Originally Posted by
Dr. HFH
12 October around midnight I saw the kiosks but they were inoperative, and the regular dispatchers were there.
Also, I seem to have happened on a new taxi scam. Drivers have tried to victimize me with this on 4 out of 4 of my most recent airport runs (two to and two from BKK), all within the past few weeks. The clock on the wait/idle timer runs constantly, even though the light flashes only when the taxi is actually stopped. So at the end of the trip, the wait/idle timer reads precisely the total amount of time since the flag dropped. It's not a ton of money; and I've dealt with it the way I usually do by paying what I think the fare should have been and walking away. None of the drivers has protested yet.
It's not a scam. Some meters are set to display wait time, some are set to display total elapsed time. I take a taxi every morning. Half the meters I see show total elapsed, the others show wait. Fares are virtually identical every day. If the 15 minute elapsed time was calculatiing as wait time the fares would be significantly different. They aren't.