What We do to Prevent Ourselves from Getting Ripped off by Zander



My dad and I outside an Egyptian mosque and about to get asked for money.

            My dad does a lot of things to save money on our world tour. My dad and my mom make budgets for each country that we visit. They try to stay under the budget. When we go to places, we don’t do anything that doesn’t have good value, and that we have negotiated a good deal on. We usually only go out to dinner once a day.  The other meals, we cook for ourselves. When we do go out to dinner, my dad negotiates really hard for a good price. My dad try’s really hard to keep us under budget, he tries to get deals on transportation, stay at cheap hotels, and eat at restaurants with good value.  

            My dad try’s really hard to get cheap transportation, but sometimes we get bad deals. When we were in Turkey, we got a rental car to drive around. My dad thought that he had got a good deal on the car. But the car had a weak battery. When we went in the snow, our chain broke and tore up the underside of the car. We went skiing while the car got sorted out. My dad didn’t like dealing with the rental car company. In the end they fixed our car down the hill in Bursa, and then drove it up to us in Uludag. So we got the car back, and we didn’t have any more problems with it. I think that it was pretty good value, because we didn’t get charged for the cost that it was to fix the car.

            In Greece, we had to get to our apartment from the airport so my family and I took the metro. It cost us 30 euros for the ride. Unfortunately, it didn’t even take us to our station. It turned out that there was protesting at the stop, so it was skipped. We were dumped out in the middle of a nice naborhood that we didn’t know where we were, and had to get a taxi to our apartment. The taxi drove us in circles, for a while, before we got to our apartment. We have also have gotten into really sketchy situations with or cab drivers that we got in Egypt.  In Egypt, we got a taxi to the train station. It was an old man with an old car that didn’t speak English. When we got to the train station, he tripled our rate, and complained when we didn’t tip him enough. After he negotiated the rate down again, my dad was not happy about that transaction.

My dad finally relaxed in Egypt, but he is in a cruise ship on the Mile.

       We are staying at budget accommodations on this world tour, and I have had some really frustrating experiences trying to find hotels late at night in strange places. When we were in Alexandria, we stayed for a night at the Egypt hotel. My dad negotiated the room, with free breakfast, and Wi-Fi. They also only gave us 4 towels to shower with. My mom got really mad and told them that there are 6 of us and that we need to have 6 towels and that we shouldn’t have to pay extra.  Right when we got back from dinner the hotel owner’s son told us that we will have to pay extra if we wanted them and breakfast. He also noted that he wanted to get paid right away and not in the morning. When we were going to check out of the hotel, there was nobody there to take our money but a person sleeping right by the door who would not respond. We left and ate breakfast at a restaurant down the street while my dad found us a new hotel to stay at. I was really glad that I didn’t have to go with my dad, because I would have to walk, and wait for him to negotiate. My dad tries to stay under budget on our accommodations, but we sometimes don’t get what we were promised and that is really frustrating.

            When we go to restaurants, we have to negotiate really hard. We negotiate because we have to pay a premium because there are 6 of us and we eat alot. We have to look at the menu and get a good rate. We also have to make sure that we see all the taxes and service fees that the owners add on to the cost of the food. Before we sit down, we have to know exactly the deal that we have with the restaurants, so we don’t get ripped off.   A common scam was that they gave us a 25% discount that doesn’t include drinks. But they have a 13% service charge, and 11% tax. So they really did not give us a discount. It happened a lot in Egypt. For example when we went to a restaurant near the Luxor temple, we negotiated a 25% discount.  There was a 22% service fee and tax. When we got the bill, we looked it over carefully to make sure that they didn’t add unknown costs onto the bill. It is hard work to get a good deal on a meal of food while we are traveling, but we try to do it so we don’t get ripped off.

    While we have been traveling, we have been trying to travel cheaply. We try really hard not to get ripped off on food, transportation, and lodging. Some times when we can’t get a good price, we have to walk away like when the sellers don’t come down with their price like at the hotels and restaurants. We also have been scammed by taxis in addition to hotels and restaurants.   It is really frustrating when the taxi driver asked for 3 times the price that we agreed on, and daddy has to negotiate it down to the agreed on price.  With all the times that we have been promised stuff and had it taken away. We have learned how to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.