I arrived @ the apartment on Monday afternoon after a long day travelling from Durban. I was met by a gentleman at the premises who required some details to fill in on an arrival form, which i assumed is just address, tel and so on.
What amazed me, is that he required my credit card details, when i say credit card details, i mean the full number as it appears on the card, the expiry date, name on card, as well as the CCV Number at the back of the card. Now all this is written down in a book. Who as access to this book, i cannot tell.
So i refused to give out this information and one does not have to be a rocket scientist to know that credit card fraud is on a massive increase globally. He insisted and that i provided this information, which i refused. I called the office of Total Stay in Cape Town, and they also insisted that this is procedure and they will require credit card details to be written in their arrival form. I was adamant that this was crazy, so the lady asked for a R5000 cash deposit.
Thereafter, i decided to call Hotels.com and was greeted by an extremely polite gentleman, who fully agreed that this was not acceptable. He asked me to stay on the line while he tries to resolve the situation which he did after about five minutes. He asked me not to provide my credit card details.
This took up abt an hour of my time, which is totally unacceptable.
However, i must conclude by saying that the apartment was great and I had a good stay.