more scams and Roman thievery, Part 3...
Janine from London writes:
"I
was the victim of two men pretending to be policemen looking for counterfeit
money while another pretends to be a tourist and gets you to take their
photo.They took about £150 Euros from me. It happened near the river
just down from the Vatican.
I have lived in London most of my life, so I'm used to big cities, but
I felt so ashamed and violated at being duped in such a barefaced dishonest
way that I havent told anyone else in my family or friends. Please warn
others".
Baruch writes from Israel:
"I rented a car to tour Sicily in this past December from a local
independent Italian company with which I was extremely displeased. Only
after returning home, did I discover to my shock that I was charged above
and beyond the terms of the rental for "damage to the rear mud guard"
(140 Euros), despite the fact that the company attendant to whom I returned
the car told me very explicitly that I would be charged no extras and
that the car was returned in satisfactory condition.
I would very much like to spare prospective car renters in Italy the type
of experience I had with them. I have carefully documented my complaint
to them and their (woefully inadequate) responses to me. I found your
site on line recently and it seemed like a very appropriate venue for
bringing to the attention of others experiences like mine.
Please make this information available to others."
Romebuddy replies:
I think this teaches us all a valuable lesson not to deal with the
locals in potentially high risk retail situations. I think Baruch was
very resourceful and courageous in even attempting to drive himself around
Italy and Sicily, because Italy is such a risky place to drive in and
car wrecks and prangs here are frequent, everyday occurances, not to mention
the bandits. But with the globalization of franchises in many service
industry sectors such as hotels and car rental firms now making it possible
to deal with a safe name you know from back home, it's simply no longer
worth the added risk of dealing any more with piddling local companies
you've never heard of. They're probably all smiles when they want your
business, and perhaps the upfront price of the car rental was less than
what the big companies would have charged Baruch, but he ended up having
to pay out more.
Thankfully, in this new globally trading internet age, consumers from
developed nations are now able to make the local so-called 'business-people'
and con artists in just developing nations such as Italy play ball by
taking our business elsewhere. Companies who don't play fair deserve to
die. This is the 21st century, not 1950 anymore, so, message to the Italian
car rental company concerned: Carry on conning and ripping off your own
local people if you like, but the easy days of being to able to con tourists
are over. Next time, we're going to Hertz.
Keith from Chicago writes:
We recently drove into Rome on a Sunday at noon. We had our car packed
with unseen luggage. We knew about the profession the people have here
of robbing you blind. We parked our car and went on our 1 Day Rome excursion.
We arrived back at our car at 2 am to find the window of our rental car
smashed in and everything in the car GONE!!!!! We then had to search out
the police. After getting a police report we head to Fiumicino Airport
which is basically closed until 6 am. But we managed to find an open door
and proceeded to our gate, having nothing to check in for our trip home.
We were then bumped from our flight and rerouted. The people at the airport
were so rude and unhelpful. Rome was beautiful, but you can have the people.
The rest of Italy was wonderful, kind folk too.
Thanks, longing for my Italian shoes...
Romebuddy replies:
I think this letter reveals an interesting point, ie, that a lot of the rest of Italy ain't bad at all, and folks are nice. But it's Rome itself where the native inhabitants probably need a few lessons in honesty and etiquette.
William writes:
I
just found your site and thought it is excellent, as well as some of the
scams that seemed to go on... I nearly got caught a couple of years ago
in Barcelona in the Sangrada Familia by a guy who spilt choclotate on
my wifes jacket and while I was cleaning her jacket he tried to clean
my pockets... but I copped to him quickly enough, however, I wasnt so
lucky with a white taxi that I hailed at TERMINI to go to Civitavecchia
as I left a camera in it. Now it was roughly an hour journey back to Rome
and it was on the back seat, so I'm convinced he has it. Talking about
taxis, my hotel rang a taxi to take me to the airport and I was telling
him about the camera etc and he made a few phonecalls but to no avail,
but he told me something interesting: He was also a private cab and was
only half the price of the other taxis I had got, he told me that you
should never leave the hotel to call a taxi for you as they up the price
of the fare and get 30 to 40 euros back from the taxi driver and that
it's the receptionists that do this and the owners of the hotel may know
nothing about it. Ifound the police a waste of time when I reported it,
as I had times and dates for the taxi which could be easily checked and
also the camera was security marked all over it...
Keep up the good work....
Romebuddy replies:
Psychologically, there is only one thing more traumatically
hurtful than losing a camera, and that's losing a wedding ring. It's actually
more painful to lose a camera than to lose a notebook computer, even if
the computer cost more. We bond with our cameras, even if they are only
cheap ones. Like cherished pets, our cameras travel with us to all the
special places we ever go to in our lives, and they record the magic for
us. Our hands grow to fit them, and, for those who take photography seriously,
their camera is a tool of their art in a way that a computer or a cellphone
can never be, and to the serious photographer, a camera is always a carefuly
researched, thoughtfuly made, major and cherished purchase of considerable
expense. And more than this - At the precise moment of theft, the camera
will usually be holding unrepeatable images recording that tourist's wonderful
day up to that point, effectively making only a cheap fifty dollar camera
as valuable as a five-thousand dollar camera.
In the Old American West and the pioneer age of that great nation, horse
theft used to be an offence publicly considered as on a par with murder,
deserving of capital punishment. Many horse thieves were actually hung,
whether lawfully or not, so intense was the grievance for a stolen horse.
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_thief
or here)
I opine that draconian new laws and punishments should be brought in to
reinforce the fact that camera theft is one of the vilest, most antisocial
and subhuman crimes in the modern world, and that a camera thief is the
lowest of the low of all criminals.
A city such as Rome, in a G8 nation such as Italy which continually trumpets and prides itself as being the cradle of the Renaissance and modern civilisation, should take greater and particular care to safeguard the personal safety and possessions, particularly the cameras of the tourists on whom it so much depends for its revenue. To invite tourists by the billion to this city each year, tourists who, because of the high intellectual target level of the Italian tourist sales pitch, are assumed to be intellectual and worthy of respect, and then to treat those quality tourists like dirt as a result of ineffective and offhand policing and civic protection methods and low social and community values, is a grave failing on the part of the Italian government and the Rome department of tourism, and makes a mockery of their claim to be the seat of Renaissance culture.
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