jphripjah

I've traveled a fair amount. I've checked in to hundreds of hotels. Something just happened that I don't think has happened before, and I wanted your feedback.

I'm checking into a mid range hotel in Bangkok in the heart of the, um, tourist district. A place very used to foreign guests, I assume.

I hand her my passport, and she hands me the registration form. She asks me to fill in my email address and credit card number. There's a line there near the bottom on the form to write down credit card number and expiration date.

I balked at that. I offered to hand her the card and have her charge it or pre-authorize it or whatever. She asked me to write it down on the form. I said I didn't want to do that, because then anyone who got the form would have my credit card number. She said "OK never mind" but it was sort of a dismissive "never mind," like she thought I was being a ninny.

I have written my credit card number down on paper forms before and faxed the forms to merchants, or scanned and emailed them the forms, etc. But I don't recall ever being asked to write down the card number when standing in front of a merchant who has, you know, a credit card machine.

As a side note, I recall years ago in Cambodia pulling a blank laundry sheet from my wardrobe and seeing that, in an effort to save paper, they were re-using old guest folio sheets. So one side of the paper had the laundry prices and check boxes, the other side of the paper had the name address, room rate, credit card number with expiration date and security code of a guest who had booked online and stayed there last week.

I guess when I book online with a hotel and send them my credit card info, they can presumably just print that right out, but I just didn't want to write the number down on the form. Was I wrong or is the hotel wrong for expecting guests to do this?