I’m planning on visiting Paris for the summer so I would like to know peoples stories of being scammed.
I heard scams in cities like Paris, London and Madrid are big. So I think its easy to avoid them if you know them.
Whats harder to avoid are pickpockets. They can come when you are off guard. Do people have any tips on how to avoid them? Here’s what I’ve read are some of them:
Wear jeans with zip pockets. As a man I only found that good jeans with zip pockets are women’s. But I couldn’t care less if they’re for females. I would rather that than be robbed out of my passport, wallet. etc
2)Use cash whenever your paying. This is not to due with pickpockets exactly but probably worse someone cloning your debit card/credit card. Its been known that some shops use a “cloner” to retrieve details from your card. So using cash only when possible will make things safer for you.
3)Don’t look like your a tourist or a flashy person. Pickpockets and scammers usually prey on people with shirts like “I love NYC”, maps in their face, cameras hanging from them, or generally looking lost. Even if you don’t seem like a tourist they’ll go for people who look like they’re showing expensive items.
4)Never leave valuables in your hotel. Especially if they’re cleaners who come in. Most may be good people, but you can never know.
How is that worse? If a pickpocket takes cash, it’s gone forever. Maybe for a small amount of money, it’s worth avoiding the hassle of having your card stolen while you’re in a foreign country, but depending on how much money you carry you might not want to take that risk.
Upon arriving in Madrid for a 3-week vacation in Spain, my wallet was stolen before I even left the airport. It was in a zipped front pants pocket. I was left with no money, no credit cards and no I.D. Fortunately I still had my passport and a printout of my return flights, so I was able to return home. It took me four days to get home, sleeping in airports with no money for food. Now when I travel, I wear an around-the-neck wallet with a cord that can’t be cut. And I stash away extra credit cards and cash in odd places.
I have traveled to Europe several times, and never been pick pocketed. But whenever i travel, (including in the US) i like to keep money in more than one place, to reduce the risk of being stuck with nothing.
When i have a lot of cash, i wear a money belt. I carry today’s money in a convenient pocket, but keep the stash in a harder-to-access location. Maybe that’s less critical now that you can use credit cards everywhere. So long as they don’t get stolen, of course.
In a related story…
Last year, less than 24 hours before i planned to fly to London, my credit card company called to inform me there was fraud on my card. I later learned than someone had actually cloned it and was using the fake copy on the other side of the US, but what i learned then was that i had to cancel the card ASAP. That was the only credit card i had that i could use in Europe. I needed a card for things like paying the hotel.
I went anyway. I was traveling with my son, so we transferred money to his bank account so as to be able to use his debit card. But i also negotiated with the credit card company, which was able to arrange to send me a temporary credit card with a $5000 limit. The card arrived the next day by noon, in my hotel room! (Which i checked into with my son’s debit card.)
So I’d advise carrying contact information for all your cards and stuff in a different place than you keep the cards themselves.
I have traveled to Europe several times, and never been pick pocketed. But whenever i travel, (including in the US) i like to keep money in more than one place, to reduce the risk of being stuck with nothing.
When i have a lot of cash, i wear a money belt. I carry today’s money in a convenient pocket, but keep the stash in a harder-to-access location. Maybe that’s less critical now that you can use credit cards everywhere. So long as they don’t get stolen, of course.
In a related story…
Last year, less than 24 hours before i planned to fly to London, my credit card company called to inform me there was fraud on my card. I later learned than someone had actually cloned it and was using the fake copy on the other side of the US, but what i learned then was that i had to cancel the card ASAP. That was the only credit card i had that i could use in Europe. I needed a card for things like paying the hotel.
I went anyway. I was traveling with my son, so we transferred money to his bank account so as to be able to use his debit card. But i also negotiated with the credit card company, which was able to arrange to send me a temporary credit card with a $5000 limit. The card arrived the next day by noon, in my hotel room! (Which i checked into with my son’s debit card.)
So I’d advise carrying contact information for all your cards and stuff in a different place than you keep the cards themselves.
puzzlegal’s advice on how to carry valuables is a lot more useful than the OP’s (pickpockets laugh at zippers), some more:
make use of available safety measures (safe at the hotel, for example)
in many countries you will be expected to carry some form of picture ID on your person at all times (well, not while completely naked). Leave the passport in the hotel, carry your driver’s license
the most common form of “robbery without violence” involves taking advantage of people’s inattention. When you sit down, don’t leave your stuff in a spot where it can be reached easily by someone walking by or sitting behind you. Wear clothes and distribute things in such a way that you can move comfortable and easily.
if a place feels unsafe, it is
Not for thieves, but:
if your PIN is not 4 figures, make it 4 figures. Many European ATMs and payment systems don’t accept other lengths.
That kind of clothing is sold all over the place. The kind of clothing that looks out of place is other details such as strange color combinations, cuts… and in the case of Americans, even the way you guys walk is different (changes of speed and direction are a lot more sudden, most of you have no idea how to move smoothly in a crowd).
When I was in the Czech Republic with a friend we got stopped by a couple of “transport cops” who fined us 400 Kroner (about $25.00) because we didn’t have the right metro tickets. We were both 18 and we didn’t know better so we paid up, but in hindsight it’s pretty clear we were ripped off.
In Barcelona I was approached by a man asking directions, then moments later his accomplice, claiming to be a police officer accused us of participating in a drug transaction and demanded my wallet and passport. It was such an obvious scam that I was unable to resist laughing. In any event, I refused and they didn’t want to resort to strong arm tactics on the street in broad daylight.
In St. Petersburg along the Nevsky Prospect I caught a guy with his hand in my back pocket. It was empty, I carry any valuables in my front pocket, but he probably wasn’t trying to make friends, despite what the others in my party said.
What I’ve done is to write the credit card account numbers and the contact phone numbers in an email I send to myself. Note that you should record both the toll-free number for the card issuer as well as the toll number (on the back of my Chase credit card, this number is identified as the international collect number).
If you don’t want to write out all of that, just photocopy the front and back of your credit cards and then send the scanned pages to your email address (ideally a web-based account like Gmail or Yahoo! Mail that you can access from a borrowed computer). While you’re at it, scan your driver’s license and passport pages and send those to yourself.
(If your wallet was stolen right now, would you remember everything that is in it? Most people would not, especially when you’re stressed out over being pickpocketed.)
My purse got stolen from me when I was in a net-cafe in England. I had wrapped the strap around my ankles, thinking I’d feel it if it were moved, but when I got up, the strap was there and the purse was not. I had all my valuables and copies of everything in the hotel safe, but I still lost my ID and credit card (necessary for using the net-cafe) and about 40 pounds that was going to be for a nice(r) dinner that night, and lost a favorite wallet with a treasured personal letter from a relative. Knowing that those both ended up in a trash can within minutes made me absolutely livid with rage at my stupidity.
I HATE having things hang off my neck, but I started wearing those stupid “passport pocket” things and putting all my big cash and my important cards in there, under my clothes, and just using my purse for all the random disposable things.
I also got my back pocket groped on a bus in Italy - I felt vindicated on that one tho. All he got was a sanitary pad.
When I traveled in Europe, I only had my credit card, which I kept in a zippered hip pack. I also carried a little local currency and my mass transit card in my front pocket.
Didn’t have a problem. I was targeted by a “gold ring” scammer. I didn’t know anything about the scam, but he was stymied by the fact that I just shrugged and said, “That’s not mine.”
If a beggar, or a gang of beggars (possibly little kids), comes up to you with a card covered in writing and shoves it under your nose demanding that you read it, get your hand under the card as fast as you can. Someone else’s hand is under there, aiming for your pocket.
And if you’re carrying a bag in Italy, carry it cross-body, not over one shoulder. Guys on motorbikes zoom past, grab the bag and keep going. People have been killed from being pulled to the ground that way. It’s common enough that there’s a specific word for it (scippare). They don’t target people with cross-body bags, since they won’t get the bag unless the strap breaks.
I know a woman who experienced that exact scenario in Italy. I forget which city, but I want to say Florence. She said there were 5 or 6 kids accompanied by an old woman. The kids cornered her and shoved their signs in her face for a few seconds and then moved on. Moments later she realized her wallet was gone with them.
The last time we went to Europe, I had a local alterations place add Velcro to the inside pocket of my jacket. That’s where I kept my wallet, and I figured that there’s no way that a pickpocket would be able to get his hand in there without me noticing.
A guy in Paris tried to pull the “dropped ring” scam on my wife. It took me yelling at him to get him to go away.
I lived in Germany for two years and travelled around a bit and never had anyone attempt anything. But at the time I was a young fit soldier so maybe I didn’t look like an easy mark. Or I didn’t look like I had any money.
We were in Paris in the early 2000’s, and had walked to see the Arche de Triomphe in the morning. There’s an underground passage so that you can walk from the Arche to the Champs Elysees without using the street. There was next to no one in the passage, and we walked quickly through and climbed the stairs leading up to the street. While climbing, I started to feel crowded, which was weird, since a glance around a moment before showed that there was no one else nearby. I turned around quickly and there were two teenage girls right behind us. One had unzippered my purse and my wallet was halfway out and in her hand.
I grabbed her hand and yelled at her, and my husband pursued them down the passage, yelling out “pickpockets!”. However, how far can you chase someone in a foreign city, with no police nearby? Luckily I had grabbed my wallet back and nothing else was missing. But it made me carry my purse in front of me, even though it seemed there was no one close enough to get at it.
I lost/had stolen my wallet in London. I had just arrived and was on the train from the airport.
I walked to an American Express office and they pressed me a new card. I only had to wait a few hours because they needed to contact a US office first (which was closed due to the time difference). They also gave me a cash advance without fees or interest.
A nice woman found my wallet, contacted me through a friend’s UK phone number that was in my wallet and mailed my wallet to an associate of mine in the UK (cash was gone, obviously).
I explained to the would-be pickpocket that I didn’t have money, but what I did have was a very particular set of skills, skills I acquired over a very long career. Skills that made me a nightmare for people like him.