Hotel in Paris someone recommended-Question?

[shauni27]

Someone on this board recommended the hotel du champ de mars in Paris, and I wanted to ask how you booked it...they are asking me to book the room by emailing my credit card information, there is no way to book the room through their website. This seems a little sketchy to me. Any suggestions?

www.hotelduchampdemars.com/

[raangoli]

Can you book the room over the phone?

[shauni27]

Yes, I just wanted to make sure it wasn't something super sketchy/scam.

[anna7602]

Jul 20, 2012 6:50:04 GMT -5 shauni27 said:

Yes, I just wanted to make sure it wasn't something super sketchy/scam.

I've been living and traveling in France for almost 7 months. It's pretty standard that I have to call and book directly or do things over email in lieu of a website reservation system. Not sketchy at all, but I do prefer to just call and make the booking instead of sending my cc info over email.

[GilliC]

I haven't booked with them specifically, but I've stayed at a lot of small independent 2-star hotels and more than one has asked me to email the credit card info. It's not uncommon for small operations to just not have the infrastructure in place to handle web bookings.

My problem is just with sending my credit card number in an email because it's not hard to intercept an email on a network (we had to do this as one of my projects in college), and if it's in plain text, anyone who did so would have your credit card. For this reason, I usually phone them to give the credit card number. (ETA - Another benefit of phoning them is that you can use a number that you know belongs to the hotel in case you're not sure if the email address is legit or not.)

If I'm staying some place where they don't speak English, and we've been emailing back and forth through Google Translate, I'll just send my credit card information in two emails (first x digits in one email, and then the rest with the expiration in another). It's not extremely safe, but that way if one message gets picked off the network, they would have to get both messages and reassemble them to have the full information. And then I keep a close eye on my bank statements for the next month looking for anything suspicious.

[shauni27]

Thank you all, this is very helpful. I will call them!

[shauni27]

ok they said they need the credit card emailed to them or faxed--they need it in writing. Does this make it any sketchier or do you still think it is ok?

[stephanie305]

Maybe they want it in writing because they won't actually run your card until your stay is over? I quickly ran the name of the hotel on TripAdvisor. People had positive things to say about the hotel, so I think you're okay.

[shauni27]

thanks, again! I will email them in two separate emails.

[chicago]

This has happened to me with a few hotels lately. I sent my card number in two separate emails.