That is neither standard nor normal.
Hotels always ask to physically take my credit card, random maintenance guys ask to access my apartment without a heads-up from the landlord. It's seen as normal, but in my book it's a bit careless.
I agree that Australia could improve a lot but hotels will take a credit card scan at every country I've been to. In many other countries they also take your passport away and you wait a while to get it back.
> .. Australia could improve a lot but hotels will take a credit card scan
I've not had this done to me in Australia since late 90s early 00s. These days all it takes is a simple tap (or chip swipe) to put a temporary Hold[0] that's released on check-out (or next day).
Of course hotels take your CC, how else are they supposed to charge it? And maintenance men accessing your home without a heads-up is very much illegal and not commonplace.
They're not supposed to write the details down, which is what this person was referring to.
In Asia, they quite often take your CC details and enter it into a text field in their own system in case they need to process it later, including the CVV. Sometimes they're writing it down on paper.
They're not entering it into a PCI compliant system where the digits are masked.
Perhaps. From a distance (physical, social, or both) local norms of behavior are often non-standard and abnormal.
It's certainly not the norm in Australia, nor have I come across that in probably the last 15 or so years. Running your credit card through the terminal to place a hold on funds is done pretty much everywhere. I'm sure there's a few crusty old operators out there doing things the old way.
This isn't normal in Australia or New Zealand, at a national or a local scale. But you can't draw conclusions at a national scale from a local interaction, either way.