Have you ever been scammed abroad?

[Cantthinkofonenow]

Last weekend I went to Bucharest, Romania from Friday-Sunday with my mum. It’s was a late 30th birthday present from my mum and we went to visit the Therme spa.
On the way there we got a taxi which cost 40 Lei, on returning we ordered a taxi from the spa, this time we were going to go to old town and we enquired how much it would cost us and he relied “not much” we weren’t even half way there when my mum noticed on the meter it was coming up to 400 Lei, we hadn’t even spent this much after being in the spa for 12 hours it was absolutely shocking how much he was charging us. We said we didn’t have that much on us as we wasn’t expecting it to be that expensive and he dropped us at an ATM and said we needed to withdraw it or he was going to leave us stranded and our phones had no signal at all. My mum panicked and withdrew the money from her credit card so of course she’s going to get faced with more charges. We gave him 500 Lei and that’s the equivalent of £95 in English money. I am so gutted that we were ripped off like that, he seemed so nice but he was obviously a scumbag. It ruined the last day of our holiday.
We were advised to report him to the police and I took a picture of his reg number but the hotel wouldn’t help us any further. Everyone we told in Romania said we were absolutely ripped off, it should have cost not more than 40 Lei
have you been scammed abroad?

Why didn’t you just hand over less?

i thought the meters operated according to the local governments pricing structure?

My mum panicked and withdrew the money from her credit card so of course she’s going to get faced with more charges.

well, that was daft!

yeah we were scared of being lost and stranded at midnight

Yes, twice. Once in Prague where a group of aggressive men blocked the door when we tried to leave a pub and the landlord imposed a 'tourist fee' of 100 euros each and once in Melbourne when a hostel manager stole our backpacks and demanded $200 for 'storing them' for us. Both times I said I said to go to a cashpoint to get money then walked into a large hotel lobby in one case and a bank in another and started making a big "This man is robbing us" kerfuffle where I knew there would be CCTV. Both times the men disappeared and then I contacted the Police to recover the backpacks. It could have gone wrong, I know, but I didn't really think about that until afterwards.

It’s easy to say hand over less in a foreign country at midnight. That’s awful but unlikely you will get any money back as you ‘handed’ the money over.

Id chalk it up to experience but I’m hit surprised it’s left a bitter taste in your mouth.

Bloody Scumbag!

We had an issue like this in Nepal. DH flatly refused to pay and gave the driver what we'd paid on the outbound trip. Some people are dickheads.

scammed a couple of times in taxis in Saigon and Bangkok. Usually only by a few pounds but it’s always annoyed me because I always think I could spot a scammer a mile off.
Don’t let it taint your trip too much. It could have happened anywhere and it happens to everyone.

victim blaming is unhelpful. Most women I know wouldn't try and antagonise someone who is clearly trying to scam them in a foreign country with no phone signal and no one to help them.

it was a question? 😕

I offered him all the money I had but he said he would leave us stranded if we didn’t withdraw it and my mum panicked. I’m going to Spain on Monday but luckily transfers are included.

It’s fairly common - you’re in a place you don’t know, without the back up you’d have at home, potentially not knowing the language. It all makes you more vulnerable so more likely to be targeted, and more likely to go along with it to get out of the situation.

When you read up on holiday destinations you often get warned of the current popular scams.

Chalk it up to experience, do your best to wipe that off your memory of the rest of the trip!

at our Riad in Morocco a fair bit, mainly stuff like duplicate orders on the final tab, or claiming we’d not paid for things when I knew we’d given them cash at the time. We’d pre paid a taxi but he still demanded the payment again. To be fair that all got smoothed over very quickly when I showed them my own records I’d been keeping every time we ordered a coke or a sandwich or whatever. It wasn’t loads but not money we had spare so I wasn’t willing to wave it away. We’d already tipped them.

In Beijing we got roped into a ‘tea house scam’ with some young people posing as students, they want to practice their English over a cup of traditional tea bla bla. Their treat. I was highly suspicious from the start but my friend is more naive. It was all very nice, we were shown to an ornate private room, and their English was very good, (too good to heed much practice with random tourists, anyway) and they said let’s order this special tea from the menu, and to be fair it was beautiful, all flowering in a golden tea pot.

The bill came and suddenly one of the students put his head in his hands and says ‘oh my god, I’m so sorry, I have accidentally ordered the rarest tea on the menu, it’s made from ancient tea leaves from the Ming Dynasty. The bill is x amount and please I beg you you must help me pay! If we don’t pay I might go to prison!’ Honestly it was Oscar worthy. He wanted £300 off us and asked what cards we had between us and a card machine was brought.

I argued the toss and gave him the equivalent of £20 which was generous but it had been a nice experience up to that point 🤣 grabbed my friend and marched out. All the way back to the hostel my friend was wringing her hands worrying this poor student would go to a squalid communist prison because of us 🤦🏻‍♀️😅

We got scammed from airport into Dubai - to be fair it didn't seem mental money but when we realised on other journeys the usual taxi costs , having gone 3 times the distance for half the money- we realised we were scammed

its made me feel like such an idiot. Feel like it wouldn’t have happened if my partner was with me

A friend of my son had to live in Milan for almost 3 months as part of his univ course. He found an apartment before he went and his mum paid the whole amount before he got there. Of course when he arrived the apartment didn't exist.
I did sympathise but also wondered how anyone could be so stupid and gullible.

only twice I’m aware of:

first, someone managed to convince me and my friend that there wasn’t a train to the destination we wanted, so we had to book his bus instead.

There absolutely were regular trains which were quicker and (a little) cheaper. Not the end of the world but I feel daft now. This was pre smart phone era so we had no way to check.

second, we went to this highly recommended (by lonely planet) “restaurant” which was very authentic, local cooking in someone’s home, no menu just special of the day, etc etc. Well it was rubbish and cost 3x the cost of meals in actual restaurants. Of course no menu=charge what you like…

I expect I’ve overpaid for taxis a few times but nothing I’ve noticed as being crazy. And never anything scary. Sorry this happened OP

Loads of people tried this in Egypt. We ended up just handing them what we thought was reasonable, having a little argument then them moving on to the next person.

Someone tried to con us in a petrol station in Mexico but my DH was having done of it. They tried to give us the wrong change and lied about the notes we gave them.

A woman tried to con us over car rental in Bulgaria as she said we hadn't returned the car full of petrol. We knew we had a receipt for it and refused to pay.

I can imagine it’s bad there 😬

We were on a cruise in the summer and in most ports a few people reported that evening on the Facebook group being ripped off by taxi’s in a similar way, it’s very common. This was in popular tourist towns like Palma Majorca, Malaga etc.

We tried to use Uber or bolt where ever possible as at your fair is that agreed up front.

Yes, Marrakesh. The good old 'tannery' scam as I later found out on google. Someone points out 'hey if you want to see where all the beautiful leather bags are made just go that way (we were walking that way anyway) my friend happens to be going that way so he will just point it out'. Lo and behold we are ushered in to this tannery and given a bunch of mint to cover our noses - the stench was awful. All you could see was a load of cow skin in the ground covered in chemicals. Honestly, I couldn't breathe and the mint did nothing. Then they say hey check out this leather bag shop and usher us in, we were the only two in there and the door was closed behind us so we felt obliged to buy something (we just got something tiny and pretended not to have more money so they let us out) then as we leave the shop, two men on a motorbike corner us in and say now we have to pay for the tour!!!! Honestly, didn't leave the hotel after that!