Overweight luggage scam at Sharm airport

by **chaos999** on Tue Sep 09, 2008 22:41 pm

We just returned from Egypt on the 5th of Sept 2008 and had a run in with the Sharm airport staff.
We had a 20kg allowance and were close to the limit on the way out from Luton, but after the usual using up of toiletries etc and buying a few presents we expected the four of us to be around the 80kg mark combined on the way from Sharm.
We were at the rear of the queue and it was moving very slowly.The reason for this was loads of people were unpacking and repacking their suitcases and counting money out. Getting a bit worried about our weight I carried each of our four suitcases to an empty check in and weighed them. The heaviest one came in at a whopping 34kg, at £8 to £9 extra for every kilo over, I was a bit concerned. So I climbed on the scales to weigh myself, I had weighed myself the previous day on the hotel gym scales and was approx 100kg . I was not too happy that I was showing 22stone in weight. I then got my youngest on the scales and he was showing 53kg instead of 40 kg. At this point a security guy got me to one side and got 3 of his buddies as well. I was trying to get an explanation and the first excuse I got was : "a human weighs different to luggage"
The second excuse was " after 50kg the scales are inaccurate"
After more discussion we were told to go to check in number 15 and get weighed there. As we were doing that I put my suitcase (the heavy one ) on number 16 scales (which people were still using and it still weighed over 30kg) When we weighed the case on 15 it weighed 21kg.
They are taking the p***.

by **loobysue** on Fri Sep 19, 2008 17:10 pm

We came back on the 12th september, on the outboand journey my case was just under the 20kg allowed, on the way back i had two bottles of vodka in the case, and a few other bits and bobs, i had wieghed the case myself on my mates digital fishing scale and i knew i was at least 3kgs over weight but they never even weighed our cases, we were in the queue, presented out tickets and passports and a guy standing at the side of the scales just put the tags around the case handles without putting them on the scales

by **fifitrixiebelle19** on Wed Oct 01, 2008 14:32 pm

I was just reading this about Sharm, as i'm going there myself in a few weeks time but i went on holiday in may to Kefalonia and they were doing it there too!!
I was certain that we were going to get charged 5euros for each kilo of weight and both and my partners were well over but luckily it didn't happen, but it did happen to two people who were complaining about the slow queue, which i thought was funny.

I don't think its just the airport people in sharm who are trying it on, i wouldn't mind betting if this is happening all over! Its away of making some easy money on poor tourists that have brought one to many presents while there.
Very concerning.