Owner wants visitors to put down a credit card before entry

Hey everyone. Thank you so much for your help. The owner of my company has updated our visitor policy to state that "A valid credit card may be requested prior to entering the facility to protect inventory"

Is this totally crazy? Can we even ask people to do that? Have you ever heard of anyone doing this? I have not ever heard of anyone doing this. 

Some of the background is he was trying to keep an appraiser out of the facility (nasty divorce), and he threatened the appraiser that he would charge him a butt-ton of money if he touched anything. He lied and said it was part of our visitor policy (it wasn't) and then he changed the visitor policy. 

I feel very uncomfortable about asking an auditor or government official for a credit card before entering the facility.

Any ideas on what I should do? Should I just let it ride? Delete it from the policy? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Cheers

At first blush that sounds ethically dubious.  I can easily imagine many people seeing it as being presumptive and an unnecessary invasion of privacy.  Do you want visitors showing up and immediately feeling defensive?  Personally I'd rather start the day with a happy auditor. 

It's also possible that a visitor to your facility might be one of the ~8% of the US population that is unbanked.  What provisions would be in place for visitors which do not have credit cards?

My jaw just hit the floor reading your post, sounds like it's time to get out to me. Having such a policy just gives the wrong message. If i was a potential customer i'd walk away. I suppose you could have a statement saying 'the establishment reserves the right to ask for a credit card.........' so it didnt effect everyone but legally im not sure where you stand. i would run it past legal and by the sounds of it the owner is spending lots of time with lawyers anyway so they may do a deal :roflmao: