Paris Metro-Great Public Transportation, but Throw your Ticket Away and You Will be Fined!
This review is from a girl I know who would prefer to remain anonymous. The information she gives is correct and insightful for anyone traveling in Paris who isn’t familiar with their public transportation.
My friend and I just spent some time in Paris and our main source of transport was METRO. If you’re not familiar, this is how the metro in Paris works. You purchase a ticket. You slide the ticket through a machine and the doors open for you. You don’t need the ticket for any part of your journey afterwards.
Eiffel Tower in Paris, France
Photo by: Heather Newgen
So basically you can’t get on a metro if you don’t purchase a ticket unless you go out of your way to jump over a door. When we hopped off at the Eiffel Tower station yesterday (busiest tourist metro stop), three people in uniform very aggressively demanded to see our ticket – which we unknowingly threw away as soon as we got through the doors. We said sorry we threw them away, we had no way to know that you have to keep them.
They got so angry and up in our faces. At first we weren’t sure if it was a scam because they seemed really shady and we have been using the metro for days and never saw this happen. A guy took our ID and went to put it in his back pocket and I tried to grab them back and he rudely snatched it out of my hand.
They told us it was a 50€ charge each for not having a ticket. We each had purchased two tickets at a time so we tried to show them the new unused ticket and they said we can’t do that but it would bring the fine down to 35€ each. We asked how should we know to keep the ticket because you don’t need use it past the doors…there response was “you should just know.” “You need to ask people” and “it says it on a public tourist map” which we didn’t have. This rule is not stated anywhere else. Anyway after a time of them completely interrogating us, we decided it wasn’t a scam and paid the fine.
My friend gave them her card, and after the transaction the woman held onto it and looked as if she was sneakily trying to memorize the numbers. So my friend took the card back and the woman absolutely lost her mind and was screaming in her face. It was crazy.
We got our ID and cards back but it was such a deflating feeling and put a damper on the rest of the day. They were really rude awful people and loved the fact that they could interrogate us. On our way back we passed them again and saw they had gotten a tourist family of five with no tickets either. That’s 50€ each for them. They were just pulling tourists up left right and center, so don’t throw away your ticket.