How to Avoid getting ripped off while traveling

The taxi driver roared out of the taxi line at high speed, looked over at the “Recommended Taxi Fares” flyer the taxi line manager had given me, ripped it out of my hand and crumpled it before throwing it out of his window. Something told me this wasn’t going to be a good ride to the cruise port. I looked for the meter. It was covered by a plastic flap. I asked the driver (in Chinese) why he wasn’t using the meter. He ignored me. Judging by the look on his face his family had left him that morning and emptied his bank account. I couldn’t blame them, I thought to myself.

When he dropped us off at the Chongqing river cruise terminal I paid the inflated price he demanded but before I could raise my phone to take a picture of his license plate he popped his trunk up so I couldn’t see his plate and roared off, probably to go finish torturing some animals somewhere.

Scams happen to everyone on the road – including me. Some, you just can’t beat – or they aren’t worth beating. The example above is very rare, probably among the top three worst taxi drivers I’ve come across in four decades of travel. Most scams are minor irritants that cost the victim a few dollars at most. Still, you want to try to avoid them so here are some tips I’d like to share with you.

Taxi Scams

Taxis are the number one way to get ripped off. Every country and city has their own unique regulations and protections – or lack thereof so read up on it before you arrive. Usually, the worst that can happen is losing a few bucks but in very rare situations passengers can be hurt. Focus on using a known entity – either one that’s been arranged by a hotel or through a respected app. If that is not possible, know which local taxi companies have the best reputation and stick with them. But here are some general tips:

• Upon arrival at an airport or train station see if there is a tourist information center or an airport kiosk at the taxi line. Ask what the best way to get to your destination is and how much it should cost. Don’t ever take an unofficial taxi.
• Before the taxi driver takes off check to see if there is a meter and that he/she uses it. Even then, some meters are rigged. If you asked someone how much it should cost before you got into the taxi then you will know if the meter was rigged and you can protest with some authority.
• Without making it obvious, take a photo of the taxi driver’s credentials on the window just in case you need it later. When you get out of the taxi take a photo of the car license plate. This can be very handy if you later find that you left something in the taxi.
• If you feel you have been ripped off and your protests to the driver went unheeded, report the incident immediately to a tourist information center. Some popular tourist cities have special tourist police..
• Where available, use a taxi or car-hire app to book your ride. Many countries have these available in English. You’re familiar with Uber and Lyft? These familiar companies are in some markets overseas but where they aren’t, there are often local alternatives; Yandex in the Russian orbit, Didi in China, etc. If possible, download the app before you arrive. Using these apps are generally safer than hailing a ride on the street because there is transparency and a record of who picked you up.
• If you are staying in a hotel, book your ride through the front desk.
• Watch your pockets and hand-carried items. Common in Shanghai, and probably some other places, taxi drivers fix their back seats so they slope significantly backwards toward a 1-2 inch gap between the backrest and the seat bottom where they disappear. Keys, coins and other items slide out of your pockets into the gaps like flies being eaten by a Venus Fly Trap.

No matter how careful you are you may still get ripped off. After reporting it, take a deep breath and move past it.

Street Touts

One of the best protections against touts is becoming comfortable with saying “no” or politely waving people off.

The first time a kindly-looking Buddhist “monk” walked up to me on the street in Taiwan and handed me a golden image of the Buddha I accepted it and thanked him. When he wanted money in return, I handed it back and said “thank you” and walked on. Later, I learned that this was a common scam. Real monks don’t do that.

Here are some other common street tout scams to be aware of:

• Friendly-seeming strangers will sometimes walk up to you and try to hand you something; a “free” rose, bracelet, golden Buddha, etc. Don’t take it. After giving the object to you and chatting a moment they will indicate that they would like a “donation” in return. If you don’t give them money they will snatch the object back. These people prey on your embarrassment and unwillingness to disappoint others. The worst of all scammers will approach families dressed up like clowns and hand their children balloons or toys and then ask the parents to pay for it.
• The cable car is closed. As you approach a popular tourist attraction a friendly guy will approach you to let you know that “sadly”, the attraction is closed for various reasons but “hey, I’ve got a car (or tuktuk) and can take you to the top, or to some other attraction – for a fee. Sometimes the attraction is closed, and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes the tour you paid for turns into a “tour” of gem or souvenir shops where you are pressured to buy something and the driver gets a kickback.
• One of the worst scams are the people who use injured or emaciated babies as props to beg for money. From New York City to New Delhi organized gangs deploy women with often sedated and emaciated babies to use to beg for money in tourist areas. Unfortunately, the money doesn’t go to the babies or the “mothers” – it goes to criminals. The same often happens with child beggars: women-on-the-road.com/street-beggars.html
• “I’ll take your photo offer”. Don’t accept the offer from anyone that looks like they can outrun you or if you are in a crowd they could disappear into – with your camera.
• Don’t buy something from a company that promises an easy refund if you aren’t satisfied. The perps are usually men in suits and women in pantsuits in board rooms. Sorry, just making a point – that’s a scam we are all familiar with on a daily basis – even when we aren’t traveling.

This may seem like a scary, exhaustive list but these instances are rare or uncommon. A few easy precautions will deter most touts. Don’t let it deter you from travel. As I point out in the last bullet point, you can get scammed by unscrupulous people while you sit at home at your computer.

Bribery

People in positions of power sometimes misuse their official capacity to demand bribes. Should you pay?

Even though I was riding in a Nigerian Government-owned van we were pulled over by police as soon as we exited the grounds of the Lagos Continental Hotel onto Kofo Abayomi Street. A brief exchange between the Ministry driver and the policeman before the driver slipped the policeman some paper bills and we were on our way.

As the line I was in approached the customs and immigration desk at Hanoi Airport I noticed that some of the Vietnamese people in front of me were placing colorful paper bills in their passports just before they handed them over to the official behind the desk. When the passport was handed back to the traveler the money was gone.

I’ve never paid a bribe to an official in my traveling life but that’s probably because I’ve been lucky that I haven’t been asked. Or maybe it’s because my fellow countrymen and women that went before me may have resisted or been too much trouble? In any case, I think Americans (and probably others) are rarely asked for bribes. For one thing, the U.S. actually has a law against paying bribes to foreign officials – though it’s meant for businesses rather than travelers. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) has probably never been used to punish travelers (how would they know?) but it has been used to punish American businesspeople that bribed foreign officials to win contracts. Some other countries have similar laws. But don’t try to explain the intricacies of the FCPA to a policeman on the streets of Lagos.

The Evil-Twin WiFi Hub

You may be in an airport and need to log on to your e-mail or get connected online so you check to see if there are any free WiFi hotspots available. You see one called “Free Airport WiFi” so you log on. Unfortunately, the free hotspot may have been set up by hackers pretending to be a legitimate free WiFi hub. They’re there to steal your data using what’s known as a “honeypot” or “evil twin”. They can steal your usernames, passwords and your browsing history. They can also download your files. How do you avoid this?

• Assume all public network are non-secure. Don’t connect to free or open WiFi networks. This is the only surefire way to avoid this scam.
• Use your own phone hotspot as your WiFi hub. Or a separate device.
• If your only choice is a public network have a software firewall enabled on your computer or mobil device. Disable file-sharing. Turn off auto-join networks.
• If you are in, say, Starbucks, go ask the workers if “Starbuck Free WiFi” really belongs to the coffee shop you are in.
• If you do connect to a public WiFi, even a secured one, use a Virtual Private Network or VPN service.

The “Shanghai Tea Ceremony”

You’re walking down Nanjing Road, the touristy pedestrian walkway in downtown Shanghai gawking at the neon-lit crowds when an attractive young lady approaches you and starts chatting to “practice her English”. She looks like an innocent school girl. After a few minutes she wants to invite you to tea or even to a “tea ceremony” in a nearby tea shop. Anxious to make a local friend you follow her up some stairs to a maze of corridors and doors in a nondescript building. She shows you into a room that looks like a tea shop but the only other customers are a couple at a table in the corner. You sit down at a low table with your new friend.

A friendly waitress serves you tea and you chat for a while with your friend. Then she turns to the waitress and orders samplers of different teas for you. You drink several different samples before you start feeling tipsy. You’ve been drugged. Your friend excuses herself just in time for the bill. Wow, there’s a lot of numbers on this bill! You don’t have enough cash. Don’t worry, there’s an ATM right outside the door in the hall. The owner of the tea shop, a rough-looking man, escorts you to the ATM and takes all those big red bills that came out. You wander out onto Nanjing Road and join the flow of the crowd as you realize you’ve been scammed out of almost $200.

When I was a diplomat working in Shanghai and taking turns with my colleagues as “duty officer” – taking calls 24-7 from Americans in trouble – this was one of the most common calls I would get in the evenings. It was almost always a young backpacker or a middle-aged businessman on his first trip to China. What could I do? Not much. We reported each incident to the police but they did nothing. This is a very lucrative big business in Shanghai alone. Probably also lucrative for the police. They knew exactly where and who was ripping off trusting tourists but would do nothing to stop it.

This same ruse goes on in many countries with variations. Unfortunately, the best way to avoid it is to never have time for tea with strangers in tourist zones.

The Goo on the Shoe. The Blob on the Blouse.

In both Mexico and China I’ve had “shoe-shine people” sneak up on me from behind and suddenly wipe white goo on my shoe and then “offer” to clean it off for a fee. In the Mexico City case it ruined my shoe. Whatever you do, don’t give in to these people. A variation on this that I’ve heard about is squirting a condiment on someone’s shirt/blouse and offering to clean it off while an accomplice tries to pick your pocket.

If this happens just wave them away and keep on walking and head for a restroom to clean it off. If you make a scene or get distracted, that’s when you get pickpocketed.

The Bogus Booking Website

Hackers set up fake travel booking websites that look like the real company – but aren’t, and lure in unsuspecting travelers trying to book a hotel room or flight. They use the real company’s logo and style to impersonate the real website. If you book a hotel room or flight on the fake website you won’t get either but your money will be gone. You’ll show up at your hotel and they will have no record of your booking. These criminals can even pay to be listed in the top search results. Here are some ways to avoid this scam:

• The golden rule of avoiding scams applies here too: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If the prices are suspiciously low then do some extra due diligence.
• Look at the URL. See if it is a secure payment site by confirming it begins with “https://“ (not http://) and has a small lock icon in front of the URL. If the URL has extra words in it then watch out. Real site URLs are usually short, like: travelocity.com.

If you fall victim anyway, immediately call your credit card company to dispute the charge.

Pickpockets and Assorted Thieves

So far, I’ve been lucky to have avoided pickpockets. A number of people have tried to pick my pockets but failed. The usual scenario is something akin to what happened to me a few times in Vietnam. In one case I was walking down a crowded sidewalk in a market area and a young man walking a bicycle through the crowd suddenly pretended to fall into me with the bike. I immediately felt his hand in my front pocket and I pulled away. Fortunately, I had everything in a pouch under my shirt and he got nothing.

But some thieves are simply amazing. I was once having a business meeting at a restaurant in Amsterdam and my counterpart placed his briefcase under the table we were at. We were virtually alone in a large room. The only person that we saw near our table was the waitress throughout the entire time we were there. But when we got up to leave, his briefcase was gone.

Here are some tips on avoiding thieves on the road:

• When you are seated at a table in a restaurant or seated in a waiting area place your bags in front of you and wrap a strap around your leg in a way that you will feel any movement. I also carry a short chain with a hook lock I can use to fasten it to a table. You can’t be foolproof but you can make yourself a more inconvenient target than other nearby targets.
• Don’t walk in crowds with valuables in your pockets – especially a back pocket. Use a zip pouch under your shirt or jacket. Travel with pants or jackets with zip pockets. Don’t put your phone in a back pocket. Wear a money belt or pouch under your clothes where you put money, cards and passport.
• Always travel with a photocopy of your passport pages and keep it separate from your passport. In case your passport is stolen it will speed replacement of your passport when you go to your embassy or consulate. If your passport is stolen report it immediately to the local police and get a copy of the police report. You will need this when you go to your embassy.
• Have a “find my iPhone” type app on your phone so you or the police can trace it if it is stolen. Enable password protection and two-factor authentication to protect your data on the phone.
• Don’t ever put your wallet or any other valuable down on a seat next to you or on a table or bar while you pay your bill. Not even for a second.
• I often stay in hostels where I wouldn’t recommend leaving valuables in your room while you are out but if you are in a hotel with good door locks leave your valuables you don’t need that day in the room in a locked case or safe. Some hostels have lockers near the front desk you can use. Bring a good lock. Ever since I left my passport in a hotel safe in London only to remember it as I was checking in at Heathrow – I keep my passport on my body in a money belt at all times.
• Crowded subways (Athens and Rome!), hop-on-hop-off type tour buses, and touristy markets are prime pickpocketing spots so take great care here. Wear your backpack or daypack on your chest with your arms through the straps.
• Put your contact information on your valuables so if they are found – or you simply misplace them, they can be returned to you. I use label tape to put my e-mail address on everything from my phone to my bags.

Play Money

Counterfeit bills are a problem in some countries. We’ve had fake renminbi pawned off on us a few times in China – usually by taxi drivers. Unless you are a local it is very hard to spot a counterfeit note. But try to spend it in a local shop and the shop owner will spot it immediately. How do you guard against this? The best way is to have small bills ready to give the taxi driver so you won’t get large bills back in exchange.

In rare occasions a country will update their paper money and invalidate their old bills. It’s hard to spot these outdated bills if you’re a visitor. This happened to me on a ferry from Finland when an on-board shop gave me “old” Swedish bills as change. Fortunately, the ferry company reimbursed me.

Damaged Rental Car or Motorcycle Scam

Some rental car franchisees will try to charge you for scratches and dents that were on the vehicles when you rented it. Go over the vehicle before you leave the rental lot and have the clerk note any blemishes you see. Takes photos of each side of the car (or motorcycle) with your phone before you leave the lot.

Not long ago we returned a rental car in Lisbon and the Sixt franchisee found a microscopic chip in the windshield that was almost invisible to the eye. I would have known if a rock had hit the windshield but the franchisee was insistent and hey, they’ve already got your credit card and a signed contract. You can contest it but you’re at their mercy. Just report it to the company and avoid them in the future if they don’t resolve the matter.

These scams are on top of what even some “reliable” rental car companies do to you with superfluous insurance fees. Before you rent a car check with your credit card company to see if they provide you with automatic insurance when you rent a vehicle. If they don’t, take a look at third-party insurers.

For more on rental car scams check out this great website: http://www.scam-detector.com/