New York cabbies are a notoriously tricky bunch. Maybe because I’ve now been here over six years they seem to want to take less advantage of me than before, but in the early days I was always suspicious that their routes were longer than they had to be. Or maybe that’s just me. I know for a fact I was always getting taken for a ride when I briefly lived in Bangkok. I’d tell a friend the route the cabbie took and they’d laugh about how it was about ten minutes longer than it had to be. Well these days I know the streets of New York well enough that if a cabbie decides to give me a bogus ride, I question him about it. Right away and with certain aggressiveness.
So I’m quite sure I would have bee alert if a cabbie tried to overcharge me for the trip from JFK. But ,alas, that is NOT what is happening to most people. According to this story in the LA Times, more than half of taxi drivers overcharged their prey, um passengers, for trips from John F. Kennedy International Airport into town.
The sting operation was conducted by undercover agents posing as foreign tourists, and they discovered that 13 out of 24 cab drivers over-charged passengers traveling from JFK International to Manhattan and Brooklyn. The flat rate is legally fixed at $45, not including tolls, and several were charged more than $100 for rides to Brooklyn, which is over two times the real cost. Also, some eleven other riders were overcharged by at least $20.
The lesson? When you come to New York, a) do your research for what a ride is supposed to cost (they’re supposed to give you little sheets at the cab stand anyway) and b) don’t look like a big dumb foreign tourist…which could be hard if that’s what you are.