On a recent first visit in years, my fairly-independent-when-it-comes-to-traveling 65 year old parents hopped a cab (hours before we were expecting them), from the airport to our home. Handing the cabbie a HKD 500 note, my father later relayed that the driver thrust a HKD 100 note at him as change, then sped off before he could ask how the fare came to HKD 400 when the taxi meter (before toll) came to about HKD 246.
Here’s the experience.
7 pm on a Fri night: My dad writes to the general information email address of the Hong Kong Tourism Board.
6 pm the next day Saturday: An officer at HKTB’s Visitor Services replies explaining the email has been sent to the wrong place and forwards it to the Transport Complaints Unit for him (btw HK cabs display a taxi complaints hotline number to call too).
Saturday evening email from a government office impresses my dad who sends a verbose thank you.
3.47 pm the following Mon: My dad receives a further polite, pleasant email from the officer at HKTB’s Visitor Services containing several website links for information about taxi services here and here.
11.33 am Wed morning: Someone working at the Quality Taxi Services Steering Committee emails:
1) An apology for an “unpleasant ride”
2) A cab fare estimate from the airport to our home (about HKD 320, including toll but excluding additional HKD5 for each piece of luggage greater than total dimension 140cm)… So conservatively, though one of their bags probably doesn’t qualify, about HKD 335… (Cab driver took HKD 400.. My dad says something along the lines of don’t bother trying to recover it I just hate being taken for a ride)
Alternate means of transport
3) Assurance the Transport Department would be informed and the cab owner would receive an advisory letter requesting them to “instruct the drivers for rectification accordingly”
4) Further assurance there’ll be an Overcharging Is Prohibited By Law-type message disseminated in the Taxi Newsletter (Uh, there’s a whole newsletter?) which, it’s explained, is a regular publication distributed to frontline taxi drivers.
5) Transport Complaints Unit email and hotline information for lodging further complaint if my dad is willing to serve as witness in a police investigation
(I think this is quite a standard thing they make available to you because we’ve called the hotline about being overcharged before, after taking down the time, departure and destination, and cabbie license plate, they will say you have two options, either (a) prosecution or (b) monitoring of cabbie. And judging by how often Rockstar and I speaking in English get overcharged, I’m guessing people who actually notice and then bother to call it in will then pick option (b)).
Oh and did I mention all the correspondence was in perfect English?
My dad, relatively preoccupied by all this correspondence, was very impressed. (By the whole handling of this case I mean, not the perfect English.)
Joyce – there seems to be something wrong with my Disqus, I couldn’t get in to approve your (very detailed – thank you) comment… Just in case you meant to delete it, I won’t copy and paste it here/ respond to it til I get the go ahead from you please…
OK this is Joyce’s comment (she is on my blogroll at left btw):
It’s funny. In more than a decade, I’ve never been overcharged by a HK
cabbie. But maybe it’s bc I’m a Canto-speaking local, and they don’t
think they can get away with it?
Sometimes my husband hands them
HK $40 for a HK $36 ride, and I presume the driver has handed the HK $4
back to my husband, but he doesn’t — or something like that. But that’s
worth all of US 50 cents and could just be a mix-up over the tip. Once,
I almost handed a $1,000 note to a cabbie in the dark, mistaking it for
$100, and he gave it back to me.
I had one bad experience when I
was getting out of the hospital, of all places. I was in ill and in
pain. I clearly told the driver we were going to cross the harbour to
Kowloon — this gives the guy ample warning to say if he wants to or
not. He said nothing, but when we hit bad traffic, he started to
verbally abuse us, loudly telling us how he’d ruined his day, he’d make
no money, etc. This continued all the way back home, to the point that
my husband screamed at him to stop insulting his wife.
We asked
if he needed directions Kowloon side, and he said he didn’t. But then he
yelled at us again when he got lost, claiming that we gave him the
wrong information. I was already stressed and unwell, and just couldn’t
take half an hour of insane ranting.
I thought about writing a
letter to the taxi association, but failed to get a receipt with the
guy’s ID number, so I forgot about it. In the end, he didn’t overcharge
us or endanger us — he was just really rude.
I take taxis every day here, and 99% of the time, they’re fine.
And then my reply was, I rarely have a problem when I fairly frequently cabbed to work (and memorized the Canto names and spoke a bit of Cantonese) alone or with Kings who speaks fluent Cantonese too.
But my parents don’t really speak Cantonese and my dad can be very verbose in English..
Also, Rockstar doesn’t speak Cantonese so we speak in English when he’s with me (and he usually chatters quite a bit in cabs)
Usually the cabbie takes a longer route to our regular destinations or innocently gives us several lengthy and fully Cantonese options full of fully Cantonese road names and streets. I checked with our (very local) building reception who confirmed we were being messed with… We phone in HKD 10 and above overcharges, we’ve had maybe 4 (one of em about HKD 30) when we first started cabbing, but have now had a part-time driver for sometime.
It’s less about the money and more about bullying or opportunism and it offended me that when the cabbies did it was wayy most often when i was with Rockstar. BUT then I also realized – they’d never shouted or said rude things when I was with Rockstar regardless whether they tried to take more. Maybe it’s more the English than the Rockstar
Thanks for sharing the details. Will know what to do should I get overcharged by a cabbie in HK but then I never take cab both times I visited HK. I guess most people who complained never go down the “prosecution” route because of the hassle and the overcharged amount is not that much.
Thank YOU Mun… And there we have another reason cabbies return erroneously given HKD 1000 bills (also, if they don’t know you don’t know you gave them a big bill – they hate making change for 1000s, you may get a lot of ‘tude asking them to break bigger bills and Kings and I often apologise if we pay a HKD 70-ish fare with a HKD 500 bill)
@ Zmun. Honestly, it happens very rarely. I wouldn’t let that stop you from taking a cab if you’re in town.
I got the following (among other things) from a reader who goes by the pseudonym Cheeky Angel; regular readers may recognize her from the detailed comments she sometimes posts here, she is a BBC who has been in HK for about double my 7years here…
“The taxi driver who overcharged was very bad & deserved to be reported. Many taxi drivers refuse to accept a $500 note if the trip wasn’t significantly over $100 & even then they may not be so quiet or polite about it. They’re worried that they won’t have enough smaller change later on. I’ve had that happen before & well, I ended up having to call a friend down with smaller notes whilst the meter continued running. I was so annoyed! But it did get me thinking that if the driver was so worried about accepting a $500 note for a short-ish trip, perhaps they don’t make that much over or close to $500 a shift, otherwise they wouldn’t have to be worried about not having the change? That’s why I now try & keep a spare $50 or $100 note hidden in my wallet if I know that in the near future I may be going out & there may be a chance I’ll need a taxi later on.”
Thanks again CA!
I got the following (among other things) from a reader who goes by the pseudonym Cheeky Angel; regular readers may recognize her from the detailed comments she sometimes posts here, she is a BBC who has been in HK for about double my 7years here…
“The taxi driver who overcharged was very bad & deserved to be reported. Many taxi drivers refuse to accept a $500 note if the trip wasn’t significantly over $100 & even then they may not be so quiet or polite about it. They’re worried that they won’t have enough smaller change later on. I’ve had that happen before & well, I ended up having to call a friend down with smaller notes whilst the meter continued running. I was so annoyed! But it did get me thinking that if the driver was so worried about accepting a $500 note for a short-ish trip, perhaps they don’t make that much over or close to $500 a shift, otherwise they wouldn’t have to be worried about not having the change? That’s why I now try & keep a spare $50 or $100 note hidden in my wallet if I know that in the near future I may be going out & there may be a chance I’ll need a taxi later on.”
Thanks again CA!
I don’t think the $500 / $1000 thing is their fault. They don’t earn very much , and keep minimum cash on hand because sometimes they are mugged. It’s not like they are a shop — if several customers give them $500s in a row, where would they get change, particularly after normal working hours? Small shops often turn their noses up at cabbies looking for change.
If you only have $500 and you’re crossing any of the harbor tunnels, tell your cabbie in advance. The tunnel fee guys give change to cabbies.
Even if you’re not crossing the harbor, it’s considered polite to mention it when you get in. If they’re out of cash, sometimes they’ll swing by a bank machine for you to get out cash.
Having the Cantonese helps a lot, since there are bits of etiquette like this that make communications easier.
As for taking convoluted routes — I do discuss this with my cabbies. When they see I speak Cantonese, they’ll ask me if I want to take the cheaper but slower tunnel, or the expensive but faster one. Sometimes they know of traffic / accidents / roadwork. With me, they’ll ask if they can take what looks like a farther route.
But with my husband, who doesn’t speak Chinese, they are often stuck, and sometimes there are language mix-ups. Of course, some cabbies will try to take you for a ride. But many times they’re just having a hard time explaining in a second language that they’re trying to avoid a bad patch of traffic.
I think Cantonese helps A LOT. Mun, you’re from KL you speak Cantonese though?
Btw I should probably mention when we were looking for part time driver (only for Rockstar’s school route cos school bus timing not convenient) we offered hkd 6000 for 4-5 hours’ work, not inclusive of toll, fuel or parking tickets, which obviously we would bear ourselves. NO taxi driver would take it.
Pingback: Here’s What Going After A Rude Taxi Driver Looks Like | Raising Rockstar