You just arrived in town after a hellish 10-hour battle with the U.S. airlines. You're worn out, you're hungry, and all you want is an easy bite to eat before bed. Good fortune! There's a flyer for pizza delivery under the door of your hotel room! You call the number and give them your credit card information.
Mistake. You've just given a fraudster your credit card number. They never show up. Or they do show up 90 minutes or two hours later, with no apology, bearing a cold, bland, inedible pizza, for which they charged an arm and a leg.
Orlando police have been grappling with this scenario for years, to no avail. Fly-by-night pizza restaurants, many of which have no permanent address, continue to sneak onto resort properties, slipping menus under the doors of thousands of rooms. Before guests realize the pizzerias are not sanctioned by the hotel—indeed, their workers trespassed to leave their flyers there—they have given up their credit card details and gotten little or nothing for their it. Worse, their payment information could be stolen.
On a recent night in Orlando, I received just such a flyer under my door at the Wyndham Orlando on International Drive. The hotel doesn't want these there and because it offers its own room service, it does not sanction the advertising, but with so many far-flung resort buildings to police, staff cannot stay on top of trespassers, and flyers wind up under doors.
The pizzeria that advertised its services at the Wyndham, "La Casa Nostra," has racked up a dismal collection of nasty online reviews from presumed past customers that includes reports that they made customers meet them across the street for deliver as well as blistering commentary such as "pepperoni pizza contained what must have been the lowest amount possible, ensuring that each piece had no more than 1.25 pepperoni slices. Mozzarella sticks tasted freezer-not-so-fresh either" and "even if I were drunk and starving I wouldn't eat here ever again."
Orlando police have a long history of arresting the people who plant these flyers for trespassing on hotel property.
If you really want to order pizza while you're at a hotel, contact the front desk for a list of their preferred restaurants. It should go without saying that giving your credit card number to a person at a phone number on an unsolicited flyer isn't the best way to use your private information—but somehow when people are on vacation, they check their brains along with their luggage.
This pizzeria trespassed on hotel property to deliver this ad—and most of its online reviews are atrocious.
