Also, the hotel reservations in question were for a Flock conference happening today through the 20th in Atlanta (which is where Flock's headquarters are). According to this article (which I also posted in its own thread), there will be a rally against Flock tomorrow evening downtown.
I'm not especially surprised that Jordan got extra 'fuck you' attention from Flock, considering he's the one that pointed out in a youtube video that Flock cameras are stupidly insecure.
Flock is a piece of shit, and they definitely overstepped at best, but this wasn’t impersonation. Impersonation is saying “hello I am grue I would like to cancel my reservation” while they said “hello I am Bobby with Flock and I’d like to cancel the reservation of grue.”
Should the hotel have gone through with the cancelation? No. But this doesn’t even constitute fraud.
It isn’t though. Fraud requires you (paraphrased) lie in order to deprive someone of money, property or rights. That isn't happening here. Journalist is getting a refund, there was no property loss, and staying at a hotel isn’t a right.
Again, they are pieces of shit, but the closest this could get to being illegal is harassment. And honestly if this is a one time thing I doubt it would even fall into that.
You’ve got more chance of going after the hotel for breach of contract but I honestly doubt this type of thing isn’t covered in their legalese.
The notion of the organizer of a conference with a big block of rooms accidentally or on-purpose social-engineering a hotel clerk to cancel an unrelated person's room doesn't surprise me at all.
It reads to me like the Flock CEO's PR lady called the hotel, lied and said "hello I'm Benn Jordan's assistant, I need to cancel his reservation on $DATE, thank you," and the hotel employee said "say less fam."
Anyone can lie, all you need is a scant amount of details and you could have pretended to be his assistant, they knew details about it because A) they scheduled the conference, they can assume Benn may show up, and worst case they get "I'm sorry that reservation isn't in our system" if it doesn't exist, "oh sorry my mistake" and hang up, B) It also reads to me like Benn emailed Flock and said "Just a heads up I heard about your conference and I'll be there, so they knew for sure.
Now, he should book it under an actual assistant's name that is kept secret for just this reason, but he shouldn't have to.
Man, it's early, go back and reread. The journalist got their own room, Flock called the event and claimed that the room was a part of their block and canceled the reservation. The hotel agreed and even held their refund since it now appeared that that room was originally set aside for Flock. Journalist reaches out, explains the situation, and the hotel finally understands. They then apologize about the confusion and actually process the guy's refund.
And what part of that is impersonating? He signed up for a block reserved for someone else. Flock cancelled it. The hotel finished processing the refund request because they shouldn't have allowed him the room in the first place.
Oh! I don't care about the impersonation claim. They did cancel his room that wasn't under their block by claiming that it was (that's why they withheld the refund). But yeah, don't think it was impersonation, just corpo "we've got all the cards" bullshit.
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