My wife just came back from a short trip to BKK and reported that the public taxi stand tried to pull the 400 baht scam for her ride to Sukhumvit. She said, "no thanks, meter please," and the taxi stand woman passed her on to a driver.

The driver had his meter covered up with a casually-placed piece of paper*; when he started up, my wife asked for the meter to be used and he refused. She insisted a couple of times; he did nothing. In the end, she opened up the door while the cab was in motion; he stopped and she got out, walked back a ways to the desk and demanded loudly that she be given a meter taxi with no tricks. The next cab was fine, though she said that the first driver looked furious: he had followed her to the desk, and she doubted that any of the waiting pax would be willing to use him...

- Michael

*We had run into a covered-meter scam at Don Muang: at that time, the meter was already running under the piece of paper, so that the final reading is much higher than it should be. But in this case, it appeared that the driver was just trying to hide the meter or suggest that it not be used...