As a general rule, I avoid anything that requires a 'deposit' of any kind like the plague.

Especially if it's a hotel.

There are two reasons for this. A small and unlikely and unrealistic one, and a bigger, more realistic one.

First, easiest thing in the world for a hotel to claim something was missing, or broken, and use that deposit, either in full or in part.

That actually never happened to me, and I think it's very unlikely, but it can happen. At least in theory.

The second reason is a lot more likely. And that has to do with the hotel/accommodation releasing the deposit, say, today, and my bank taking its sweet time to actually follow through.

Now this, this happened to me more than once.

I've just booked a hotel for my stay in a city in the U.S. for 10 days.

There was no mention at all of the deposit when I booked (and prepaid by the way), otherwise I wouldn't have booked it.

But I digress.

When I did the virtual check-in thing (I hate those, too, by the way), I was given two options.

This hotel charges a flat fee of $300 for any stay longer than a day.

Fully refundable of course.

OR.

You can pay $29, also a flat fee, but it's not a deposit. It's an extra charge to avoid the deposit.

That's a very good idea on the part of the hotel.

I'm assuming, statistically, they don't really need to tap into the deposit that frequently, otherwise they wouldn't do it.

But it's an interesting strategy.

And I fell for it.

I don't want to spend at least 10 days plus who knows how long with an extra $300 charged on my card.

Am I fool? Or would you have done the same?