Rossi
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RE: The Saint Petersburg Scammers
(06-07-2018 06:54 PM)Tail Gunner Wrote: If you check the menu and it says 13 Euros in writing, then how do they later claim that the price is actually 30 Euros?
WTF. Now I am in the mood for a mango mojito.
Very easy. Multiple ways.
They can say, it's outdated menu, happy hour price or even they can write prices in written, not 13 euro but thirteen euro. After all, you're in foreign country where you don't speak the native language and you don't really know anyone. %90 of the time, cops won't be on your side because they're also getting their cut from that bar/restaurant too.
I mean, you're talking like you are in a country where law applies. When bartender gives you €200 bill for 4 beers and if time is 11 pm, you have 2 bodyguards in front of the door, you just pay up instead of arguing usually. These kind of bars are not in center usually, they're either bars in basement or somewhere quiet.
I mean, I've seen some Italian bars charging €500 to Japanese tourists in Venice for few drinks.
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| 06-07-2018 07:56 PM |
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The following 2 users Like Rossi's post:2 users Like Rossi's post
Tail Gunner, zatara
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Vincent Chase
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RE: The Saint Petersburg Scammers
(06-06-2018 06:32 PM)qwertyuiop Wrote: Pay with credit card, go home, call CC company and dispute charge and report fraud.
Just don't sign or scribble so they cant tell
not sure how legal this is tho lol
They try to work around that now. The scam bar I went to didn’t accept cards and only cash or a “money transfer” whatever the fuck that is I assume a bank transfer. (You’d have to be crazy to do a bank transfer in a bar.) As such you have no option for ever getting your money back. At one point I said I didn’t have any more cash and the girl said I can do a bank transfer. Told her I’m not retarded. She said she can pay for the drinks herself, of course she didn’t and would have no doubt made me foot the bill for the next round anyway.
They also push you to play music you like assumingly then asking you to pay per song when you get the bill. The girl will keep ordering shit as much as she can drinks, food, shisha and will try to get you drunk and go for the more expensive items like a bottle of champagne and fuck knows what else.
She would initially tell you you’re meeting outside her place but she’s really just walking over two minutes from the bar where she’s working for the night along with 3-4 other wastes of human flesh who will jump at any foreigner on Tinder. Many of them barely even speak a word of English.
It’s what’s called a “legitimate” bar scam, i.e. bar appears completely normal, even the bartenders do one was a young guy and another a reasonable looking woman, then there was a manager who was clearly full of shit and a bouncer guy sitting near the entrance. They make it half legitimate so it won’t get shut down, high prices but you’re not paying 500 dollars unless you start ordering champagne and shit. For my own safety I was taking pictures and videos at the bar and including of the girl, bartender and bouncer and they didn’t seem to mind if anything they were happy to indulge.
(This post was last modified: 02-27-2019 03:48 AM by Vincent Chase.)
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| 02-27-2019 03:47 AM |
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The following 1 user Likes Vincent Chase's post:1 user Likes Vincent Chase's post
OM88
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Vincent Chase
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RE: The Saint Petersburg Scammers
(06-06-2018 06:32 PM)qwertyuiop Wrote: Pay with credit card, go home, call CC company and dispute charge and report fraud.
Just don't sign or scribble so they cant tell
not sure how legal this is tho lol
They try to work around that now. The scam bar I went to didn’t accept cards and only cash or a “money transfer” whatever the fuck that is I assume a bank transfer. (You’d have to be crazy to do a bank transfer in a bar.) As such you have no option for ever getting your money back. At one point I said I didn’t have any more cash and the girl said I can do a bank transfer. Told her I’m not retarded. She said she can pay for the drinks herself, of course she didn’t and would have no doubt made me foot the bill for the next round anyway.
They also push you to play music you like assumingly then asking you to pay per song when you get the bill. The girl will keep ordering shit as much as she can drinks, food, shisha and will try to get you drunk and go for the more expensive items like a bottle of champagne and fuck knows what else.
She would initially tell you you’re meeting outside her place but she’s really just walking over two minutes from the bar where she’s working for the night along with 3-4 other wastes of human flesh who will jump at any foreigner on Tinder. Many of them barely even speak a word of English.
It’s what’s called a “legitimate” bar scam, i.e. bar appears completely normal, even the bartenders do one was a young guy and another a reasonable looking woman, then there was a manager who was clearly full of shit and a bouncer guy sitting near the entrance. They make it half legitimate so it won’t get shut down, high prices but you’re not paying 500 dollars unless you start ordering champagne and shit. For my own safety I was taking pictures and videos at the bar and including of the girl, bartender and bouncer and they didn’t seem to mind if anything they were happy to indulge.
(This post was last modified: 02-27-2019 03:53 AM by Vincent Chase.)
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| 02-27-2019 03:51 AM |
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Tail Gunner
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RE: The Saint Petersburg Scammers
The first time that I ever heard of this scam, many years ago, it was known as the Riga bar scam. I read a funny article years ago about how the scam was pulled on a detective from the UK who was on vacation. When the detective tried to leave the bar without paying, he got into a fight with several bouncers and absolutely destroyed them. I seem to recall that he even bit off a portion of one of their ears. Because the detective had some clout in his home country, it caused a minor international incident and caused major embarassment to Riga and Latvia. I wish I could locate the news article that I read.
At any rate, Riga now has a special police unit that deals with fraud against tourists:
Quote:In Latvia the biggest surprise was 10,000 USD for a bottle of cheap champagne. However the bar had a wrong person for the victim – it was an official from one of the embassies in Riga, Latvia…
Tallinn | Riga | Vilnius the scheme was one and the same. Nice looking young ladies with perfect English lured foreigners into the bars. After a few drinks, the unsuspected foreigner was getting a bill for several grands for a few drinks.
Bar – Girls scam was one of the main reason for Riga City Council to create a special unit within the municipal police: Riga Tourist Municipal Police.
”Riga Municipal Police has a specialised Tourist Unit, which ensures public order, as well as provides information to foreign visitors about the opportunity for assistance in case of incidents like theft, lost property and fraud. A 24-hour information Hotline +371 67181818 has been introduced for foreign nationals. Information is provided in Latvian, Russian, and English.”
https://www.balticsecurity.org/bar_girls_scam/
Nonetheless, various forms of the scam are still going on strong, including massive credit card overcharges. It is best to always pay using cash.
https://www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/21110/
(This post was last modified: 02-27-2019 07:26 PM by Tail Gunner.)
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| 02-27-2019 07:10 PM |
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No More Mr. Soy Boy
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JaegerMeester
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RE: The Saint Petersburg Scammers
(02-27-2019 04:26 AM)No More Mr. Soy Boy Wrote: I saw this multiple times in Old Town Bucharest (don't ever go there by the way) last summer.
I tried to tell a drunk American guy who probably thought he had won the lottery when he got the attention from two 7's in the bar and they kept bringing in expensive champagne and all kinds of shit to where they were sitting. This dude tried to kiss one of the girls multiple times but she just turned away and asked the bar for more drinks.
As the dude came out from the toilets I went up to him and told him he was getting scammed and should be aware and then he thanked me and said I was right and unfortunately, he had gotten himself a bit too drunk. Then these two girls screamed "what are you doing??" in bad English and called for the bartenders. Then the bartenders started to scream at me in Romanian and soon two bouncers came and wrestled me out from the place.
As I then stood outside two Romanian guys who had saw what happened came up to me and we started talking. They said this behavior and scam is normal in Romania. Romanians rarely do it to one another but they do it to westerners because they don't value westerners. In their opinion, Americans and other Europeans already have a lot of money so it's fine to scam them.
The East coast (many Hungarians live in the west side and it's significantly better) of Romania is a shit hole filled with people who try to scam you like this just like in Saint Petersburg.
Yes, this is very common (lived there for 1,5 years; still need to drop a slightly out-of-date datasheet on it). In the old town, for game purposes, there is only Nomad's and Freddo's... slightly high gold digger ratio, but the trick is to get your own bottle for 200-300 lei and have the girls flock to you. Anybody asking you for a drink up front in Romania is at best a gold digger. A lot of the normal bars have hot girls that they pay to be there, and they take a cut from the drinks they make chums buy for them. It is really funny, because a lot of my coworkers or acquaintances would still go to the shoddy old town bars, which I never really understood. Ah well.
As a ps, go to the clubs in the north around Floreasca/Dorobanti. Or E3 if you want a bar. Still a fair amount of gold diggers, but for the quality, one can't do much better in Bucharest.
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| 02-28-2019 04:48 PM |
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No More Mr. Soy Boy
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