I’m trying to make a reservation at a hostel for my upcoming trip to New Zealand (To AI 08), and I just ran into something extremely silly.

For some reason, most of the hostels in Auckland request your credit card information _BEFORE_ you actually make a reservation. In fact, they will ask you for your C/C number before even telling you if there are any vacancies or not, which makes no sense at all! If you are not sure that I can actually stay there, why are you asking my Credit Card number?

The most unnerving thing is that they even claim that they won’t charge anything from the credit card. Well, if you’re not charging anything, why do you need my card number them?

This makes me extremely uneasy :-/ Or maybe it is because it’s late here.