Blue Taxis

I've been in Shanghai for six months and take taxis all the time. They aren't too bad. Some taxi drivers are very friendly and others are not at all friendly. I haven't run into a single one that was really rude to me - at least not while I was in the cab. Once you pay them and get out of the taxi and assume pedestrian status they'd just as soon run over you as all the other pedestrians they try to kill. Today I ran into the first couple of taxi drivers that blatently ripped me off.

I was showing some visitors around the Bund in downtown Shanghai and we split up to go in different directions - my son and I to Xujiahui and the visitors back to my house. I should have known better than to go with the two beat up blue taxis in line at the Bund but it was starting to rain. The drivers looked untrustworthy and turned out to be just that. Both had rigged meters. My visitors ended up paying nearly 80 rmb for a 35 rmb ride and I paid 43 for a 25 rmb ride. I wrote down my driver's driver number (# 229041) and will call in a report to the taxi complaint desk tomorrow. We'll see what that's like. My lesson though is to avoid the independent blue taxis and drivers that look like Johnny Depp.