Scam Alert: Fraudulent Hotel Room Reservations Services from Exhibitor Housing Services (EHS-housing)

 

July 30^th 2015.

I am scientist (from the university of Lyon, France), and I will attend a conference in UK (in September), where I will give a talk. A few weeks ago, I received a phone call from EHS-housing (http://www.ehshousing.com/). The person told me that he was working for the conference organizers, and that he was in charge of making hotel reservations for the speakers. I trusted this person because he mentioned some very precise details about my participation to this conference, which were known only by the conference organizers and me.

He proposed me a room in a hotel, saying that "most speakers already had a reservation in this hotel", and that the hotel was located "5 minutes walk from the conference". I accepted his offer, and he sent me an email with a link to a web page to complete my reservation. I was immediately charged for the entire cost of my stay (5 nights).

 

In fact this was a scam:

-     This company has absolutely no link with the conference organizers

-     The hotel they booked for me is located very far from the conference (40' by bus, instead of 5' walk!!).

-     On the phone I was told that the price would be 99 GBP per night (i.e. about 700 euros), but they added to the invoice a "Surcharges" line of 175 euros (hence I paid 875 euros).

 

When I contacted EHS-housing to cancel my reservation and get reimbursed, they replied: "in case you wish to cancel this reservation the amount that you paid as a deposit will be applied as a penalty for cancellation".

I checked on the Internet (EHS-housing+scam) (https://www.google.com/search?q=ehs-housing+scam): there are plenty of scam reports for this company.

I do not know how they obtained all the details about my participation to this conference: I guess that they hacked the email of the conference organizers, or mine...

 

Laurent Duret