Jaunted

We Want You to Beat the Scammers

2/08/2008 at 4:35 AM
Tags: Scams, Tourists, Tourist Scams (all tags)

We're smart travelers. Really we are. But when we read the UK Times list of the 14 best travel scams last weekend, we realized that we might be smart but the scammers are sometimes smarter.

This list should be compulsory reading for all travelers, just so you're aware of how nice-but-nasty some scam artists can be. Among the usual phony free trips, credit card theft and drink-doping "buddies," there were a few scams we hadn't heard of yet.

One of these was "the metal detector shuffle," where the scam-artist, without baggage, waits until you've put your bag on the conveyor belt, but then rushes through ahead of you. With enough coins or other metal items in his pockets, he gets held up and has to go through the detector several times; meanwhile your bag has gone through and the scam-guy's accomplice, in front of him, has taken off with it.

And finally, there's one we can't imagine we'd fall for, but apparently some people have:

You are approached by someone in a bar who guarantees you thousands of dollars if you join in a scam by getting on a bus that they will rear-end somewhere along its route. Most of the passengers, you are promised, will be in on the fraud, and will all protest that it was the driver's fault, while rubbing their hips and necks. And the bus company will start handing out cash and liability-waiver forms immediately.

We hope we don't have to tell you to beware of strange men promising a bus crash.

Related Stories:
· The 14 Best Travel Scams [UK Times]
· Flyertalker Gets Scammed in Istanbul [Jaunted]
· Scams coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: MontiLee]