Pretty rampant. Just found out today I was also targeted.

 

Hyatt would not reimburse me for my hacked card. Said I bought it from a third party and to go back to that company. I bought a bunch of these and now they have all been hacked. Found the card - I bought it from GiftCardZen. I have reported the issue - we will see if they will do anything about it.

I argued that they have a problem with their system. They still refused to honor it.

 

how quickly are these happening between purchase and drain? I am looking at buying some for a stay in 3 weeks but would don't trust having them wait even that long.

 

I purchased mine on 11/23/15. Checked it today and was told it was drained on 12/6. So pretty quickly.
I stupidly had just bought another one today with the Cardcash deal. Now I am booking a Hyatt for this weekend to at least get one stay out of it. (hopefully!)

 

I purchased 4 Hyatt gift cards from CardCash tonight. 3 x $100 and 1 x $50 to cover a stay two weeks from now. I called Hyatt to check the balances, each of the $100 cards had $129.xx on them according to the automated system. Does the system realize I'm in Canada and convert for currency??? The $50 gift card had $0 balance, so I've opened a claim with CardCash.

 

I took the 'gamble' of buying 2 physical $200 Hyatt cards last Wed. from Cardpool.com @$170 each (= 15% discount) to cover 2 stays in April. I received them via USPS today, then checked them. Each one is still loaded with $200.
Gee, I wish I could ask the hotels to grab the money off of them now just to be safe.

 

I purchased a couple from ABCGiftcards (same company as Cardcash) over the past few days. Given the level of issues, I didn't want to buy anything too far in advance.

After purchase, I immediately checked them. One $100 and one $50. The $50 GC was already at $0 balance. I immediately filed a claim and purchased a new $50 one right before I needed it last night. I had good luck with them honoring a drained card last year despite being over the 45 day guarantee. I have no doubt that they will honor this one, esp since it was drained before I even purchased it.

Now I'm just worried about some that I bought last summer on Ebay. They are still in the package but I plan to use them next month so I need them to be full value.

 

I'm curious though what Hyatt is doing about these drained cards, particularly the ones bought directly through them.

It's pretty easy to know when & where the card was used at. You can call customer service and get that information yourself. Then all they have to do is trace the card back to the hotel folio and determine who used them. Not sure what they could do at the point but they would have the name of the thief and could file charges or something.

 

I purchased (from Hyatt) an e-gift card in late November, then partially used it at two different hotels in late December. Because of this thread, I regularly checked the remaining balance, which was correct in mid-February but gone by late February. Hyatt issued a new card, which I partially used at the end of February. As of yesterday, the remaining balance is still intact.

Long ago, I took a course in stochastic processes. If I could remember even half of what I learned, I think it would be fun to analyze the times to drain.

On a tangentially related thought, has anyone had a gift card or e-gift card partially drained? Every report I can recall said the entire balance was taken.

 

For those who don't know already, the US/ Canadian toll-free phone # to check the value of Hyatt GCs is 1-866-784-0540. If calling from elsewhere, first dial the ++ code of the country from which you're calling, subject to the normal rate for ringing the USA.

 

I have been giving this a little thought myself.

Things may be as you suggest, and then the question would be, Why not go after the offenders?

Here are two other possibilities though:

1. The one time (so far!) that I had a card drained, my calls to Hyatt went around and around until a claim (made to me) that the card had been used I-don't-remember-where on such-and-such a date. I protested that I was not there then, and they didn't really care one way or the other because they said that I needed to contact Raise.com, from whom I bought the card. Raise was nothing but helpful (described above, I think around 6 December 2015). What they (Raise.com) said was that Hyatt was incorrectly draining and/or not loading cards. This didn't totally square with what Hyatt had told me or with the fact that I had checked the balance previously and found it intact. On the other hand, Raise.com was happy to reimburse while at the same time pointing the finger at Hyatt. In fact, now that I recall, Raise.com made it clear that this was a card that they had gotten directly from Hyatt, not a resale. Anyhow, the whole thing made me think that maybe Hyatt's crack IT system was having trouble filling and unfilling cards, that the early call-in chatter about the use elsewhere was a red herring (since why was no one interested in going after the wrongdoer? ... unless there really wasn't one).
2. Alternatively, maybe there are some bad guys (and/or gals) stealing the cards and selling them through re-sellers, so if they are being used at actual Hyatt properties, they are being used by real customers just like us who purchase these things on the re-sale market.

My hunch at this point is closer to the no-real-theft, Hyatt IT snafu hypothesis, because otherwise it seems that someone (Hyatt, the resellers?) is being way too cavalier about so much double payment (fraud then card replenishment).

 

two things give me pause. Hyatt pushing people back to the gift card sites, and the fact that they have not been able to put a security fix in place to stop the breaches in 5 months! That is not worth the hassle of saving $50 in my case if the cards so get drained.

 

Card cash is/was offering 17.5% off of the GCs but it's just not worth it to me take the risk here. I still can't believe that they haven't figured out really what's going on and stopped it yet.

Fdw

 

I had a card purchased from CardCash that was used. It was only partially drained. I tried calling and emailing Hyatt to let me transfer the funds to a new card but b/c I bought it 3rd party, they kept telling me that I had to go through them.

 

Purchased $250 on cardcash and $500 gift card spread this week. Cardcash balance still intact. Gift Card Spread one is already down by $160. Hyatt doesn't give the agents enough information to tell me which property the $160 was used at.