‘For that fare, do I get to keep the taxi?’ Readers’ tales of extortionate rides around the world

Taxis comprise an important element of the transport universe. They cover the first or final miles of many trips. On-demand personal transport in a three-wheeled rickshaw or tuk-tuk is one of the joys of travel in Asia. Sometimes, though, you need a taxi for a long-distance journey.

To reach a flight from Tbilisi to Luton last week, the only way to get from the Armenian-Georgian border to the airport was by taxi. The driver, who also chaperoned me through the frontier formalities, wanted only €60 (£52) for the 90-minute journey in a vehicle almost as old as he was.

In contrast, at Bergerac airport in southwest France last year all my options ran out and the last taxi driver on the rank outside the terminal knew it. He could name his price for an hour’s run parallel to the Dordogne river in a fresh Mercedes. We, or rather he, settled on €200 (£173) to reach Castelnaud-la-Chapelle.

Small change compared with the figure quoted by my colleague, senior travel writer Natalie Wilson, as revealed on Tuesday’s travel podcast. On her first visit to Tuscany, Natalie needed to get from a nature reserve named Oasi Dynamo, north of Florence, to Panicale, southeast of Siena. How much, she wondered, for a taxi?

“I thought, maybe naively, that a two-hour trip wouldn't cost me the earth.” The figure: €1,000 (£870).

“It was a bit too rural to hitchhike, unfortunately.” So Natalie spent a relatively modest €50 (£43) for a taxi down to Florence and navigated her way through the chaos of Santa Maria Novella railway station for a Trenitalia trip. “The journey was beautiful, and it made me so confused on why our trains are so expensive,” she says.

Conversely, I am constantly confused by taxi tariffs in Italy. Most of the fares are commensurate with the journey – but sometimes a trip of a few minutes can turn out to cost €30 (£25). And yes, that is according to the meter, spinning faster than than the Cern synchrocyclotron.

Italy featured frequently among the responses to Natalie’s tale. Lee Marshall paid €200 (£175) for the 40-mile trip from Catania airport to Taormina after a British Airways flight delay meant he missed the bus. “Tried to claim back from the airline to no avail,” Lee reports.

James Boddie sent a screenshot of a €114 (£100) quote from Uber to take him just under a mile from Milan Malpensa airport to the Tribe hotel. “Caveats: hotel is other side of motorway and no pedestrian access from terminals. Time was 12.30am. Uber Black was the only option.”

He settled for the €20 (£17) quoted by a local taxi. Marc Mills finesses the Italian connections with his experience on the half-hour trip at 4am from a hotel near Malpensa to the central station: a €285 (£245) quote from Uber, which he declined – instead paying a local taxi firm a non-negotiable €130 (£110). The moral: avoid the ends of the day if you can, and avail of Italy’s mostly excellent public transport.

Across in Japan, “Andy B Travels” reports on a journey that cost £950 – but, he stresses the train firm JR East paid “after abandoning me in middle of nowhere when [the] train was cancelled”.

Blake Lindsay was in the beautiful Nile town of Aswan in Egypt when he needed a one-mile transfer. “Hotel in Aswan quoted us $30 (£22),” he reports. “Downloaded the local taxi app and paid around £1 – and that was us paying above the going rate as we had no change.”

But Mike Wood takes the global title, harking back to 2010: “€3,500 [now £3,000] for a taxi from Oslo to Paris when flights were grounded after Icelandic volcanic eruption. Added a €600 (£520) tip.”

Read more: Why is it so difficult to travel to – and through – Europe by train?