Ever got to a checkout, seen the numbers ping on the screen and thought “whhhhaaaaaaaaaat?!” Maybe you were buying a pint of milk from a petrol station or buying a single train ticket. When was the last time you were ripped-off and where? This post is dedicated to the everyday rip-offs which come out of nowhere and hit you like a ton of bricks.
The safest thing to do if you don’t want to get ripped off is to simply stay in at all times, lock all the doors and hide under the duvet. However, this is not always practical so I thought I’d open up this page to readers who may have encountered rip offs in this country or anywhere in the world. Please drop me an email or let me know if you’ve had a similar experience in the comments section below.
I’ll start us off…
– I was in New York last year and bought a salt beef sandwich from a famous deli called Katz, in Lower East Side. The guy I ordered from threw together their supposedly ‘world beating’ sandwich with utter disgust and then charged me $14. For ONE sandwich. It looked like a kebab and tasted approximately 4,000 times less exciting.
– Recently a friend of mine paid a whopping £80 for two adults and two children to go to London Zoo. When the kids got peckish he thought he’d be fairly safe getting them burgers… he wasn’t. 4 cheeseburgers and 1 apple juice came to £26! That’s a £106 for half a day out.
– I once went to ‘Pacha’ the ‘super club’ in Ibiza. It’s definitely not my usual scene (I looked about as natural as a polar bear in Burma) but I was being treated to a free holiday by a trendy brand who I’d done some work for. They were paying for everything which was just as well… On one occasion I found myself stranded at the bar and ordered a bottle of beer. It came to 12 euros. Water was the same price – 12 euros for one bottle!
When was the last time you paid through the nose for very little and where? I’m sure it would be helpful for other readers to know, whether they’re planning a day out of visiting a new area, where the rip off merchants are.
2 responses to “What’s your favourite rip off?”
Biggest Rip Off
I visited a friend in NYC for Thanksgiving this November and she bought tickets to see Al Pacino in Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway. Actually the ticket prices weren’t too bad about USD125, which was cheap compared to the previous year when he was Shylock in the Merchant of Venice and tickets started at USD300. No, the rip off was two large gin and tonics (tonic from a nozzle), no ice, no lemon, plastic glasses, at the theatre bar came to USD50 + tip…
I’ve lost count of the number of times that i’ve nearly been ripped off in supermarkets, Asda in particular since that’s where i do most of my shopping. CHECK YOUR RECEIPT!!!
Once had a £15 “Combo Meal” on a receipt – had no idea what it was but i certainly did not have one. Funnily enough Customer Services had no idea what it was either! REFUND! Watch out for “Special Offers”. 4 bottles of beer at 4 for £5.00 – sounds good till you get charged £1.80 each! One brand had just gone off offer 15 minutes ago which was why all four were charged at full price! They had not yet changed the labels on the shelf. REFUND!
The one point is that I would probably have not noticed this overcharging if i had a trolley-full but since i only had a few items the rip off was obvious.
CHECK YOUR RECEIPT!!