[QUOTE=Gamahucher]The places where you quoted as examples of your bad experiences with Manila taxi drivers are the very places that the very worst sharks congregate to bottom feed I. E the airport and venues such as LA Cafe. The vast majority of the taxi drivers you flag down on the street are relatively straight. Of course they will try it on but if you are firm with them (remaining good humoured), I find they are easy to deal with.
I'm not on a mission to defend taxi drivers. They annoy me as much as others, particularly the way they hike their fares when its pissing down or when they hum and harr as to whether to take you or not, particularly if you live somewhere out of their normal comfort zone of operation, like I do. But its a buyers market and if I don't like their attitude, I tell them to move on, knowing theres another one right behind.[/QUOTE]G,
Your comments are exactly why we shouldn't pooh-pooh the complaints of some mongers who report taxi problems. There's substantial wisdom in what you offer here as background (deviant behavior is more likely near mongering sites) and advice (don't put up with violators), and this wisdom was acquired over time.
I have taken perhaps 15 to 20 cab rides in the metro area, and the majority of drivers were courteous, friendly, and professional. But when I first arrived in Manila I received a sort of cultural orientation from a professional Philippine organization with ties to the U.S. Embassy. They warned us about taxi scams. This wasn't like exaggerated U.S. Embassy warnings to avoid Mindanao; this was Filipinos telling us they considered it a problem. Among other things they told us where to look for the meter, and that a large orange sticker on the passenger side of the windshield means the meter had been officially inspected recently. (Don't know if that's still the color to look for) This information may have biased me mentally to think of taxis as a problem, but it also caused me to be a more informed consumer, and so I probably minimized the likelihood of problems because I knew what to look for. Even so, I did have two experiences (so roughly 10-15% of my cab rides) in which the driver tried to rip me off. Were the amounts involved large? No, the total ripoff, had I not circumvented the larger of the two, would have been about 12 USD. But if I'm going to decide how to spend 500 pesos, I'd prefer to use it to upgrade a p4p lady from ST to LT rather than a dishonest cabbie.
I think it's not good advice to newbies to provide whitewashed accounts about taxis, nor should impressions created on the basis of one or two bad experiences necessarily prevail. I think you've offered good advice here, as have others. Even though some insist that they've never had problems, my own experiences lead me to believe some of the reports of bad experiences are also valid. The sum result of this dialogue has been the sharing of a lot of advice and a balanced discussion that would not have occurred if nobody had raised the issue in the first place.