A few VCF Midwest 21 exhibitors have let us know that they received phone calls and emails from people claiming to represent VCF Midwest or the Schaumburg Convention Center, using names like "The Convention Network" or "Cloud Conventioneers", offering discounted rooms for VCFMW and being generally nosy about what rooms the exhibitor had booked, what they're paying for them, etc. Each email has been signed "Group Reservation Specialist - The 21st Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 2026".

These calls and emails are SCAMS. No one from VCF Midwest, Chicago Classic Computing or the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center Hotel will call you about changing rooms or "special deals." Do not give any of these callers any information about your reservation or about yourselves!

In the cases reported thus far, the recipients' phone numbers and email addresses were listed publicly elsewhere and likely cross-referenced by the scammers; most contacts used contact information that we did not collect. The scammers are researching names from our confirmed exhibitor list and using the World Wide Web to match them to public contact data. We have no reason to believe that any personal information has leaked from our records.

If you need to confirm that your reservation at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center Hotel is safe, you can visit [the Marriott site] and enter your booking confirmation number, or call the hotel's booking line at 847 303-4100.

It's a wild Internet out there. Be safe!

For further reading:
AIFD Hotel Scam Alert
Audiology.org Hotel Scams