What's the French for scam?
2007-10-22 11:45
Brakpan - South African singer Sunette Bridges has been taken for a very expensive (R87 000) ride in Paris, France, by a bogus travel agent who was supposed to arrange accommodation for her and her partner.
Bridges and her companion Tommy Lawson have been in Paris since September for recordings at the World Cup rugby tournament, amongst other things.
Speaking from Paris on Friday, where she also watched the final between South Africa and England, Sunette said they discovered that their prepaid accommodation, where they were to have stayed until October 25, did not exist.
In fact, they were to discover, neither did the travel agent through whom they had done their booking.
'Just a misunderstanding'
"When Tommy and I landed in Paris on Wednesday morning October 5, we couldn't wait to get to the picturesque flat where we were booked.
"When our pre-arranged transport did not arrive at the airport, we got a taxi after waiting for two hours, and thought there had just been a misunderstanding.
"When we got to the pavement in front of 7 Rue Veledon, we were surprised to see that it was nowhere near the Eiffel Tower (as advertised on the website) but in fact in quite a seedy part of Paris.
"And when we rang the doorbell, there was no porter to welcome us. In fact there was nothing vaguely resembling the photos we'd seen on the website.
"We finally phoned our agent in South Africa to find out what had happened to the agent to whom we had already paid R87 000 for our accommodation!
"There we were sitting on a pavement in Paris, with our luggage around us, using up all our cellphone airtime, just to find out that we had been scammed! Big time!"
They eventually found a coffee shop that charged R80 for a cup of coffee, not R90 like the others, and waited for word from their South African agent.
Another shock
He contacted them two hours later to tell them he had arranged accommodation for them. Convinced that their South African agent had arranged everything for them, yet another shock awaited them.
"When we landed at the Paris Marriot hotel we were asked for a credit card to pay the R3 000 a night it was going to cost us, in advance. So, after just six hours in Paris we were already R97 000 poorer than when we arrived here."
They spent their first week in Paris haunting the South African embassy in a bid to trace the bogus agent, a certain Toby Summers.
He also did not exist, apparently.
"We're staying in a 4m² flat at an additional cost of R48 000 and we have to put in a stiff 50 minute walk every day to get to our place of work."