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Comment by RBerenguel | Hacker News Reader

Not in Barcelona, at least, since fare prices are shown in the windows (IIRC this is also the norm in the UK, and I thought this was also done Spain-wide, but it's been a while since I took a taxi outside of Barcelona.) Of course, nothing prevents the taxi from driving around needlessly. But this can happen anywhere, Uber or no Uber.

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When I took a taxi in barcelona the taxi driver held my luggage hostage and insisted on a flat fee instead of the meter when we arrived at the destination. I had no working mobile phone so there was not much I could do but pay him.

An anecdote but I doubt it's the only time that happened.

I doubt it too, but in highly regulated places (like Spain is, sadly for many affairs, luckily for some others) you could just pick the taxi number (they are always shown outside, license plate would work too) and complain against the city/company. Losing their mean of living is a pretty scary thing.

As a matter of fact, I've taken 2 taxis in the UK and was scammed in one of the trips (first one actually), the second one was nice. Shit happens, everywhere.

At Cabify we actually get around this issue by calculating the price from the distance of the optimal route between pick-up and destination using Open Street Maps. This incentivises drivers to take the most efficient route and attempt to avoid traffic jams.

Works great! You just sit back and relax while the driver figures out how to get to the destination. Totally avoids the usual stress when a taxi driver takes a wrong turn.

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