START BUDAPEST BLOG

You must have heard that taxi drivers preying on toursists is one of the annonying things in Budapest. With a little caution you can easily manage not to fall victim to these suckers. The main rules:

• Use a taxi from a big company
• Order a taxi on the phone if possible
• Make sure the taxi you ordered picks you up
• Don’t take an offer form a taxi driver to visit strip bars etc.
• Try no to look like a fool and use common sense

Click to find out how and why.

Use a taxi from a big company

As in any big city, some taxi drivers in Budapest like to take the tourists for an expensive ride. The masters of this game are the few hundred (!) “hyena” cabs that don’t belong to one of the big companies. You can see examples of these arrogant, petty thieves around railway stations and main tourist attractions. Their taxis have taxi signs but no other logos or ads. Avoid them. Apart from tourists, they usually rip off desperate people, like grannies from a village visiting relatives in a hospital. The city authorites could catch these vultures easily for once and all, but they are busy doing other things, like designing bridges that don’t connect.
You can use the “respectable”, big taxi companies. They are:

• City Taxi - a bit upmarket, but clean, and often speaks English
• FÅ‘taxi - okay
• 6×6 Taxi - okay. Many companies use this one as transport partners
• Taxi 2000 - bit underclass, but big and cheap. Drivers range from smelly granpas to thug looking thugs
• Taxi 4 - upmarket

The hotel you stay in might arrange you a taxi or a driver for the day. This canbe cheaper than the street rate or way more expensive, depending on the hotel and what kind of people they are.

Order a taxi on the phone if possible

Strangely, it is cheaper to order a taxi by phone to your location than to hail one on the street. This is exactly opposite to what is normal in most cities. In other cities, you hail a taxi, get in, ride, pay, leave. In Budapest, you call the taxi company, the taxi comes to pick you up wherever you are, and you pay less starting fee and less per km than the “street pick-up” tariff. Allegedly it is because the taxi companies compete to get regular comstumers. Still, it doesn’t make sense. But this is the custom, so follow it or be taken for a ride.
If you order a taxi by phone, the dispatcher might ask you to tell them which number you are calling from. Quite possibly you are calling from a mobile phone or street phone whose number is indicated, and the dispatcher should see the number. But still, you have to repeat the number. Has to do something with rhe privacy rights in case they have to call you back. Or just normal stupidity. When the taxi arrives, tell the driver your name to chekc if it’s yours, and off you go.

Make sure the taxi you ordered picks you up

Sometimes an other “pirate” taxi driver might intercept the the taxi company’s radio call and rush to pick you up. This is called the “shark” taxi. This doesn’t happen often, but still, watch out.
Don’t take an offer form a taxi driver
The taxi driver is not your friend. He doesn’t give a damn how you feel yourself in this town. He tells you about this cool bar with big tits because he gets commission. You will pay for that commission if you order drinks. And quite likely there will be a hefty mimimum consumption thrown at you, too.

Try no to look like a fool
Urban legend says that one unlucky passenger paid 300 Euros to get to the airport. A true story: some Japanese told their host that they saw three rivers on their way back to the hotel. Use common sense and try not to look desperate.
Also, don’t be over-aggressive. Some people managed to beat up or knife taxi drivers, but this is the exception. If you cause trouble, usually there will be plenty of taxi drivers within seconds to clear the situation. This can especially happen if you were stupid enough to hail and unmarked taxi and argued about the price.

So, why is all this?
In many western countries the taxi drivers are the latest immigrants. If they try to fuck with you, you get the foreign police on their asses and they get expelled. Or the taxi business is regulated by boards, unions and regulations. Or they are part of the tradition, like in London. In any way, they are part of the service sector.
Not in Budapest. Here the taxi drivers belonged to the aristocracy of the eighties. They had access to lots of cash and even hard currency, were free and uncontrolled. Times have changed, today the adjective “taxis” (taxi driver) is used as “petty, uncultured and money-hungry” by some people in Buda. But still, to own a cab is still regarded as a success story in the outer districts.
And being a taxi driver will be success story for a long time. Hungary doesn’t have considerable immigration. Hungary has more regulations than Prussia did, but no-one cares about them. The city is run by idiots. So these sharks and hyenas thrive in wild.
Budapest has the a bit more inhabitants than Vienna, but is considerably poorer. Still, it has 20 times as many taxi licenses. Not as many per capita as say, Peru (1 driver/adult), but we are getting near if the tourists keep flocking and the ecomony keeps falling.
And it seems Hungarian seem to love to serve the people who prey on them. There was even a time when cab drivers were regarded as kind of freedom fighters. In 1990, the government, contrary to its promise, raised the heavily subsidised petrol prices to the market level. Cab drivers blocked the roads and made a circus in front of the parliament. The “people” brought the protesters - the same people who ripped off their grannies - home-made cookies and tea.