sixteen $200 Mastercard gift cards in my safe on top of the receipts they sent me (which were reflected in the receipts) and I provided a picture of Mastercard gift cards in their packaging to show them what they should look like. I went on to say that I had a wonderful return stay and that I recognized that this was entirely my mistake from the start, but that I would never expect the cards to go missing given my experience at the hotel. I asked if it was possible that someone simply forgot to include the gift cards in the package sent to Nice?
I want to highlight my strategy there: It was an intentional decision to approach this as “Is it possible that someone simply forgot to include the gift cards in the package?” rather than approaching it like, “I am shocked that you have a thief on your staff who stole my gift cards!”. I knew that the second approach was a no-win situation: it leaves the hotel in the unenviable position of either having to admit that their employee messed up while having to defend the hotel’s honor by arguing to convince me that it was an honest mistake (which is just a path of embarrassment for them) or admitting that they employed a thief (which is just a path of embarrassment for them). Put between a rock and a hard place like that, I could see the hotel just saying “No, sorry, we didn’t find them” since there would be no “win” for them in admitting that they had the cards whether it was an honest mistake or not.
Instead, I wanted to give them an opportunity to frame it as an honest mistake whether or not it was an honest mistake. At the end of the day, I don’t care about the details. Whether the person who ships stuff has a messy desk and the cards slid under a pile of papers or they found the cards hidden away in someone’s employee locker, I just wanted the $3200 back. And I truly had been blown away by the interactions I’d had with employees at the property, so I really did think it seemed unlikely that someone intentionally stole the cards.
A couple of days later, I received a reply from the hotel:
Dear Mr. Reyes,We deeply apologize for the late reply.We kindly inform you that we found all the 16 gift cards and we started the shipment procedure.We remain at your complete disposal for any further assistance.Kind Regards,
That was all the response I needed. As noted above, I didn’t care about the story, I just cared about getting the cards back — it was a relief hearing that they had the gift cards. Of course my next fear was that I was going to get those cards back opened and drained to a $0 balance, but the good news is that I got all 16 cards back in the unopened packaging a few days later. I did have to pay to ship the cards to the US, which seemed a bit unfair since I had already paid for them to be shipped to Nice and it was really the hotel’s fault that the cards weren’t in the package I received in Nice, but another $40 or $50 or whatever it was to ship to the US paled in comparison to the prospect of losing $3200.
I went on to use the cards after getting them back and all is well that ends well: the 16,000 Ultimate Rewards points that I earned while buying those cards easily outweigh the costs I paid to ship them to both Nice and later to the United States (though perhaps it would be fair to say that they don’t necessarily outweigh the stress felt in between).
For me, the takeaways from the story are:
- Try not to bring gift cards on vacation (duh)
- The games we play have risks, not the least of which is human error (in this case my own). If I had lost thirty-two hundred bucks worth of gift cards, it would have wiped out the value of the rewards earned over a long period of time. You’ve gotta be careful.
- When you put stuff in the hotel room safe, remember to take it with you at checkout. I’ll probably set a phone reminder in the future.
- Keep the gift cards and the receipts separate. I don’t know whether I could have gotten the cards replaced, but having the receipts probably would have helped (and I could have been out of luck if they had been taken along with the gift cards)
- If you leave something behind, follow up with the hotel. Be persistent, but be nice.
- Leave the hotel an avenue to “win”. In this case, I essentially left $3200 in the safe and they returned it to me. No, it wasn’t as easy and quick as I’d have liked, but it’s hard to complain about that. They got to be a hero finding the cards and I got my money back. I’m not sure if the outcome would have been the same with a different approach.
- The Grand Hotel Victoria deserves some kudos here. I don’t think the outcome would have been the same at just any old hotel (heck, I once left a favorite hoodie hanging on the back of the desk chair at a hotel and called within an hour of checkout and they never found it!). For starters, it speaks volumes to me of the Grand Hotel Victoria that they sent me back everything I’d left in the safe. More importantly to me, they didn’t just brush me off when I followed up about the fact that I was missing more than what they had initially sent. They obviously listened and followed up to find the cards. Sure, it was a mistake that the gift cards weren’t sent to Nice, but we all make mistakes. How many times have you received an email response from a company that demonstrated that nobody was listening to you? Clearly, the Grand Hotel Victoria was listening, took my message seriously, and they were responsive enough to take action and find the cards.
I don’t plan to repeat this mistake, but I was pretty elated not to have lost the money. I am embarrassed to have made such a silly mistake, relieved to have escaped from it so cheaply, thankful for the lessons learned, and grateful to the Grand Hotel Victoria for continuing to live up to my high expectations even after checkout.
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Another risk here not mentioned above is the significant (imo) risk of taking $3200 in cash equivalents across international borders. Whether or not it’s morally right or “should” be the case (imo, no to both) it’s not unprecedented for law enforcement to think that just having those GCs in your possession is suspicious and seize them on that basis. (Just google “civil asset forfeiture” for a host of stories about how innocent people were victimized by law enforcement in this way.) No matter the rewards earned, imo it’s definitely not worth the risk of passing through multiple international borders with that much in cash equivalents – way too many opportunities for an overzealous customs agent to be a “hero.” (On that note, I’m curious – did you declare the GCs at customs?) All that said, very glad to hear that everything worked out in the end (less the cost of shipping)!
And that’s why you always leave something in the safe that will make you remember. Maybe your car keys or one of your shoes. Makes it tough to forget.
First off Nick, let me say we lived almost identical lives in Lake Como this year lol. We were in Lake Como the first week in April, and stayed at the Hilton Lake Como, but only for a couple of nights. We then took the train down to Milan where we stayed 3 nights at the Excelsior Hotel Gallia right across from Centrale station.
After checking in and going out to lunch, it wasn’t until we got back to our room that we realized that we had left our then 4-yr old’s priceless teddy bear in the bed back in Lake Como.
Horrified and trying to keep it a secret we called the hotel and explained what we had left behind along with a detailed description of the teddy lol. They assured us that the room hadn’t beed cleaned yet so they’ll send someone to take a look and call us back. To our relief they called and it was great news, Teddy was found! We thought this was going to be easy but it was the complete opposite.
They had us fill out and paid for next day delivery to our hotel in Milan. However, Teddy did not make it and he sat at the depot in Milan for about a week due to labor unrest in Milan.
The rep at Hilton Lake Como was helpful and assured us that they would forward Teddy at their cost to where ever we were going next. We didn’t want anymore mishaps so we requested for him to be sent to our home address in the US. They gladly reassured us that he’ll be sent there and we knew it was the right choice to evade anymore delays.
Ultimately we left for London, spent a week there for a family wedding before returning to the US, where Teddy finally arrived home in a package. Our son was so happy to be reunited with his stuffy, and finally we were able to get pass the constant whine of “where’s teddy?”
Teddy was a world traveler by then who went as far as Singapore and Thailand and made it back with us. Only to then get left behind in Italy lol.
Other safe mishaps did happen to us in Singapore where we left our passports in the safe at the Conrad Centennial. Luckily we only went to the Ritz Carlton around the corner and realized we had left all three passports behind when we tried to check into the Ritz and they asked us for our passports.
You could only imagine how horrified I was when I realized what I had done. I’m always so OCD about our passports being left behind that I always make sure that’s the first thing I pack whenever we travel. Not this time though.
It was only a short walk through the back of the Ritz and over to the Conrad where a staff member ran up to our room and retrieved our prized possessions. I was so relived that we were still so close by and not at the airport about to check in for Thailand which was our next stop a few days later.
My almost $500 dollar mistake was not reading the receipt at Mejier that said “Gift card funds did not load, stop at Customer Service.” I tried to use the card on taxes 7 months later and discovered my mistake. It took multiple trips to Meijer and multiple calls to the gift card company, but eventually, I did get the money refunded. Now I read the receipt and register the card right away.
Slow down and smell the roses!
I have a cautionary Staples GC story too – still pending but hopefully nearing resolution.
I purchased $1,600 (8x$200) Visa Gift Card from Staples. There was a glitch on the transaction after I swiped so the clerk said he would re-do the transaction. 2nd time round it went through and so all was well, or so it seemed.
Several weeks later I received the credit card statement, which I did not get to reviewing for a couple more weeks – when I noticed there were TWO $1,600 charges on the same day at the same Staples store.
I sent a DM to Chase disputing the charge, 10 days later I got a letter from Chase along with a response from Staples stating “customer left store with GCs” and a copy of the receipt. On the same letter Staples also provided a facsimile of the receipt showing 8 GCs purchased. Chase promptly reversed the credit they had initially provided.
Most times when I purchase Staples GCs I ask for a printed and emailed receipt (“belt and suspenders”) but this time around I could not find it. Luckily I did receive the emailed receipt and when I reviewed it I noticed the serial numbers were the same just in a slightly different order (the clerk must have rung them up in the jumbled order).
I sent another, long and detailed DM to Chase with a copy of the Staples responses and a PDF of the 2nd transaction.
This is where it gets annoying – Chase just pushed it back to Staples and came back with a word-for-word repetition of their previous response.
About a week ago, I wrote (this time using paper) to Chase explaining the issue, with a copies of both receipts numbered and highlighted. The letter was even longer than this posting. I also sent a CC to the CEO.
Early this week I got a call from an unknown 844 number and on a hunch answered it. It was from the Chase “Executive Office”. The caller asked for details and seemed to understand my explanation.
Not out of the woods yet, but hoping some sense will prevail at Chase.
It always bothers me when they have to rerun the cc saying it didn’t go through. Once at a doctor’s office my card was rerun twice and I ended up having a triple charge for an x-ray. Fortunately it was pretty obvious I didn’t have the same xray 3 times so they quickly reversed the charges. I can see dealing with your situation could be harder to prove it was just a mistake.
I was triple charged at a grocery store once many years ago when the cashier said it didn’t work and just kept swiping over and over. (This was before the chips in cards when everything was literally swiped). From then on, watching an employee swipe my card more than once makes me cringe. Glad that most places now let you insert or tap your card yourself.
So in the future, if there is a “glitch” and they say they need to re-run it, would you just politely decline?
“Sorry, I have had issues with duplicate charges before. Keep the cards.”
Clever.
But I have a work around.
Such as . . .
Thanks for sharing your story, I have been getting e mail receipts from staples to try to make sure that I keep the records of transactions and don’t have them i the same place.
I read this story and can relate. This bad experience is for those who are buying visa gift cards at staples or Office Max. I stopped buying gift cards after being a victim of gift card fraud. Be very careful. I bought $2000 worth of visa gift cards. I took it home and started to use the card a few days later. There was no money left on any of the Visa gift cards. Lucky for me, I kept my receipts. I called the phone numbner on the back of the card. I explain that there was no money. The Rep said there were indication that the cards were hacked after i made my purchase at the counter. told me not to worry, that they will send new cards out. I had to send proof and took 2 months back and forth to resolve. Had to show them the receipts from Office Max and prove the card that was use to purchase was mine. Will not be doing that again.
Last year on a Qatar flight to the Maldives, I left my jacket on that little pop out hook in the qsuite. In the pocket was $1200 in the currencies of the 5 countries we were traveling to. I was unpacking at The W when I realized I had forgotten my jacket. I contacted the concierge, who contacted the host at the W’s reception center, who contacted Qatar Air. Much to my surprise Qatar had my jacket. The W flew a rep to the Male airport where she retrieved the jacket and returned on the next flight. The money was still in the pocket. Best of all, the W did not charge me! I personally thanked and generously tipped each of the 3 employees involved with the retrieval. I also lost and found my cell phone at the Cairo airport on that trip, but thats a story for another day.
Wow!
WOW! What a save from a massive headache. Glad that was the end result versus what we ultimately think right off the bat if we ever leave something behind.
once in Paris I lost my wallet, drivers license and a few credit cards, possibly some cash but most of my documents were in my money belt. To this day I’m not sure whether I left it in the hotel safe (black wallet in black interior of a safe or whether I dropped it from my winter jacket or someone pick pocketed me.
I never bothered doing a police report since I didn’t think it would matter and once I got back to the states I quickly got a new license and canceled the cards. Nothing was ever charged. This was about 5-7 years ago.
Fortunately the only major mistake I’ve made.
This is a funny story! Combining the perils of MS with the sometimes chaos of travel. Thanks for sharing!
You were lucky that the GHV was so helpful.
I had the misfortune of leaving my U.S. Passport in the safe at the Hilton Garden Inn in Krakow. They were horrible. Unkind and unhelpful, acting like I was pulling a scam when I said I left a passport with my name in the safe of my room.
I had to change my itinerary and return from Prague to retrieve it.
Upon requesting the passport (with my photo in it) the receptionist demanded identification to prove that I was the passport holder. Fortunately the hotel manager happened to recall me (and I had an EU passport with me).
Ugh! That’s the whole reason they have photos in them!!!!
Honor among ‘thieves’…
Stephen Pepper probably ALWAYS has $3k+ in gift cards in his hotel safe – would love to hear how he keeps GC fraud at bay while always on the road!
for some reason I thought those prepaid debit cards can only be used in the US. while, the thief wouldn’t necessarily know that—if true, it would make them useless in the location you left them.
Indeed these are only usable in the US, which is the main reason I had hope of getting them back at the beginning — I figured that even if someone had taken them, they probably couldn’t use them (or it would take them a while to figure out that they’d need to, like, buy gift cards online at US websites or something). But the fact that they were all unopened means that nobody even tried.