I Smell a Scam: Trials and Tribulations at the Johannesburg Airport
Normally I would have some pretty choice language to help narrate this story but I want to keep it as PG as possible….enjoy.
We left the Air France lounge in Paris completely spent. Let it be noted that no amount of free cheese and champagne could make me feel any better about the twin babies who bawled at the top of their little lungs almost non-stop the whole time we where there. Baaabies….currently on my top five “least favorite living things” list.
We boarded our AirFrance Airbus…more like battle ship. Two full decks of seats. (we got to be on top!) This plane was literally larger than life. After two Tylenol pm in the lounge and a glass of grape juice I mistook for wine, I was out like a light…missing dinner which was served around midnight and the screams of the little Dutch baaabies. Yikes. We arrived in Johannesburg at 10am and passed through passport control and baggage claim with zero problems. I was admiring all of the World Cup signage when things went from great to complete crap. A nice gentleman approached us as we searched for the South African Airlines ticket counter and directed us to a group of black and orange dressed men called “porters.” A rather dodgy fellow steered our luggage cart as we followed him through the airport. When I say dodgy I mean blind in one eye, skinnier than a meth head in Granite Falls and the proud owner of roughly three very yellow teeth. A real gem.
Red Flag number one, he mentioned something about our bags being too heavy on the escalator… yes you read that correctly. He was talking in a low voice about the cost of extra weight, but it was difficult to understand him and I truthfully wasn’t really expecting to being scammed that soon so my radar was down. From what I could make out we were going to have to pay extra for the bags, not surprising since we were sitting economy class on this flight and I am embarrassed to admit the bigger of my two suitcases is about 64lbs. (I am moving to Florence for four months!) Next we made our way to the ticket counter but first weighed all of our luggage on one scale that was separate from where we checked them, we then got a receipt which apparently said we were 35kg overweight. (Red flag number two the porter didn’t talk to the scale workers in English.) I still didn’t really get what was happening until after we had our boarding passes and the sketch-wad porter was still with us trying to explain how, “we just can pay him since he saved us a money on our overweight luggage.” DUPED! Not even 10 minutes after getting to Africa! Finally I stopped him and made him explain the details of his scam, which I discovered was a pretty simple scheme. Basically the employees there have some kind of system where the porters convince the idiot tourists like myself that they’ll take their bags and then get them checked for less than what they would pay to the airline and in turn they get cash and the people at the ticket counter get a cut. After a few frustrating minutes of dealing with the porter (trying the weigh my options and wishing I knew metrics and the local currency better) I finally paid him $50 USD (more than he makes in a week I bet!)…I am still pissed about this. Lesson learned: No one touches my bags but me.
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