On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 15:15 +0300, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote: > Actually, they are allowed to charge anything they want *provided* they > don't exceed the predetermined fee (which is calculated as you > indicated). > > Of course, it may be difficult to convince a taxi driver to take less > money than what the ministry regulation specifies :) You are quite right. :) I omitted some details in my explanation: in many cases, the driver is not the owner of the vehicle nor of the taxi company that he drives for. Thus he is employed by someone else and typically he doesn't have the authority to reduce the fees. In general, the agreement is that any reduction is also reduced from the driver's salary. So you may find that the driver suddenly speaks only Finnish if you try to negotiate the price. ;-) Some taxi company owners do drive themselves, so if you stumble upon one of those, then you might have a better chance to negotiate the price. But the way Andreas suggested, to skip to the following cab in the line, isn't possible. The taxi drivers are quite rigorous about this. Either you take the cab that is first in line or you wait for the next one. The Helsinki-Vantaa airport is also a special case. Taxis from the Vantaa region have precedence over Helsinki and Espoo taxis at the airport. So unless you want to upset the drivers, you'd better take the first in line. Some friends and relatives of mine are or have been taxi drivers. Their advice was clear: a discount is extremely unlikely. If the drivers perceive you as troublesome, they might leave you stranded, especially at the airport where there is a constant stream of customers... -- Fabian Fagerholm <fabbe@paniq.net>
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