Tag: scam

Top 5 Taxi Scams In Mumbai

TProphet3 Comments

Ah, taxi scams. You’ll encounter them all over the world. However, even though I’m pretty accustomed to taxi scams during my travels, Mumbai pretty much takes the cake. Nowhere else in my travels have I encountered more shamelessly avaricious drivers. It’s a jungle out there, folks, so be careful!

By Ask27 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Mumbai taxis are really cute, but the bill might make your blood boil

Top 5 Mumbai Taxi Scams

1. Modified Meter: You get in the taxi. It has a meter. The meter even starts at the normal fare. But then, not too long after that, it starts running really fast–insanely fast. Don’t stay in the cab. You won’t win an argument about the bill. Insist that driver immediately stop, get out of the cab and take another one. In 3 days in Mumbai, I have been stung by this three times. Also applies to Tuk-Tuks with meters! It’s a huge red flag if the driver wants to wait wherever you’re going and then drive you back. This is so you don’t notice that you overpaid (it’ll be the same both directions), and of course, to rip you off both coming and going.

2. “Broken” Meter: You get in the taxi, and the driver claims the meter is broken but he’ll take you to wherever you’re going for a low flat fee. No problem. Of course, the fee is 2-3 times what it should actually cost.

3. The Drive-Off: The driver guns it and pulls away before all your stuff is out of the cab. This happened to me last night. Fortunately I had the guy’s license plate number snapped on my camera phone (and backed up to the cloud). Also, one of the items stolen was my phone. I went directly to the police, they tracked him down almost instantly, and they were able to get all my stuff back. The driver claimed he didn’t know I hadn’t gotten everything back, and it was all just a big misunderstanding. The police had to let him go because they couldn’t prove he intended to steal my stuff, but I am told by locals this isn’t uncommon.

4. Lost In Translation: The driver will claim he knows where you are going, and then drive you an entirely different place nowhere near where you’re actually going. This is particularly common with hotels and restaurants, where they will drive you to the one that pays them a commission. If you insist to go to the correct place the driver will eventually take you there, but will also charge you for the unnecessary detour. Expect a hard sell for the other property first.

5. “No Change.” Drivers get paid all day in small bills, but usually claim to have no change. If you say “well, I guess I can’t pay then, you will need to call the police” change magically appears, but not necessarily before the driver erupts in a tirade.

Should you let Mumbai’s taxi scams get you down? Keep things in perspective. I was egregiously ripped off today–charged triple the normal rate. In ill-gotten gains, the driver netted… $3. Obviously, he needed it more than I did.

What scams have you encountered when traveling abroad? Comment below!

 

Reducing Rotten Resort Fees

TProphet0 comment

One of the most evil and insidious creeping inventions of the hotel industry in recent years has been the “resort fee.” These originated in faraway tropical destinations but have spread to many destinations that you’d never consider to be resorts.

Typically a resort fee isn’t advertised as part of the base room rate. So, for example, at the Rio in Las Vegas (where I completed a recent stay) the room rate was advertised online at a low $37. It’s only after reading the fine print and adding up the charges that you see that the rate nearly doubles:

  • Room charge: $37.00
  • Tax: $4.44
  • Resort fee: $22.40
  • TOTAL: $63.84

Obviously, the $63.84 that you actually end up paying is considerably more than the $37.00 that is advertised. Even though the FTC has warned hotel operators against this type of deceptive “drip pricing,” the industry continues to advertise room rates that bear little relation to what you’re actually charged.

Picture of Rio Las Vegas

Resort fees sneakily cram $22.40/day onto your bill at the Rio

How can you fight back against resort fees? Make sure you actually get everything you pay for. Hotels will hold firm on charging a resort fee if the services that were promised are available (typically services that really ought to be free anyway such as access to the fitness center, local telephone calls and WiFi). However, you have a reasonable argument that the resort fee should be waived in the event that services weren’t available, particularly if you complained to the hotel and they failed to solve the problem. But this only works if you use all of the resort fee services so you can find problems with them before you’re charged.

In my case, once I arrived in the room, I began by trying to make a free local phone call. Often, the hotel phones don’t work well or even at all. The ancient telephone was essentially inoperable. Heavy scratching noises accompanied the audio and the microphone inside the handset had become unglued over the years so my speech was muffled and nearly inaudible to other parties. I called the front desk at the Rio, who immediately agreed there was a problem and assured me it would be corrected.

3 days later, at the end of the day, a technician finally showed up and replaced the phone. I could finally make free local phone calls. I asked the technician to note in my folio that there had been a maintenance issue with the phone, and it was replaced, “just to avoid any confusion about the phone in case they try to charge me for it.” He was happy to oblige. So, when I checked out, I was able to successfully challenge the resort fee because I didn’t receive all of the services I had paid for, and it was partially (proportionate to the number of days I was inconvenienced) waived. Remember, hotels stick to their guns on resort fees, so if you are able to get anything waived, it’s unusual. I was satisfied with the result.The next time you see that a hotel charges a resort fee, start figuring out how you might be able to get out of it. The more that resort fees become more trouble than they’re worth to hoteliers, the more likely they are to disappear.