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Unscrupulous Taxi Drivers:
Cheat tourists and innocents
By Timothy Daiss

London’s taxis have been voted the best in the world for the second year running, a poll of international travelers has shown. A third (33%) of the travelers surveyed said that London’s black cabs were the best in the world, according to travel site Hotels.com.

Despite being named the most expensive city for cabs, London’s taxi drivers pulled in the most votes for a number of different categories including friendliness of drivers, quality of driving and knowledge of area. 

Percent of votes cast for top ten

1. London 33%

2. New York 17%

3. Berlin 6%

4. Madrid 5%

5. Copenhagen 4%

6. Stockholm 3%

7. Bangkok 3%

8. Las Vegas 3%

9. Dublin 2%

10. Paris 2%.

But what about the worst cities for taxi drivers in the world? While no official rankings can be found, many site Calcutta as one of the worst as well as Kuala Lumpur, Cairo and also - Manila.

BAD FEELIN’ IN THE PIT OF YOUR STOMACH
My experiences with Manila cabbies have been colorful to say the least—but also it’s hit and miss. I might have a bad experience with a taxi driver in Manila two days in a row and not have one for several weeks. 

Yet, that horrible feeling one gets in the pit of their stomach when hailing a cab in Manila is unmistakable. One Filipino friend, watching me trying to hail a cab as they whizzed by ignoring me, took over and waved one down for me, spoke to him in Tagalog and away I went.

"These guys look at foreigners like a piece of meat," he said, shaking his head.

Two poignant experiences in my nearly four year stay in Manila spring to mind. Last October, as April, a friend of mine in town from Malaysia, and I were south bound in a taxi one Friday night going to Manila Bay, the cabbie started speaking excitedly in Tagalog, and looking at April in the rear view mirror. She shrugged her shoulders and simply said:

"I’m not a Filipino."

Smart he was not. He kept talking in Tagalog.

"Look!"  I said, starting to feel my Irish rise, "she is Malaysian, what’s the problem?"

Seems one of his fellow cabbies had a stalled car and he had to rescue him. But likely that was a fabrication. Expletives flew from my mouth until I saw April start to grimace.

He put us out in no-man’s land in the middle of the night, unknown location—Metro Manila. Adding insult to injury he asked April, again in Tagalog, for the fare. Understating a few lines of Tagalog, I pieced together what he was saying.

"If you can physically come and take it out of my wallet, then you can have your fare," I told him. "Otherwise get the hell out of here."

He left.

Another time a cabbie was driving me from Greenhills to Makati in the middle of Monday afternoon rush hour traffic. Not a good time to commute. But the traffic wasn’t the only problem. He began complaining about not only the traffic but a whole host of other problems.

Then it happened.

He started waving his hands in the air, shaking his head around in all kind of directions like he had lost his mind, then asked for an extra 150 pesos. It was an obvious attempt to throw me off guard and intimidate.

Like the previous cabbie just mentioned, it did not work. However his shouts and curses in both Tagalog and Visayan got so bad, I was about to force him to pull over.

However by that time he started to calm down. When he asked for "extra" as we approached my destination, I placed 100 pesos on the seat and walked away.

Both of these incidents are rather dramatic. Often cabbies do their jobs with no strings attached. But as a safeguard I always tell them exactly where I want to go and give directions, in an attempt to let him know I’m not a naive tourist. Then I make a call on my mobile phone, even if it’s a bogus call, telling the person on the other end where I am and what time I should be there.

If his meter is fast, I wait until I reach my destination, then step out of the car before I confront him and pay

It’s common knowledge that most foreigners in Manila, particularly Westerners, struggle with dishonest cabbies. But what about the local population? How do Filipino taxi drivers treat their own—fellow Filipinos? Seems they don’t fare much better. An online forum by Filipinos about Manila taxi drivers confirmed this.

EXPLOITIVE SYSTEM
"It really gets to me when I encounter taxi drivers who insist on negotiating with the fare, because they're usually high-handed and boorish," wrote one forum contributor.

"Like it's the passenger’s fault that a driver's life is hard! What's hard is that they don't seem to understand that they're not the only ones suffering from the economic crisis. And besides, how come, you usually encounter these situations with taxicabs in bus terminals and harbors. Like I said, it's an exploitative system that seems to have never been broken. I've been in Metro Manila since college days, and it's still the same at the North Harbor and in provincial bus terminals when you try to get a taxi."

The rest of the posts makes good reading.

"I wonder why this kinda thing only happens in Metro Manila. For one thing, we don't have that problem in taxicabs all over Baguio City. Maybe it's the weather...everyone's cool."

"I gather from your response that you have not gone to Cebu where I met the worst kind of taxi drivers!"

"It's very true that in Baguio taxi cab drivers are "true to their calling"! My aunt and her family are living there. I've never had problems with taxi cabs there."

"Cab drivers in Baguio are courteous and they charge by the meter which isn't the case here in Manila plus in other cities."

"The best taxi service I witnessed is in Davao when you can ride any taxi and you just have to pay what was in the meter. It also holds true when you are in the airport and going to your hotel. This is also true in Baguio. Now, in Cebu, it is the worst experience I’ve had with taxis, worse than here in Manila.

Some Cebuanos I talked to told me that they have less greedy taxi drivers now because they all went here in Manila! So, now you know where these greedy lots came from! More like the greedy taxi drivers got attracted to Metro Manila because here they get away with it!"

Finally, one forum contributor, complaining about taxis at Manila’s airport, sums it up perfectly. She writes:

"Why does the Manila airport embarrass us so with "fake" metered taxis? Corruption. They might as well hang a sign as you arrive: ‘Welcome to the Philippines. We cheat tourists and innocents.’ Shameful."

For those who plan to visit Metro Manila, the Philippine Travelers website, offers tips and suggestions on how to deal with unscrupulous Manila cabbies.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
My column "Hong Kong Be Damned," a few weeks ago, about an OFWs trouble in Hong Kong, generated a lot of reader response. In light of this, if you know any OFW story that deserves to be told, let us know.

We are asking you to help us report the story by telling us what’s going on. Contact me using the twitter link. http://twitter.com/tdaiss or at the email below-

Tim is a journalist, author of four non-fiction books, an ESL teacher and public speaker. He has written for numerous publications in the US as well as international magazines, newspapers and websites. He holds a B.B.A. in Finance as well as a Master’s. He can be reached at timothygsu85@yahoo.com or at http://twitter.com/tdaiss.

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