Thorn Tree travel forum

1

You were likely cheated.. Learn the numbers, Shi Wu, is 15.. Leaning Chinese number is easy, and should only take a few minutes to count to 100.. (seriously) its very easy the Chinese numbering system..

Everytime I get into Shanghai they try charging me full rate for the taxi to downtown, or they point at their meter.. I just tell them 147, or go away..

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2

Yes, they can set their meters to run differently. I've usually learned how much from point a to b and then when the meter is incorrect I just pay the expected rate and leave. They usually complain vigorously, but I just walk away.

john

3

taxi drivers in harbin are the worst i have met in china so far!!!!
i went there a few weeks ago for the ice festival and although i know chinese numbers and chinese in general very well i'm pretty sure they overcharged us not only once.
one time the driver demanded a 10yuan parking fee from us which we refused to pay. he didn't say anything anymore until he dropped us of and charged us 25yuan (as stated on the meter). it was a little strange, as on our way to that attraction it was mostly the same way, even a little longer and costed 17yuan. but well, foreign city....
when we all got out of the taxi he started laughing at us, showed us the 10yuan i had just given him and said something like - you stupid laowais, look how i got the parking fee from you! the real price must have been 15yuan and he somehow made his meter run faster....
i heard so many people complaining about harbins taxi drivers.......take the bus!

4

We arrived at the railway station a couple of weeks ago on the airport bus and there was a regular looking red cab parked close to the bus stop. The meter drop was 8 kuai but it racked up very rapidly, and it appeared to be clocking kilometers at about 5 times the normal rate.

As we made it obvious to the driver that we had spotted his scam, he uttered deep unmentionable oaths and when we reached our destination, the meter read 45 kuai

We got our bags out and gave him 15 (even that was probably too much). He accepted it after a bit of bad Mandarin.

Drivers returning from the Ice and Snow Festival claim they have to pay to "wait" in the exit area and want to charge an extra 10 kuai. This may be genuine.

The other scam is to go round three sides of a rectangle to get into the city centre when coming back from the other side of the river. Not much you can do about that unless you are following the route on the map and can speak taxi Chinese.

5

Yes, we were well and truly ripped off then - to get from the centre of town to the ice festival south of the river we were charged 38 Yuan there, and 40 Yuan back! I know it's not much in dollars or pounds but still............

6

I pretty much like Harbin, but I also have 2 cases to post about idiot taxi drivers of Harbin. My friends and I were there 20-22/1, they for the 1st time, me for the 2nd. All of us speak Chinese at a native level and look Chinese, though probably not PRC Chinese.
The 1st case wasn't so much a problem. We took a taxi from Harbin airport to our hotel which's just off Zhongyang Dajie. The meter was 170 RMB and the highway toll was 20 RMB, thus total of 190 RMB. The actual fare (exclusive of highway toll, which is rightfully paid by the passenger anyway) should've been about 110-120 RMB. I told my friends to get out and take all our baggage out of the boot first, and asked the driver nicely if we could have a discount. He then asked for 150 RMB total and I offered 140 RMB which I think should be a fair price. He displayed some reluctance but took it anyway, and we all parted amicably.
The 2nd case was much uglier. We asked our hotel to help us arrange for a taxi to the Unit 731 ruins in Pingfang district, quite a distance away from downtown Harbin. I've been there before in Jan 2005 and know that it's quite far and that it could be difficult getting a taxi on the way back. The agreed price was 90 RMB for a return... not sure if it was totally fair but we felt it was still agreeable. No mention was made of any limit on the time that the taxi would have to wait for us. I'd already noticed that the taxi meter was running when we got back on the taxi after finishing the sightseeing at Unit 731, but didn't ask about it -- although on hindsight I should definitely have brought the point up, as since this was supposed to be a vehicle hire, the meter shouldn't have had to be turned on at any point. We chose to go directly to the Snow Expo on Sun island after visiting the Unit 731 ruins, instead of going back to the hotel directly. However we did have to stop by Zhongyang Dajie in order to put down a deposit for a reservation at a popular restaurant which we wanted to have lunch at, before continuing on our way to the Snow Expo. Upon reaching the Snow Expo, the driver demanded that we pay 170 RMB for the entire trip, which was 80 RMB more than what the hotel had agreed upon for us. We refused and I told the driver that we would pay 100 RMB and no more, and I also called the hotel to try to ask them to sort things out, but nothing ever came of it. Finally I had enough of the whole drivel and told my friends to leave the taxi, paying the driver nothing, as I had already told him we would pay 100 RMB or nothing. (We were 3 girls and 1 guy.) Just before we got to the gate of Snow Expo, the driver came running up and physically grabbed my male friend and was going to assault him had I not stepped in and yelled at him etc. We finally paid 160 RMB (my friend didn't want to get beaten up) and took down the driver's licence number, name and company name. Yes some posters would say that I was wrong to not want to pay, but the fare was substantially more than what we had agreed upon. Even if we added the extra fare from Zhongyang Dajie to the Snow Expo on Sun island, there's no reason it should've cost that much.
Cheers!