Luckily I had read this topic before my experience this weekend, and let tourists beware: even natives get *&$(#ed. My two tips for dealing with NY cabbies are these -

(1) be prepared to negotiate and even get out of the cab before it departs the airport if you feel that you are going to be cheated, and

(2) you have to know the routes. Carry a map with you or even look at your route before-hand on the internet, print out door-to-door directions from mapquest.com or other, and have them with you.

Here is my experience - I live in Long Island - just moved there last month and barely know my way around (since I have been out of town most every weekend on mileage runs!) When I fly, if it happens that I will be flying to/from the office, I always take the cheapest and most reliable possible public transportation. If not, I go way out of my way to get my car to the airport. Even when it means getting up at 4 am, driving all the way to EWR, parking, storing my luggage, (or sometimes having to schlep it into the office and back again,) getting the bus into the office and then going back out later that day and so on. I have ended up paying $24/day for parking at LGA unless I can park at the Marriott and use their free shuttle for $13/day, so my three-day weekend would have cost $39 in parking.

I figured that a cab from LGA to my home would be less than this (stupid me, should have checked first!) so I decided to leave my car home, take the train in to the office as usual, then the bus to the airport later that day. I planned to use a cab to get home after my trip. Since my flight got in after midnight, the public buses weren't an option and it is a pain to have to drag all my stuff into Manhattan and back out to Long Island on the train that late anyway.

The first cabbie I got didn't seem to understand where I wanted to go - Baldwin, in Nassau County on the South Shore - so I told him to stop and I got my things and got out. I went back to the starter and got another cab. I got in, stupidly expecting a "reasonable", $30-$40 fare. The cabbie pulled out a book and showed me the fare, $104! I said, "NO WAY! I can take the train or a bus, let me out." He knew that I had just walked out of another cab and started saying, "well how much do you want to pay, we can make a deal." I said that I wouldn't be willing to pay more than $30 because "I drive it all the time and it is not that far!"

This late at night, I didn't feel like doing anything else so we agreed on $60. (He said, "this is half-off!" WHY? Because you have a book showing that it should be more? From where, New Jersey????) But I can imagine that other people wouldn't have been so mad and might have just agreed and been cheated, which is why I am writing this now.

Thank God I had some idea of how to get home and spend my spare time looking at maps, watching traffic reports to get an idea of how the roads are laid out and so on ... since, when he got on the Long Island Expressway - which I had to tell him to take - he didn't turn off on the Van Wyck. "Hmm, that's interesting, I would have taken the Van Wyck! Oh well, we can take the Cross-Island ..." I said. When he got to it, he passed by it too! I then asked him what his intended route was to be. He pretended not to hear me! Or to not understand me. We continued going east.

I asked a couple more times and finally he said that he was "waiting for the Baldwin exit " - for those of you that aren't from Long Island, there isn't one! And by now we were too far north and had gone too far east of where I live. When we approached the Meadowbrook Parkway, I told him to take that. Since I have gotten lost on this road recently, I now know the exact numerical exit to take and was able to tell him this or we might have ended up on Jones Beach.

So the moral is, even though he knew that I was not a tourist - since I had exact directions and knew the roads - it didn't matter. Who knows where we would have ended up and when. I think that these cabbies are just experienced in taking people to Manhattan. Next time I will try the car service or go back to my former method of getting up at 4 am, driving to the airport ........ but remember, you *can* negotiate! And the price ended up right about where classic negotiating studies show it should - in the middle of the first price and counteroffer - $104, $30, middle is $67. I still think that this is a lousy price. His final explanation was that he "had" to charge so much since he was not allowed to pick anyone up on Long Island and would have to come back "empty" even though he said I was his last fare anyway and he was going to go home after. If he could find his way home from there.