Videos of taxi drivers "cheating" customers have surfaced online, according to a report by Chinese evening daily Wanbao.
To prove that cabbies deliberately take longer routes to get higher fares, a young couple took three trips and filmed the entire process.
According to Wanbao, the couple discovered that a few dishonest cabbies did indeed took longer routes to run higher fares. This led them to publish the videos online.
In the first video, the couple boarded a taxi at Devonshire Road to head to Thomson Medical Centre at Thomson Road. The couple expressed that they were in a hurry and need to get to Thomson Medical Centre as fast as possible.
Using the GPS on their handphones, the couple then worked out the shortest route and estimated duration of journey.
As the cabby strayed from the proposed route indicated by the GPS, the couple started questioning the cabby on the reason for doing so.
After repeated questioning, the cabby retorted that they should have said earlier if they had a route in mind.
In the end, their route was 7.3km long and lasted 15 minutes, a drastic difference from the calculated distance of 2.9km and less than 10 minutes.
In the second video, the same couple boarded a cab at Balestier Road and told the cabby to head to Circular Road. As before they requested the cabby to make haste using the shortest road.
Similarly the couple questioned the cabby when he took another route. To which the cabby shot back, " Do you want the fastest route or the shortest route?" The cabby explained that there was a difference between the two.
In the videos, one of the cabbies were driving a ComfortDelGro taxi.
When contacted by Wanbao, Ms Tan, Communications Officer for ComfortDelGro, operator of the largest fleet of taxis in Singapore, said that cabbies who take longer routes to charge higher fares will be issued demerit points.
She added, "Passengers who think they may have been led on a longer route can call our customer service hotline at 6552-4525.
"Alternatively, they can e-mail the driver's name, licence plate number, date, time and destination of journey to feedback@cdgtaxi.com.sg so that we can further investigate."
With regards to the video, Ms Tan requested for the couple to contact ComfortDelGro to assist with their investigations.
