I’m going to share how I ended up paying $160 for a cab ride from Waikiki to North Shore Oahu, and why you shouldn’t let this happen to you.
After our time in places like Thailand and the Philippines, I thought I had seen every taxi scam in the book.
The broken meter… The missing meter… The excess surcharges… The longest route… The “Sure, I know where that is” lie… The negotiate-a-fare scams… The “I have no change” guy…
Just to name a few.
Unfortunately however, trying to make our way from Waikiki to the North Shore of Oahu, we forgot about and consequently fell prey to the most rudimentary taxi scam of all… and got the biggest cab fare of our lives as a reward.
Here’s the story:
So we’re heading out to the North Shore on our 3rd morning and booked a Hawaii Helicopter Tour and were understandably excited to be doing so.
Strangely, we’d been having trouble working out how long it actually took to get there on the bus.
The helicopter people told us 1 hour, the lady at our hotel desk told us 2 hours, and the shuttle driver who brought us from the airport told us 3 hours.
Anyway, our breakfast took longer than expected so by the time we got to the bus stop we realized we probably wouldn’t make it out there, however long it took, by the time we needed to arrive.
For added speed we thought “Let’s just take a cab”… That was our first mistake.
I asked the lady at our hotel desk “About how much do you think a cab to the North Shore would be? About $50?”
“Oh no, more like $80″. She replied.
At that point, we decided we were happy to pay $80 to avoid missing our helicopter flight, so we went out looking for a cab. That was our second mistake.
I walked up to the window of the first cab we saw and asked him how much it would cost for him to take us to the North Shore.
“I’ll use the meter… but about $50″
BARGAIN we thought!
As we get in, he did, so honestly adjust his estimate for us to “Maybe $70″.
At this point, I really have to take responsibility and say that I should have seen it coming.
After all the meter shenanigans in Southeast Asia, I had this idea in my head that as long as we were using the meter, everything would be ok. That was my third mistake.
Have you ever had the feeling when something bad is happening to you and you realize you can’t do anything about it, so you just have to sit there and take it as you stew in a pot of your own anger?
That’s the feeling we had as we watched our meter tick past $100, $120, $150, not knowing how much longer it’d take to get to our destination.
At $100 we decided this driver was getting NO tip.
At $130, I was moved to say to him “Not really $70 is it buddy…”
At $150 we realised that on top of him giving us an estimate about 1/3 of the fare’s actual cost, he’d also taken us the scenic, and surely the longest route in a sick combination of taxi scams that if he were playing a taxi driving video game would have surely earned him double points.
And as the cab came to a halt with the meter at just over $160 we hastily departed, slapping the money in his fat little hand and turning our backs in disgust.
Lessons Learned:
- Waikiki to North Shore is not a journey to take in a cab.
- Just because a meter is turned on, doesn’t mean you’re not getting scammed.
- The “downplay the fare” trick is the simplest and most effective taxi scam there is and it’s genius because you don’t even know you were ripped off until it’s too late.
Fortunately all was not lost. We had a memorable day on the North Shore, definitely became wiser travelers, and got a good travel story out of it to boot.
If you’ve got travel taxi scams, I’d love to hear em!
