Budapest: Biggest Travel Scams in Budapest

hey fellow travelers mark here with walters world today we're here in budapest in hungary and i've been walking around town today seeing some very interesting things and i've seen some scams going on and stuff like that so i thought today would be a good day to put out a video on some of the typical scams that you actually see here in budapest i've been coming to budapest since 1997 so i have seen a lot of things change over the years but scams are some of the things that have kind of stayed here now it has got a lot better i won't lie to you about that yet from the taxi rip-offs they still do happen they're a lot less now to the to the oh hey take me for a drink kind of stuff there are still some issues here but it has gotten better so i want to stress that part there but i guess i should give you those those scans we're talking about probably the one that you'll read about the most and one that's actually happened to me a couple times that i've been here is the um how would i say this the no deed go no good deed goes unpunished scam so basically what it is maybe a girl or a grandma and her daughter or whatever will come up to you and ask you for help like hey do you know how i get to this place or i've lost my friends and how can i how can you help me find them and stuff like that they'll be so happy that you're helping them like hey while we're waiting for my friends to show up why don't we grab a drink and they'll take you to a bar and you'll sit down chill order a drink you'll order a drink and then next thing you know she's gone and you've got like a 30 euro bill uh like for for a drink like what the hell's going on and they're like hey you've got to pay for this look that has gone down a lot in the last few years here but it does still happen so do be careful if you notice any tourists that are or any locals that are overly friendly now i'm not going to lie to you the locals here they speak english really well they'll like chat with you a bit but you do need to be careful about the overly friendly tourists they're not kind of using you to like you know part of their scam to make a little extra money for a bar or a club or something like that but honestly i don't it doesn't have as much as it used to but if you are a solo guy or maybe two guys do have a heads up for that because i know when i've been here with jocelyn i've been here with the kids and stuff like that nothing ever happens but i've been by myself i do get those things occasionally okay now another set of scams you might see when you're here i like to call that the menu mix-ups so the menu mix-ups this is what i've actually seen people write about where they'll order food and then they think they're going to pay one price and the bill comes and it's a lot more like what happened like let me see the menu and they get the menu back and like oh okay the prices were that high but you got to realize is sometimes in the various places they might switch the menus again this is one of those things that's not as pop as it used to be but it does still happen occasionally so make sure before you order you look at the price you know what you're going to get don't just order a beer look on the menu and say i want this beer don't just get a palinka the local schnapps kind of thing they're saying i'll give me a polinka make sure you get a link and i want the the pear one around with a cherry one or something like that because if you don't they might just order the more expensive thing for you so do have a heads up for that and also if you're coming from the us whether you as the us dollar or you're coming from the europe where there's the euro it's about 300 to 1 for the exchange rate okay so look at the money it all seems like oh who knows who the price is and some places some of the various places will actually use that to their advantage and against you so they might shortchange you on the change so just make sure you're looking at your bill and make sure everything's okay all right now another one that i had forgotten about before i got here is some of the taxi scams that are here now i know a lot of people just think oh i'll just take uber when i'm there well here in budapest there is no uber uber's been gone since about 2016. so you're gonna be taking taxis and there's different taxis out here and what you want to make sure is if you can see one when you see a taxi if on the top it says taxify or it has a brand name like a taxi company name and on the side it has a taxi company name those are the better taxes to take because it just has a yellow tax and it has a black sign outside it says taxi look on the side if it says freelancer those are the ones that a lot of times will rip off tourists so do be careful with that i know we came in today and we came to the train station and we were like trying to find a taxi to get into town and noah's taking us we find a guy he's like oh 20 euros i'm like dude it's like a five euro taxi ride he's like well you ain't got any other choice and i couldn't download the apps to get them to work on my phone so i didn't have any other choices so you got to be careful the taxis here so what i recommend you do if you can download an app for one of the taxi companies here do that though some of them require that you have a hungarian phone number so that's not going to help if you don't but some you can get you can get um and use those to call your taxis also maybe ask your hotel or ask your hotel or your hotel or arrest the restaurant you're at to order the taxi for you and therefore you know it's gonna be more legit and also it's a good idea to talk to your hotel and ask them how much is the taxi how much should it cost to get to the hotel because then if you know how much it's gonna cost well you have an idea if they're trying to rip you off or not okay so do be careful with that because there is the usual taxi stuff like they take you out of the way to get there or they overcharge you for stuff or oh i'm sorry i don't have change so those things do happen so do have a heads up for that another thing it's not really a scam but some about safety stuff you should watch out for don't they recommend you probably don't stay right by the parliament there's other places in town to stay in we're staying at the inner in the inner city and that's pretty cool there's some other place to check out as well but just i let you know that was one place that people recommend not to stay um it's cool to go by but at night might not feel so cool i guess here in budapest i mean it is a european capital and it's gorgeous i mean look random gorgeous architecture all around this city is awesome i've been coming for 20 years and i still love seeing the same amazing buildings 20 years later the thing is though even with a cool city like this has the usual scams as well you'll see the people you know the pit pockets are here and the oh i spilled some mustard on your shoulder or a bird pooped on you or something like that and then they take your bags those things are here the ladies that give you you know like flowers they give you something and you're like oh thank you and then they're like oh hey uh now you got to give me money like those things still exist so just make sure you're watching out because you don't want to like lose your money on silly scams that you obviously know where scams in the first place so just have a heads up for that word of warning my fellow travelers if you're at any kind of thing with a band playing or there's a performers or street performers or whatever there's a big crowd around this is actually prime pickpocketing spots because everyone's paying attention to the band playing and they're not paying attention to their pockets so hey have a heads up and pay attention when you see something like that do enjoy the street performers do enjoy the van but just know that someone else might be putting their hand where it's not supposed to be so hey pay attention when you're there there are a few other scams i do want to let you know about you will see guys coming up to try to sell you oh i found this iphone 7 you want to buy that i mean i i thought it was kind of funny when i saw stuff about people selling electronics on the street but obviously if someone's picking up an iphone off the street trying to sell it to you not something you should buy so that's one thing i saw there also you don't see it too much anymore but if you're looking for people that are exchanging money on the street just don't just go to either the exchange house like you said go to the bank or just use your atm that's going to be your best bet okay so if you are seeing any of these euro net atms look you can use it as a normal atm the only thing that when they really get you is actually if you click the please convert to my home currency don't do that i've seen this in hungary i've seen this in the netherlands i've seen this in other places in prague and stuff like that here in budapest be careful with that because you take that conversion you really get a horrible exchange rate and that's where they make their money but the thing is you don't if you decline the conversion you just get your bank to do it and they work fine that way so that's where they really get the bad reputation is they just really kind of get you when it comes to the bad exchange rates that they offer you as a oh at least you already know what you're going to get charged in dollars so isn't that better than not knowing and they make it sound like well we can't guarantee what you get so it sounds like they're trying to help but they're not also another thing on these that a lot of times they'll offer like crazy high amounts to take out when you don't really need that much so make sure you can push the other amount button and then you're gonna get like a normal amount of money instead of a crazy amount so just want to give you a heads up for those i know i've had problems with these around the world but it's not just euro net there's there's other places too other banks do that as well so just make sure you're paying attention and always declining that conversion the place i went to today when i took out money uh they offered me with the exchange hit that would give me 195 when i looked at my bank account it was 153 just 40 difference in terms of that i mean that's a huge thing and so make sure if you're at a restaurant or you're getting money out of the atm if they offer it to you to say hey you know what we can convert it for you already never do that always decline the conversion you want to get just take the money out the local currency pay in the local currency because that's going to save you a lot of money in the long run so i hope that helps if you want to learn some more tips on traveling check us out our website at waltersworld.com for us on twitter facebook instagram youtube pinterest we really hope that we can help other travelers like you not get your uh get a bad exchange rate and other problems when you travel bye from budapest

Channel: Wolters World

Views: 148,268

Keywords: travel, europe, wolters world, travel advice, tourist attractions, travel vlogger, honest travel, Walters World

Id: MJvKQFWhZ0k

Length: 8min 56sec (536 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021