City Guide
Answers
Login
Home
/
Community
/
Forums
/ Post a Reply
Post a Reply
Thread: Tell Others Your Travel Traps here!
Title:
(100 characters at most)
Content: ( 3,000 characters at most, please )
You can add emoticons below to your post by clicking them.
[quote=GUESTC MAYNARD,435456]i had pre-booked an apartment for three weeks in shanghai using a website called move and stay , i live in the u.k. with my chinese wife and we were travelling to china to visit her family , my first visit was 3 years ago and we based ourselves in bejing and travelled to henan , we had booked anapartment then directly from the owner and had no problems , so i didnt contemplate there be any problems on this occassion either . i had paid move and stay $180 for the deposit they wanted for a two bedroomed apartment in shanghai for three weeks , the balance and further deposit was to be paid directly to the agent in shanghai in RMB , we had no problems with this , the apartment building was called shanghai metro gardens serviced apartment and it was described as being a holiday apartment in a nice area and not too far from attractions .the agent in shanghai was a chinese lady but spoke good english and she was very helpful and sent us directions to the apartment. we left heathrow on 27th july 2011 and arrived at pudong airport on 28th in the morning , after collecting our cases we made our way to the currency exchange kiosks but the exchange rates at the airport was very low and i knew i could get a better rate from visiting a bank , we proceeded to take a taxi and asked the taxi driver to take us to a bank of china branch , i needed about 8000 yuan to pay the apartment balance and deposit , we collected our currency at a much better rate then the airport currency kiosks and made our way to the apartment address we had been sent by the shanghai agent , the taxi driver stopped at a building in gonghexin road and pointed to a building , my first reaction was of disbelief , this could not be the building i had seen photos of on the move and stay website , i suddenly got that feeling that i was being conned , we proceeded to the building compound , there were about 3 buildings huddled together , there were people loittering outside , one man looked drunk , my wife then contacted the agent on the number she had given us to tell her we had arrived and we needed to get to our apartment building but she told us that we were already there , we entered the lobby of the building which was poorly lit and at that point i refused to go any further , my wife then contacted the agent , i spoke to her and she told me that i had booked the apartment in that building , i told her there was no way we were staying there , she said there was one other option but it was a one bedrrom apartment , i agreed to look at it and she instructed her assistant to take us on foot to a building that was situated around the corner , that building was worse than the first one , we got in the lift and the assistant got out at floor 24 but asked us to continue to floor 26 where she would meet us , at that point we decided to get out of the building , we went to a local hotel and stayed one night and we had to arrange accomodation from the internet . i am so glad we walked away .[/quote]
characters left
Name:
Get a new code