Friday, June 11, 2010

Scammed! A travel lesson

Its possible that with your first glance at the following picture, you will already know what happened & how we were "scammed." After arriving home and typing "Beijing Scams" into Google, it became extremely clear that this is a very well-known scam that we somehow happened to overlook in all our planning.


The Beijing Tea Scam

Deciding to take advantage of a nice day, we ventured out to a part of town known as Qianmen. Wanting to practice our Chinese, we take every opportunity we can to speak with the locals, even if it means buying a banana or a coke or a packet of spices we don't really want. We were walking down a hutong and exchanged greetings with a man and a woman. They said they were siblings and the girl was his younger sister; they were visiting from Xi'an (another town). After walking together and talking for a good 20 minutes, they mentioned it being really hot out and wanting to get a cup of tea together ~ we agreed. They led the way to a teahouse that by all appearances was just one of the many teahouses in Beijing. Outside, the teahouse had signs indicating different drinks and teas, prices displayed - 5 kuai - about .73 U.S. cents.


After sitting down inside the teahouse, the waitress kept bringing over very small, almost thimble-sized cups of tea. We thought these were samples, and eventually we'd order the one we liked. About halfway through, we started to feel like something wasn't right and stopped the waitress to ask how much this was costing. She told us for every type of tea you taste, it is 30 kuai per person - about $4.40 - remember, thimble sized. She told us that we had already tasted 8 types of tea. At that point we indicated we were done and wanted to just pay. At that point our lovely "friends" indicated that they had no money and we would have to pay for them. We paid. It ended up costing us about $160 which is just astronomical for the amount of tea we drank, not to mention we were totally swindled by these two people, who actually work for the restaurant and purposely bring unsuspecting tourists to this place to conduct the same scam over and over again. (Consider the fact that we usually spend about $15 on a meal that can feed 5 people with tons of leftovers to take home!)

Afterwards, the "siblings" had to suddenly leave and got on the next bus. We had a hunch... so we went back to the place we had originally stumbled upon this dynamic duo and sure enough, there they were, chatting it up with the next poor bastard!

Anyway yes we paid, perhaps we shouldn't have taken it lying down like that, without protesting at all, but China is not a place we want to do anything questionable. I've heard of people arguing about it or bringing the police back but at that point, we just said forget about it and chalked it up to a really expensive travel and language lesson.

Google Beijing Tea Scam and see how every single hit is people talking about how they fell for this scam! Some people even went back with their video camera for some sort of revenge.

In the grand scheme of things, its not that bad - we had an hour and a half of Chinese practice! And we did drink some very tasty, albeit overpriced tea. Its just the point that people purposefully set out to take advantage of people. It happens all over the world, not just in China. We were just annoyed with ourselves for letting our eagerness to speak the language get in the way of the feeling that something was off. We've learned to be very selective in who we speak with & won't let this sort of thing happen again!

So, if you are coming to China, definitely don't go with someone you just met to a teahouse, no matter how nice or genuine they seem! And if you come to Beijing, avoid Yimingyuan Teahouse in the Qianmen area.

Steph

22 comments:

  1. Oh that's horrible! That's the only thing about being in a different country, you can't really do anything about situations like this. Thanks for sharing, I'd never heard of this before.

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  2. Ohhh, China.

    lol

    What a bizarre scam. It sucks that you're out almost 200 bucks, but I'm glad you can look on the bright side of it. I would still be fuming. ha!

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  3. I'm so glad you stopped and asked about the price in the middle. What a mess.

    I hadn't heard about this scam either. It's a good reminder to be wary while traveling. Better safe than sorry, right?

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  4. Thats horrible, but I love how you found the silver lining. My friend also told me they scam tourists with fake jade and such at the markets (way to check is compare market prices and actual stores prices and see the discrepancy)

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  5. What a mess! Very interesting to read, though. I love your optimistic attitude and that are found something positive in the situation.

    PS I have missed reading your blog! After being gone for 10 days it has taken me forever to catch up again with my Google reader.

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  6. Thanks for the sympathy guys!! I guess you have to just look on the bright side sometimes :)

    Kelsey, thank you so much!! That is so sweet. You were much busier doing far more important things!! I need to check out your blog right now to see if you have made any updates on how the wedding was... I hope it was everything you dreamed of! (running over to check!)

    Steph

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  7. Ughh I read about those scams before we traveled to Beijing. Awful!!! I'm sorry Steph:( At least you learned early in your travels!

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  8. OH NO!!!! We had two guy friends that went to Beijing for a weekend and ended up with a 300 US dollar tab in the end. !!!! Oh friend, I am SOOO sorry this happened to you. Beijing is FAMOUS for that. argh!!! I am mad FOR you! :)

    lesson learned like you said. bust
    k

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  9. oh wow! i've never heard of this before but i hate scams like this where they take advantage of tourist looking people! its quite the lesson learnt! at least you two are okay!!

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  10. That really sux! It's a good thing you asked midway so you weren't out even more money.

    Hope you enjoy your weekend,
    mavjen

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  11. Wow, very interesting. I can't believe you had to pay $160 for tea alone! Yikes. But at least you learned and did get to practice your Chinese.
    Ouch.

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  12. That's awful! I can't believed they scammed you all like that!!

    I'm glad that you guys were able to pay and move on - and thank goodness it wasn't worse!

    Got to listen to your instincts :)

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  13. Gosh that's an astronomical price to pay for tea, no matter how delicious the tea is. Thanks for sharing with us this experience.

    PS... Glad that you decided to drop by Manila. It's rainy season now so the best time to be there is around October or November. The weather will be perfect. If you'll just be there for a couple of days then maybe you can just tour Manila (there are many places to go to there) and take a boat ride to Corregidor. xoxo

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  14. That's a ton of money by Beijing standards. I'd never heard of this before, but unfortunately I'm sure they target nice-looking foreigners who wouldn't put up a fight. I wonder what would've happened if you refused to pay for these so-called "friends"? You weren't obligated to and at least you'd save $80!

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  15. crazy, they seem to have scammer everywhere!! hate that....

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  16. yup. china is really full of swindlers. not proud of it. pretty much be suspecting of every single person you see because they're probably all out to get you.

    my family is native of beijing and when we go back to visit everyone tries to scam us because we wear american clothes. the taxi driver tries to play dumb and take the longest route, everything. be careful!

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  17. That is a strange scam. Too bad, but at least now you'll be on your toes.

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  18. oh my, that's really awful. :(

    http://whatmimiwrites.blogspot.com/

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  19. weird I left a comment but i don't see it. You must have word verification, I always close the window and don't do them, I wonder how many un published comments of mine are out there...

    Anyways I agree your attitude about it is great but man that SUCKS! And OMG $160 is SO much in Beijing that is quite the scam, but like you said lesson learned and a tleast you have this under your belt and won't let it happen again.

    Oh and in my preivous comment I mentioned that i totally agree with not wanted to deal with the police or goerment lol. How about those security guards everywhere that aren't really even security guards. As safe as beijing is I would not want to have to deal the police or goverment at all. lol

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  20. Amber, too weird, I don't have the letter verification actually. Maybe you closed out before it went all the way through! But yeah, definitely don't want to get in any sort of trouble over here.

    Angie, its like that a lot of countries though so don't worry, hah. We've actually come across so many NICE chinese people who don't want anything! Today we were out and about and we were talking with a guy, he was genuinely nice & didn't want anything but to point us in the right direction. I was wary of it but it turned out perfect!

    Woodlands - I know, listening to your instincts is sooo important!!! There is a great about about how it can save your life even! Its called The Gift of Fear if you are interested.

    Thanks guys!!

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  21. Oh my goodness, that is horrible but I suppose that's (sadly) quite 'normal' for China. I've heard some restaurants have two menus, the more expensive menu is obviously for tourists - have you experienced that?

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  22. My husband was recently in Shanghai, and the same thing happened to him. Except he and his friend realized what was going on and walked out before drinking anything. Americans are to nice and naive, speak up don't be embarrased. Good lesson learned.

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