No, there's something wrong here. A year past Christmas I got so wound up by the situation at Heathrow that I wrote to my MP. Hoppa were running an hourly schedule on Dec 26th (saving themselves £££s) and it took longer to do the last two miles to the Bath Road than the first 300 or so down from Newcastle.
He escalated the matter to both the head of National Express (who run the Hoppa) and the head of BAA (from whom I later got a written apology). This letter confirmed that taxi dirvers were obliged to take any fare to a local hotel and there's even a display on the inside of the cab door that should give you a rough idea of cost. At the very, very most, T1 to the CP is 5 miles which would be about £20. I'd say it's closer to 3.5 miles, so should have been less than half what you paid.
In future, if this happens will people please take the number of the cab and report them to the relevant outfit - see
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/pco/taxi_complaints.shtml for details and you can submit the complaint online at
[email protected].
If we all contribute to this, perhaps we can make a difference. From what I understand of my conversation with management at the Sheraton, they detest the Hoppa arrangement and would gladly see it overturned.