We received a note from Susie Lee who reports that some of the credit cards on record at Travel Planners may have been compromised — she and no less than THREE of her friends have found fraudulent charges on their cards that were used to book hotel rooms with Travel Planners, including airline ticket purchases.

At the very least, checking your credit card statement right now isn’t a bad idea.

UPDATE: We originally posted this so as to alert as many people as possible, but please be advised that Travel Planners has investigated and found there was no breach. Their statement reads:

Obviously we were very alarmed at the implication that security at Travel Planners had been compromised. As you can imagine, we take credit card security and the confidence people place in our services very seriously. After a review of security we’ve determined that there has been no breech on any of the systems maintained by Travel Planners. This includes not only systems which deal with Comic-Con but on all systems throughout.

Guests of Comic-Con who may have questions regarding this matter please contact [email protected] and write Comic-Con in the subject line.

We would urge anyone who thinks they have been victims of fraud to contact Travel Planners directly.

1 COMMENT

  1. Last year a friend made a reservation with Travel Planners, then later I switched the reservation to my name and my credit card, but I forgot to change his address on the reservation.

    About 6 months later, I got a call from the credit card fraud department telling me about bogus charges and merchandise ordered – which showed up at my friend’s house, with my name on it. Travel Planners is the only place that had that particular combination of my name and credit card and my friend’s address.

  2. Holy crap. My card number got stolen a few months ago… It didn’t occur to me that it may have been related to Travel Planners. Wow. Thankfully I always match my receipts to my bill, so I caught it. Travel Planners really needs to be replaced, though.

  3. I got a call from my bank on Monday saying I had charges from a hotel in Dubai among others. I had no idea how or why that happened at the time, but now it makes sense.

  4. I got a call on Monday from my bank. Someone tried to purchase airline tickets from Barcelona, Spain with my credit card. The bank canceled the card immediately. My card’s fairly new… only about 5 months old, and I used it to guarantee my hotel reservation with Travel Planners.

  5. I also had some fraud on my card (with Chase, who have been a complete nightmare since they bought Washington Mutual, my previous bank). Small charges from all over the world, in amounts like $11.00 and $8.00. Wonder if that was the Travel Planners mess? I’ve never had it happen before.

  6. This “statement” from the guys who can’t even keep their servers running when reservations spike? Ask me why I don’t share their confidence.

  7. Speaking as somebody with a background in Risk Management and fraud investigation in the credit card industry, a server being compromised is not the only way for cardholder information to be compromised. I certainly have no knowledge specific to the fraud being referenced here or how it may or may not relate to Travel Planners, but internal and external investigations that I have personally been involved in conducting have found employees to be the problem, or a breach at the POS provider’s level, or something like that. Hopefully Travel Planners investigation has not stopped at examining the server.

  8. My card was compromised a month or so ago. My credit card issuer caught it before the charge even showed up online. My suspicions are now aroused.

    I have a new card, but now I’m nervous about using Travel Planners again.

  9. I would be interested to see how the cards were compromised. It seems like they are mostly hotel charges around the globe. Are these all one hotel chain? Is it possible the problem is a hotel related one?

  10. @Secret Identity – the fraud on my card was an airline ticket purchase. I called the hotel that I had made the TP reservation with this past Tuesday, and TP hadn’t sent my reservation to them yet. My card was new with a low limit, so I haven’t used it at many places other than with Travel Planners.

    I’ve notified my credit card company’s fraud department of this matter, and will let them investigate.

  11. Similar story here – I’m a guest at a con at UCLA right now, and had to come sans my business visa because someone tried to buy airline tickets with it a few days ago.

    Cancelled the card, and have no clue if it’s related at all. But that’s not a great pattern shaping up here.

  12. With at least 10 people just posting here today (including the ones in the original article) saying that the credit cards they used at TP were later compromised, I find it really hard to believe that it’s a coincidence.

    And with my incident last year, with a unique name/card/address combo that was ONLY used with TP, really makes it look like something fishy is going on. Who knows how many, if any, other cards were compromised last year?

  13. I strongly urge everyone who has had their credit card number stolen to notify their credit card issuers of this situation, as well as filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. If Travel Planners is faultless, then nothing will happen, but if there is a possibility of a breach in their security, then hopefully we can save thousands of other people from having to go through the inconvenience of being a victim of credit card fraud and having to replace their credit cards.

    FTC Complaint form: https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

  14. Just got word in that several of the Japanese creators coming into San Diego who booked hotel rooms through Travel Planners have just discovered they’ve become victims of credit card fraud.