How To Avoid Being Ripped Off By Taxi Drivers
It happens. Travelers get ripped off. And it happens often.
One of the most common ways of getting ripped off involves taking local transportation and sometimes it seems as if we spend hours every single day trying to negotiate taxi or rickshaw or tuk-tuk fares wherever we go. And somehow, no matter how hard we try, we almost always end up paying infinitely higher prices than locals.
Of course, as soon as we find ourselves being ripped off or once we learn that we paid much more than other travelers for the same journey, we are oh-so-quick to place all of the blame on the evil taxi or tuk-tuk or bicycle rickshaw driver who took our money.
After all, didn’t we approach the driver with a smile on our face, hand them a piece of paper with our destination scrawled in local script and then, just as our guide book instructs us to do, attempt to reach an agreement on the price before we entered their vehicle?
Yes, that’s exactly the steps we are trained to take and yet, we repeatedly find ourselves frustrated when the driver quotes us an extraordinarily high price for what we believe to be an extraordinarily short journey. Twenty-five dollars for a ride to the market? Come on, that’s a ripoff! It’s a good price sir. That’s ridiculous, I’ll give you five dollars. Five dollars? Impossible. Twenty dollars is my final offer. Are you nuts? No sir, fifteen dollars and we leave now. Fine, let’s go...........
It happens. Travelers get ripped off. And it happens often.
One of the most common ways of getting ripped off involves taking local transportation and sometimes it seems as if we spend hours every single day trying to negotiate taxi or rickshaw or tuk-tuk fares wherever we go. And somehow, no matter how hard we try, we almost always end up paying infinitely higher prices than locals.
Of course, as soon as we find ourselves being ripped off or once we learn that we paid much more than other travelers for the same journey, we are oh-so-quick to place all of the blame on the evil taxi or tuk-tuk or bicycle rickshaw driver who took our money.
After all, didn’t we approach the driver with a smile on our face, hand them a piece of paper with our destination scrawled in local script and then, just as our guide book instructs us to do, attempt to reach an agreement on the price before we entered their vehicle?
Yes, that’s exactly the steps we are trained to take and yet, we repeatedly find ourselves frustrated when the driver quotes us an extraordinarily high price for what we believe to be an extraordinarily short journey. Twenty-five dollars for a ride to the market? Come on, that’s a ripoff! It’s a good price sir. That’s ridiculous, I’ll give you five dollars. Five dollars? Impossible. Twenty dollars is my final offer. Are you nuts? No sir, fifteen dollars and we leave now. Fine, let’s go...........
funny or unfortunate thing is that all those talking heads on internet claiming expertise on cab driving scams, taxi con artists in different countries and cities have no slightest clue about taxi drivers business and how they work in certain markets.
ReplyDeleteThey throw Tampa, NYC, Hamburg, Toronto or San Francisco cab drivers in same basket as a rickshaw pullers in Mumbai, India or minibus drivers in Soweto, South Africa.......
there are certain situations that visitor to Tampa Bay who plans to use taxi cabs as a means of transportation around the city or the area should avoid or be on look out for them, if he doesn't want to overpay on his / her transportation bill.
ReplyDeleteThose things are pretty simple, especially in the age of electronics like GPS and smart phones with GPS directing capabilities, but........