Budapest Taxi Scam! BE AWARE!!!!

Taxi scams seemed fairly common in Budapest. We experienced it first hand and would like to warn fellow travelers about what happened.

We booked a dinner cruise with folklore dance and live music performance from Viator. (Check out the link here: https://www.viator.com/Budapest/d499-ttd/p-5808DINNER?pid=P00136102&mcid=42383&medium=link). The dinner and performance were great and we had a good time. Hotel pickup was included in my option when booking, however, drop off was not, which became the issue.

There were several taxis waiting at the port when the cruise was over. We did not have any issues with getting taxis at taxi stands in any other European country, so we didn’t think much about it, which turned out to be a big mistake!

All taxis waiting there were yellow taxi-like cars with taxi stand on top of the cars. When we approached to the taxis, one particular car honked and informed us that he was the first one ( if you have gotten a taxi from a taxi stand in Europe, or even back home, they go by orders they arrived). Once again, all taxis there looked alike in yellow cab look and we didn’t think much about it. Unfortunately, we didn’t take any pictures of the car or the driver.

We told the driver our hotel and he recognized it right away. So we got in the car.

The driver spoke decent English and was very chatty. But a few moments later, I realized that he did not turn on his meters. First red flag! But we didn’t say anything at that point.

The ride was about 12-15 minutes. On the way to the cruise, the pickup included in my Viator booking was made by a city taxi and the meter read about 3400 HUF (approx $9) back then. When we arrived back at the hotel, the driver informed us the fare was to be 3910 HUF (approx $11), which wasn’t too far off from earlier. I was a little relieved that the fare wasn’t crazy since he didn’t turn on his meter. TOO SOON!

The driver then produced a white credit card reading machine and said he only took cards. We didn’t have any Euros cash left on us and we hadn’t had the chance to take any cash in HUF yet, so we gladly accepted the card only policy, which should be our second red flag!

We tried one card that we just used to purchase drinks at the dinner cruise, but the machine turned red, seemingly indicating the transaction didn’t go through and the driver said the card didn’t work. We tried a second card that we used to pay hotel city taxes earlier, and the machine turned red again. We still didn’t think too much about it, but it really should be another red flag for us that we used both cards just minutes or hours ago and knew they worked perfectly fine. So we tried out a third card and this time, the machine turned green and indicated it went through.

Nothing really alerted us at this point, until I received a text message and an email from my credit card company just minutes later. The text message asked me to confirm if I have made a transaction for $108.60. At the beginning I wasn’t even sure if the text message was legit since all the text message scams, etc. But I also received an email about it from Chase, my credit card provider. That’s when we started to get suspicious and checked the other credit cards the driver claimed to be “declined”. Sure enough we found the pending transactions showing on the other two cards we tried as well.

We had to contact our banks to report the fraudulent charges and had to cancel those cards to be safe. Cancelling three credit cards amid international travel is inconvenient and could be extremely problematic if they were our only access to funds, but we don’t have many choices at that point, do we?

We talked to the hotel reception staff about the incident later. The hotel staff informed us that even though they look like a yellow cab, they might not actually belong to any of the main taxi companies and they could be “freelancers”. The hotel staff also informed us that there is a button on those types of credit card readers to make the lights red so the customers thought their cards were declined when they were not.

I started to do some research and found out that many people had experienced similar scams in Budapest for years. It’s sad that the local authorities haven’t seemed to do anything or create better regulations. Some advices for fellow travelers to prevent the inconvenience and frustration we suffered:

1. Do NOT hail a taxi on the street or from the taxi stand!

2. Use the taxi app such as Bolt, City Taxi, Fotaxi, etc. or call the taxi companies directly to get a ride.

3. Do NOT pay cash in HUF! I read about someone paid 5,000 HUF but was told by the driver they only handed a 500 instead, or the driver will give the change in Indonesian currency, which worth significantly less.

4. Get a picture of the taxi’s license plate BEFORE getting in.

5. ALWAYS asked for a receipt.

Hopefully this will help save someone from a similar situation and we surely will be more alert about this kind of thing in our remaining time in Europe!