Scammed in Split
First post!

I was in Croatia a couple of years ago with a good friend. On the last day we took a busride out to a quaint village near Split. We asked for and bought two return tickets so we could get back again. We spent the day wandering around at our leisure, bought a few postcards of dalmatian dogs with dolphins jumping over them (?) and then went for dinner before heading back. We found a taverna with what looked like a good 'meal deal'; three courses for a very reasonable price. Not eating meat I ordered the fish choice and my friend had the chicken choice. My starter of 'soup' turned up and when I asked what flavour it was I was told 'the flavour is red'. Fine, I thought, well I'll just give it a go. It was ok, the fish main course was alright but we were both looking forward to sating our sweet tooth for the final dish. Out came dessert - one biscuit each, laid on a white napkin. Great. Rip off #1!

Anyway, off we went to get on the bus back to Split. Again we checked that the tickets were returns. 'Yes' affirmed the driver and he waved us on to the bus. About 20 minutes into the journey we came across a huge traffic jam caused by an accident. We waited patiently a while and then some conducters came onto the bus to check tickets. No problem we thought. 'These are not return tickets' we were told. 'Yes they are' we said. 'No they aren't'... etc etc. The conducters started threatening fines and charges despite our protestations. I pointed at the bus driver and said that he had assured us we had returns so it must be his fault not ours. He then eventually just got off the bus anyway and someone else got on. At this point the group of Croatian students behind started shouting 'Girl Power' and punching the air. But did they offer to translate and help us out? Nope. We eventually got back to Split at 10pm to arrive at a deserted square in the dark. Suddenly no one is around but three conducters demanding we pay £50 or they would call the police and we would have to pay £500. No chance of this and by this point I'd given up on broken english and had swapped to german which they all understood better. We tried to explain it was our last day there and we had no money but soon enough they made the call to the 'police' and then demanded our passports. No chance of me handing my passport over to anyone who is wearing a makeshift uniform. In the end we gave them the equivalent of £5 which was all we had and this bizarrely was enough. They wrote us out a receipt, shook our hands and trilled 'Guten Abend' as they walked off. Rip Off #2!

On another matter, how's this for being ripped off. My partner was contracted to live in a house for a year only to be told one day that they weren't liked anymore and had to move out. This would have been ok if my partner had the chance to just quietly move away but one day we turned up to find the entire room inexplicably packed into boxes (sample box contents: one cashmere jumper, one packet of crisps, one bag of pasta, one tub of fishtank gravel, one glass lamp, one bottle of wine, underwear, one camera) - no prior warning given or permission asked for. The house was a total shithole anyway - RIP OFF!
(Rosemarysbaby, Tue 20 Feb 2007, 11:44, Reply)