Portugal: "legal" (buyer beware) scams?

Which airline? Carry on weight restrictions are usually on the airline's website. I've never seen it on a boarding pass.

Quite a few international airlines have a combind weight limit for the carry-on bag and personal item, so that gate-check charge, while exorbitant, was probably not a scam. The bag size and weight limits (which can vary by type of ticket purchased) are not uniform and have changed over time. It's essential to check that information before you buy any airline ticket if you'll have anything with you. If you are over the limit, it will usually be a lot cheaper to pay online to check a bag rather than having to do it at the gate.

ATM: As you said, read the instructions. To call it a scam is really ridiculous. I have to do the same in every foreign country I'm in.

Taxi: Happened to me in the US too. Not nice, but it happens everywhere on this planet. That's why I always keep a close eye on the meter - especially in countries where there are day and night tariffs. Is that why I'm mad at the country? No, because such people are everywhere.

Flight: I don't think it's good to speak of a scam here either. It also helps to familiarize yourself with the instructions.

All in all, a post that annoys me somehow. Not because I'm European, but because I find it really exhausting that people tend to shout scam when it's their own fault.

I apologize for being the unfriendly German for once, but that had to be said now.

My guess is the OP flew with TAP Air. They have a weight limit of maximum 10 kg for hand luggage and 2 kg for the personal item. So if the 2 items together were more than 12 kg, you were over the limit which is clearly stated on their website
https://www.flytap.com/en-nl/baggage/hand-baggage
So this isn’t a scam at all. In fact it seems they were trying to do you a favor. It seems your hand luggage was over 10 kg, so they were already in their right to charge for it. But by weighing your personal item, they offered the opportunity to check to see if the total weight was under 12kg. If that was the case, you could have moved some items from your hand luggage to your personal item.
So, no not a scam. In fact the airline could claim you were trying to scam them by taking more hand luggage than you paid for…..

This electronic world is getting harder to navigate for some of us. Machines have gotten ticker and trickier. It's not Portugal's fault because I've run into tricky machines in Spain and even where I live in France. Yes, it's on purpose.

I've never had a taxi problem in Portugal but did in my hometown in the US and a doozy in Bordeaux. And we speak both languages. It can happen anywhere.

Others pointed out your misunderstanding of the luggage rules. Yes, those get trickier and trickier, too. You have to be really aware if you buy a bargain ticket. Those are gotchas. I can't deal with those, so I budget for more expensive tickets. At least it wasn't Frontier Airlines where agents get commission on getting a gotcha.

No need to apologize for the upset German. What I appreciate about this forum is civil disagreement.

Upon reflecting further, I suppose the frustration was due to misaligned expectations based on assumptions I made (perhaps, as the uninformed American).

• Misleading ATM UX - As someone who works on websites and apps that try hard to not mislead people this website approach should win awards for achieving its goal (monetization) without user consent. Some could also argue that Google isn't doing anything misleading by putting its ad links higher up than its search results (as the paid ads have slightly different coloring and labels).

• Taxi - I was too trusting here. Individual taxi drivers ripping off tourists in any country aren't seeing the bigger picture of how Uber can just come in and take over an antiquated system. I've learned my lesson and in the future will divert less of my funds directly into the taxi driver's hands.

• Airline - much appreciated to the poster who found the weblink. That pointed me to another link that showed fees for checked baggage that don't match the USD of what I was charged. My issue here is with transparency of information and consistency in website information (again, I'm in the web industry). Incorrect assumptions: what's on the website should also match what's on the electronic (email) check-in notification and electronic confirmation (which said to look at my online boarding pass), and the online PDF boarding pass (which said nothing about weights or fees, just dimensions). The TAPPortugal website UX wasn't ideal either. We had the same baggage when flying from Lisbon - Tenerife, Tenerife - Madrid, Madrid - Marrakech -- when our bags had to be checked at any prior times, there was no fee, and we did not have mandates to check our bags.

Yes this is buyer beware, and making any assumptions about an airline's website informativeness (or a business's willingness to address frequent areas of tourist customer confusion) was a mistake. The lesson learned? "Expect nothing", which is unfortunate.

Dutch_traveler - yes, TAP Portugal. We booked the trip via United Airlines. Looks like TAPPortugal is part of the Star Alliance which is how their flights were sold to us. And there's nothing specific on their website about fees for baggage "at the gate". Just "other fees apply". Indeed.

As someone who works on websites and apps that try hard to not mislead people this website approach should win awards for achieving its goal (monetization) without user consent.

I think you're giving FAR too much credit to the European, especially Iberian, thoughtfulness and skill in UX. It can be bad, and confusing without the intent of being misleading.

We were in Portugal this past spring. I do a lot of research before travel and that helps a lot. We did use the Multibanco ATMs a few times. They were in English and we had been warned to watch the prompts by a Facebook Portugal group that I followed. If you were using Euronet, or similar, yes, probably set up to mislead you, or at the very least to make a lot of money, but that would likely be the same anywhere in Europe using that type of ATM.

I tend not to use taxis for a lot of reasons. We use public transportation a lot wherever we travel. In Lisbon, we took the convenient metro right by the airport exit. We actually had A LOT of problems with Uber in Lisbon and Sintra (lots of no shows, or would accept the drive and cancel after 10 minutes). Our three taxi experiences which were to the bus station in Porto, the bus station in Evora and to the airport in Lisbon worked quite well. We really appreciated our taxi driver in Lisbon. We were late to the airport because we waited a long time for a couple different no show Uber drivers. His route to the airport was efficient and knew the best place to drop us at the airport and even told us which direction to go in the terminal. Also the ride was quite cheap. Maybe 25 euro is my recollection. Every hotel/innkeeper we asked about Uber (in Sintra, in Lisbon, in Porto, in Evora), said, do not use it, they are not reliable, which was our experience. In talking to folks about Uber in Europe and probably some places in the U.S. is the platform, itself, less so the drivers.

Your airline experience is unlikely unique to Portugal. It probably has everything to do with the airline chosen. I've never flown a budget airline, but if I did, I would be expecting them to be a stickler on baggage.

We thought the people in Portugal went out of their way to be friendly and transparent. The only thing that came close to a scam was the "self appointed" parking lot attendants. We didn't mind paying a euro or two for someone that pointed to vacant spots. We thought it was resourceful and we chuckled a bit. I would also guess that there is less crime/break ins because of these guys being in the lot.

The few things that annoyed us about Portugal, were the strikes, lasting for weeks, making it more difficult to plan, and lines probably due to not having a system set up to accommodate what seems to be exponential growth in tourism. e.g. Buying a timed ticket for the Belem monastery means nothing. You simply get into a rapidly growing line with no sun protection and wait, at least an hour, twice. One for the monastery and one for the church. Even there, I'd done a bit of research and talked to other travelers so we were prepared as well as possible.

I understand when a trip doesn't go as planned. In our travels, we felt cheated by an inn in Taormina, my daughter was pickpocketed in Barcelona, on the same trip, one of my daughters dropped my camera in Vienna. My very wise, low key husband, said each time, "Do not let this ruin your trip".

You were charged more for your gate checked bag than what it says on the website for checked bags because there is a penalty for showing up at the gate with more than the 12 kilo allowance for carry on bags.

That is pretty standard for airlines like that with low carry-on allowances. Otherwise everyone would just do as you did—-try to carry on more than allowed rather than pay for a checked bag.

Jules, thank you for writing about your experiences with Lisbon taxis versus Uber. We will be flying into Lisbon next March and I have booked a hotel near Rosso Square ( Praça Dom Pedro IV). This will be in early evening after the long flight from Seattle (via Heathrow), so we will want to keep it simple. I see there is a a metro station nearby so will look into that, but we probably would prefer a taxi as my husband lost his wallet to a pickpocket on a metro in Santiago. It was in a zippered pocket. 😔

As for the ATM and conversion confusion, it begs the question of how much cash are you taking out? Meaning, if it some token amount up to around 50 or 100 euros, even if you make the wrong choice, how much of a penalty does that amount to in the 'scam' user interface? Just chalk it up to the cost of travel and move on...

I obtain the nominal amount of foreign currency I want to have on hand in Europe from my bank, Bank of America, before departing the US. Saves me the frustrations you had, and the concerns of my card getting eaten, or getting skimmed, or someone stealing my card number through nefarious means...I haven't used an ATM for cash in Europe since 2017.

As for the baggage check penalty you got hit with, the failure to read and understand the size and weight restrictions for the airline was your bad. Own it...and I am sure it will never happen to you again.

@Lola, we typically use public transportation to and from airports, but train stations were uphill from our hotel and we had about 8 bottles of wine/olive oil in our luggage. ;) It was a smart decision on our part to elect to use the taxi. Our flight was also early and that was another factor.

@jojo. It's not the piddling amount of money in any of these instances; it's the lack of clarity and/or intentional confusion created to squeeze the customer.

@jojo. It's not the piddling amount of money in any of these instances; it's the lack of clarity and/or intentional confusion created to squeeze the customer.

My philosophy in life, and it especially applies to travel: don't sweat the small stuff...

Jojo - the margin on the conversion "extra" was USD$40 for an attempted EU200 withdrawal. 20% makes for good incentive to keep up the behavior, especially if customer satisfaction & return customers are not a priority. USD$40 for the cost of a mistake may not be a high number for you - absolute or relative. That's not always the case for others.

Scudder - LOL that thought also did cross my mind. It was countered by another thought that, post-COVID, I assumed (again) no international boundaries to remote work meant that anyone with a decent grasp of English (or German) could freelance on anything web-related (design, front-end programming), for anyone in any country. (With the assumed goal of being able to make more money with cross-border work than was available pre-COVID).

Interestingly re: Uber - our driver in SF, CA told us that the app recently was updated so drivers could now see where requesters want to go, and can choose to cancel matches. IDK if the driver still gets penalized like they used to. This is more like common taxi driver behavior - refusing rides. In the past, uber drivers couldn't see the requester's desired destination. The driver could set their city radius / boundaries so they didn't get a match who wanted a long car ride (like SF to Los Angeles), but cancellations came with a penalty to the rider or driver who chose to cancel after a match was made.

With an ATM, you always have the option of terminating the transaction.

I don't feel the OP's ATM's transaction is any more of a scam than my local Well's Fargo. Well's Fargo says there is no fee for obtaining currency for customers, but then the exchange rate is so bad, that I doubt that its a better deal than the "horrible" ATMs (probably Euronet or similar) in Europe.

A point is frequently made that "Europe" is not a single country. But, yet, in some respects, with the EU, some rules governing certain businesses are EU wide. Banking and medication come to mind. The issue with the ATM is not specific to Portugal and Portugal's government likely has little control over ATMs.

Hello Iktraveler1.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. As I plan my next trip to Portugal I’ll be sure to keep these situations in mind. Although I had no issues of this type in 2009 (including flying TAP) things have changed over the last decade plus.