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Touristic frauds abroad

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Travel Articles >> Travel Advice

Of course, you can meet tricksters in your own homeland, but at least at home we feel ourselves more secure - we know where to run and where to look the the help and protection. And this looks quite different if anything happens abroad. For example the total loss of funds can spoil the whole holiday mood.

Hunt for the plastic cards.
Don't forget that the piece of plastic in your wallet - is not only the convenient way to pay for the shopping and services, but also a quite attractive thing for various hunters for money. The internet-forums are overfilled with messages about fraud ATMs and mysterious withdrawals of huge amounts from the bank cards. One of the most popular means of getting access to your accounts can be easily encountered at cheap resorts - a special device that reads data from your card and saves it's number and pin-code - and there is nothing more complicated left to solve - the card duplicate creation is the next and last step.

It can also happen that the card you pay in the restaurant with, is being processed several times by the crooks.

Another popular way - are the add-on superimposed keyboards that are attached to the ATMs. A tourist leaves his pin to the crooks, withdrawing money and the next step is to steal the card.

An exotic fraud technology is reported by the tourists that visit the Indonesian islands - Bali, Java, Sumatra, Sulavesi. Near the currency exchange points there are "convenient" calculators for the currency conversion. The trick is that this calculator does it wrong - showing the amount less that it should be. The same device is also used by the exchange operator. Stay away from such calculators - better use your cellphone - almost all of the modern phones have a calculator.

To evade the card fraud, try not to pay with it in small stores and restaurants.

But if you really need cash - search for the ATM in the bank offices or in the hotels: their administrations really hate scandals that are linked with fraud activity in any way, so the terminals installed here are usually guarded round the clock. And before the trip - it is a good idea to switch on the SMS-informing service - in this case all the information about any operation with your credit card comes instantly to your cellphone and you will be able to block the card in time in any case. Also the phone numbers of the bank emergency departments should be kept in a separate note-block - to have an opportunity to call anyway, even if the cellphone is lost.

Don't exchange money in cabs!
Another danger for the tourists are the currency exchange commissions. Usually there is no information that each currency exchange point takes additional fees, so the tourists are really surprised sometimes that they have received a couple of dollars, euro or whatever currency less than expected. There is only one way to evade it - just ask the exchange officer - what exactly amount you will receive really before the exchange.

In most countries the currency exchange points don't work round the clock and get closed at 4 or 5 o'clock in the evening. After that you can be "served" by the street "exchangers" or taxi drivers that offer a good exchange rate without commissions. Don't believe them - for example the police departments of Turkey are full with tourist's claims that have risked to perform such an exchange. Tourists often even don't know how the local money should look like and as the result, they are left with a heap of colored but useless pieces of paper.

Car rental: examine the vehicle.
These examples should already be included in all the touristic guides - when the car rental companies are "earning" money in this way. A tourist rents a scooter or a car signs papers with texts in foreign language without understanding what is actually written there. And these papers tell that the vehicle has been offered in ideal state and that there are fines that a person has to pay in case of damage. As the result, a small scratch can cost hundreds of euro for the tourist. There is already no sense to prove that it has been already there before you have taken the car and that the repair costs at most 5 or 10 euro - you have already signed the papers. And the fact that you don't speak the local language - doesn't exclude the responsibility.

So, the conclusions here are quite simple:

Most of the car rental companies cars can be insured. Of course the rental will be a bit more expensive, but this is worth the possible costs and nerves.

And in any way - there should be no hustle - have a look at the car thoroughly before you drive away.

Don't forget about the insurance.
The insurance for the tourists is not always a compulsory action, but it really helps in many cases. For example - the health - it costs in many countries really huge amounts of money, even for a trivial help. There are also other types of insurance, but these are too diverse to discuss these here.

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Article Submitted On: July 22, 2008