5 Uber & Taxi Scams to Watch Out for in Egypt
Using Uber in Egypt is far easier for tourists to use navigating hailing taxis off the street, but that doesn’t mean you can escape the famous Egyptian taxi-scams! Here’s a quick guide to some of the taxi scams we ran into while traveling Egypt for a month (Tip: we had the most difficult time getting around in Cairo). Consider reading the guide to how to use Uber in Egypt linked below for some more tips on how to get around ⬇️.
Uber in Egypt is easy to use, cheap, and more safe than taxis hailed off of the street.
5 Uber & Taxi Scams In Egypt
🚩 Stopping At A Shop Scam – This scam is way more common with normal taxis than Ubers since Ubers are tracked, but it still happens! Basically, a driver stops at a gift shop, restaurant, or some other attraction mid-way through your trip and tries to get you to buy things, and then they’ll get a commission on the sale.
🚩 Higher Prices For Tourist Locations – This has happened to me a few times while taking Uber. Uber bases its prices off of the distance traveled, but taxi drivers are used to charging tourists extra. So, if you’re going somewhere very touristy like the Pyramids of Giza, or the airport, your driver might say the fair is actually much more than what the app has posted.
🚩 The Fake Uber Scam – If a taxi driver sees you standing around looking at your phone waiting for an Uber, they will pretend to be your Uber so you take their cab instead. Ubers aren’t clearly marked in Egypt so it’s hard to tell what is an Uber and what is a normal cab. To avoid this scam in Egypt, always ask the driver for your name before you get in the car. I saw a girl on TikTok who fell for this scam in Egypt and she thought they were trying to kidnap her! It’s not so sinister, the cab drivers just want to make some money – but it’s a very annoying scam.
🚩 No Change Scam – This is another one that happens all over the world! In Egypt, I had to pay for all of my Ubers in cash since the app wasn’t accepting non-Egyptian credit cards at the time. If the trip cost 20 Egyptian Pounds and I only had a 50-pound note, the Uber driver might refuse to make change and hope to just pocket the remainder. The only way to avoid this scam is by carrying lots of small bills and paying for your Ubers in exact change!
🚩 Handing Off The Ride – This is the worst Uber scam in Egypt! There have been reports online that sometimes Uber drivers will stop on the highway or in random places and tell their (always foreign) passengers that this is as far as they can take them. Sometimes the drivers will say that their car has stopped working, other times that this is as far as they are allowed to go – but always the driver will have a “friend” handily waiting nearby that can take the passengers the rest of the way for a very high fee. This is a total scam. The driver is basically taking you to the middle of nowhere to extort money out of you for a second cab.
