nini

Our only bad experience with a cab driver was in France--Chartres to be exact. It was our second time there and we were familiar with it. We dropped our rental car and took a cab one mi to train sta. On previous trip we actually had walked this mi. the driver took this ridiculously out of the way route, and long story short our brief ride cost ten dollars. Our French was not good enough to argue & we had exactly ten min until the train was leaving for Paris--the last train of the day as a strike was in effect. I think the driver was angry because we did not tip!

Barb

suec1: I saw this happening when I was in Rome last Oct. I was waiting for a bus outside Termini and watching the taxi que. There was a dark haired woman seemingly directing people into taxis. I thought it a little odd. Then, coming back from Tuscany and arriving at Termini, I needed a taxi to the hotel. I got in line at the taxi stand, a taxi pulled up, looked legit, got in, gave him the address of the hotel, and a few minutes later I noticed he had not turned on the meter. Well, I knew something was not right. A ride from Termini to Campo di Fiori, with a little side trip right down the tram track barely missing a tram head on, cost me 38E!!! The hotel manager happened to be standing in the doorway and heard what he charged me, wrote down his license number and reported him. So, I'm not sure how I could have avoided this happening to me. I guess when I noticed the meter not on, I could have said something, but he didn't speak English -so he said - and I didn't want to be dumped off in dark alley somewhere, or worse.

francesco_m

Nini, in response of:
" I think the driver was angry because we did not tip!"
a French driver could not really expect to get a tip if he knew how French tourists behave when travelling abroad!!! ;-)

pg

StCirq,
Have you been to Lisbon, Portugal. I got taken not once, but all the three times that I took a taxi there. Now I have been to several countries where I knew beforehand that I would have to haggle with the cabbie, but not knowing this in Lisbon certainly hurt my wallet and my tender little heart that had to work extra-hard to keep my blood oxygenated after each cabbie experience.
Obviously, you haven't "been all over the world ".

elaine

this last comment doesn't seem reasonable to me. Whether someone has been in 50 countries or in 5, reporting that you have, or have not, been the victim of a scam is a fact. Even having it happen 3 times to you in one city, doesn't mean it will happen to me when I go there. Admittedly, it does make me wonder about heightened probabilities and I'd do a little research to see if this happens pretty often (as is often reported about Prague as well), and if so it would heighten my awareness, but
statistically, I'll bet it doesn't happen to everyone. That doesn't make an individual feel better when it happens to them, of course.

I've lived in New York when the crime rate was WAY up, and I still wasn't the victim of a crime, despite the much higher odds then of it happening. Except in truly chaotic places, most people aren't scam or crime victims.
Awareness IS reasonable; assuming every cab driver (or shop owner, or whatever) in a city is a crook is not reasonable, imo.