Turkey was one of the first countries to remove their ban on travel in response to the Coronavirus. Since the middle of 2020 Istanbul became a haven for tourists who wanted to experience a Mediterranean summer, unique historical locations, and chic European vibes. If you are thinking about travelling to Turkey within the next year, here are some tourist traps you need to be aware of. Istanbul is generally a safe city with lots of friendly people. However, I have run into a few scams while here, and have read about some worse ones online.
The Turkish people were also hit hard by the economic repercussions of the Coronavirus. It’s no surprise to see some enterprising Turks making a few extra Liras at the expense of tourists. There are many success stories of business innovation during the pandemic, but many more sole traders are struggling. Keep it in mind when you’re travelling there. You might run into some tourist traps, and it’s not a reflection of the people but rather the economic difficulties that we have all been facing globally.
Even the human urge to help someone else when they drop something of theirs has become an avenue for scammers.
The humble taxi
I had always heard people’s advice, watch out for taxi scams, although I never really knew what it meant. I have become familiar with a few key destinations, how long it takes to get there, and how much it will cost. Sometimes a 10-15 minute journey will cost you just under 20 Liras, then the same journey back home might cost you 35 Liras. Our expat friends have also had the same experience.
Many taxi drivers have a pretty good mental map of Istanbul, but others have no idea where they’re going and they won’t always let you know that. So even if they’re being honest, you might end up taking the long way home with them. Sometimes I just let them borrow my google maps; it felt awkward to lend them my phone initially, but at the same time at least I could be promised where we were going and how long it would take.
I would like to say; ‘try to avoid using taxis’. However, I know sometimes this might not always be possible. Perhaps you are carrying a lot of stuff with you or you want to go somewhere a little away from public transport. You may even want to avoid the congestion that is part and parcel of public transport, especially while the Coronavirus is still being transmitted.
In our experience, if you hail a taxi off the street or in front of a mall you are playing a game of luck. Sometimes the taxis will have all kinds of official-looking stickers inside, and sometimes they won’t have any. I’m still not sure which one I feel more comfortable with. Sometimes you pay the right amount and sometimes you are charged 20 Lira more. I’ve never really tried to argue with the taxi driver on the price. The language barrier also doesn’t help; almost all drivers I have had do not have a strong grasp over English, and my Turkish isn’t anywhere near good enough to call them out on their high prices.
If you must take a taxi, I have two recommendations to help you not get trapped. Firstly, if you need to take a taxi off the street make sure to agree with the driver about the price before getting in the car. If it is too much either try and haggle for a cheaper price or do not get in the car. You will not be able to discuss price once you have started your journey in the taxi.
I have made this mistake before; your getting in their car is an indication of your agreement to the price. If they point at the metre and say they will use it, proceed at your own discretion. If you notice that the metre isn’t running once you’re in the car, make sure to remind the driver of it until they turn it on. Another thing to note is that hotels are often situated in high traffic areas; many drivers will up the price due to the inconvenience of being stuck in traffic.
My other recommendation would be using the government app iTaksi. This will be easy if you already purchased a Turkish sim for your stay. The app is a little tricky to use sometimes as you need to indicate your pickup point and if you don’t know the street names that can be difficult. However, I feel like every person we have used with the app has been both pleasant and well priced. Because the app calculates fares based on distance, you can avoid being over-charged because of high traffic. I would even recommend the app over asking your hotel to call a taxi. Generally, the taxis that hotels call are trustworthy but every now and then one dodgy operator will slip in and your ride will be a little more expensive.
A polite no is sometimes all people need and they will move on.
Read the prices
Shopping and even walking around in Istanbul is an activity that requires my complete focus. This is my own personal experience, as it’s a foreign city with a foreign language, and my mind is trying to stay active and alert all the time. Operating like this all the time can wear you out quickly and every now and then, that’s when you can get caught out by this tourist trap. Buying something from a shop and paying the amount that it says on the menu is somewhat of a luxury I have discovered. Sometimes shop owners will try and add some sneaky extra charges onto your purchase. You need to be observant, look at the price of what you’re paying for and check your statement before paying.
I have two separate instances of this; both at the open food court in Cevahir Mall. The first happened at a place that sold Turkish food. I checked that a serve of rice and some meat would equal around 15 Lira. I decided to try out my Turkish and asked how much it would be, the seller said 19 Lira. In that second I thought, ‘On dokuz doesn’t sound like fifteen to me’. I politely asked him something like ‘not 15?’ in my broken Turkish. He played it off as incorrect counting and then charged me the correct price. The important lesson here was in that split second, if I wasn’t paying attention, I could have paid more than I needed for my meal, even if it was only a few Lira extra.
On my second visit to Cevahir Mall, I wasn’t so lucky. I also complained about this the day it happened on my Instagram. My wife and I went to a Krispy Kreme outlet and bought the 5 doughnuts, 1 free deal. Pretty standard in most cases, we thought, we also bought a drink. Somehow our total ended up being 80 Liras but, including the drink, it should’ve been somewhere closer to 50 Lira. However, neither of us were really paying attention and I took my cash out and paid for it. Only later did we realise that we had paid for, a metallic promotional box as well. The man serving us must have put the doughnuts in there behind the counter, and not the regular paper box, we simply nodded our heads and paid, without even looking!
Shoe Cleaners
I’m not sure what it is about shoe shiners or shoe cleaners. We never really had them in Australia and all I’ve ever seen of them is in period films, generally set in Europe. So I don’t know if it’s something a little more European or if it’s something that people like because it feels nostalgic. Either way, someone like me who’s never experienced it might find shoe shining interesting, at least for photo’s sake!
There’s quite an intricate tourist trap where somehow a shoe shiner will offer to clean your shoes out of good favour. It gets murky because they will never say free, but they’re just so friendly! We’ve seen one particular guy who waits at a corner that leads out from our hotel, lots of tourists coming in and out! Essentially he will pick his target and drop something in their way, once you pick it up he will gratefully offer to clean your shoes. Once all is said and done he will then ask for a pretty high payment. If you don’t pay up, then he will berate you and normally that might be too difficult a situation for tourists to get out of; so they pay him. Even the human urge to help someone else when they drop something of theirs has become an avenue for scammers.
If you’re really in need of a shoe cleaning, most hotels have little shoe polish kits you can request and take back with you. For other discussions on packing and utilising your resources, check out my article here.
Similarly, as my wife and I were walking down the street, we were speaking in English. A nice old man started a conversation with us and pointed out some sights to see. Eventually, he opened up more to us, saying he had kids in another city, asked about where we from, soon enough things were getting friendly. He then asked if we wanted our shoes shined, for 1 Lira, to which we said no. We decided better not to open that discussion. If you would like to experience have your shoes shined but avoid falling into any tourist traps, pay attention to the places that the locals go to get their shoes shined. There are still some of the old generation who get this done from some honest operators.
Registration Fees
We were stung by this tourist trap when we had some issues with our sim card. Getting a Turkish sim card, and whether you are staying short-term or long-term, is another complicated matter to discuss in a different post. After living here for three months, our phones stopped working. Despite the fact that we had Turkish sims and phones, we were disconnected from the network.
We went to a Turkcell phone dealer at Cevahir Mall, I’m starting to notice some patterns about the people at this place. The guys at the Turkcell said it was just a simple matter of entering our new details into their system. Everything seemed fine, then our attendant asked us for a 100 Lira registration fee. If you’ve noticed a pattern; no registration happened.
There were some red flags that I should have noticed early on. When I asked the manager to translate for me, our attendant got defensive. Secondly, when I asked for a receipt or proof of the registration I paid for, they could not produce anything. Unfortunately, by then I had already paid. After checking the Google reviews for this particular branch, it seems like the 100 Lira registration scam is a tourist trap others have fallen for as well. If only I’d checked that beforehand!
Just buy what you need
Not to get all motherly on you, but only buy what you need. When we are visiting a place for the first time we can often get caught up in the environment. Sometimes a seller is just so charismatic that, without any real sort of pressure, you find yourself buying more items. A scarf to go with your earrings, some chocolate along with that Turkish coffee you got, and so on. After speaking with a few Turks, this is something that sellers do here. After all, they want to make as large a profit as possible.
When you are shopping, mentally set in place some boundaries. How much money are you willing to spend and how many things do you want to take back with you. Allow for some leniency, because you may find something amazing you never knew you wanted before. This is less of a tourist trap and ore just a sales tactic that sellers use. That way you won’t come back from a milk run with bread, pickles, a kebab, and sweets as well.
Be prepared early, always be about your wits, don’t forget you can just say no
Being travel savvy, and avoiding tourists traps, is about being prepared. It’s about knowing what to expect before you arrive at a certain situation. Yes, that can be hard, and it just sounds like more work. However, if you read travel experiences like my own, as well as other peoples, you will at least have a general idea about what things to expect. Whenever you go shopping, bring your wits as well as your wallet. Also never forget that you can just say no. A polite no is sometimes all people need and they will move on. I have seen beggars and street sellers follow people down the street because they just decided not to say anything. Acknowledge them for the human they are; give them a shake of the head or a wave of the hand and hopefully, they will leave you alone
1 COMMENTS
Comments are closed.