A most taxing taxi ride

Nightmare trip costs tourists in Miami more than $777, plus tip

MIAMI — When Carol and Eugene Barrington were ushered into a yellow cab from the official taxi queue at Miami International Airport on Sept. 13, 2017, they weren’t paying attention to the license number or driver’s name. Why would they? They were just happy to be on vacation.

“We were tourists being put in a cab to our hotel. We didn’t know any better,” said Mrs. Barrington. For about 45 minutes, the couple relaxed in the back of the taxi, not realizing they would be charged more than $35 per mile for that trip, or about $17 per minute. (The standard rate is $2.40 a mile, with up to $0.40 per minute of wait time.)

They’d already had a streak of bad luck — Hurricane Harvey wreaked havoc on their Houston home, and then Irma blew through South Florida three days before their planned Miami vacation. But in the end, their cruise on the Celebrity Equinox was not canceled, and they had a day to explore Miami before setting sail. It seemed their luck was improving.

It wasn’t until after their vacation that Barrington checked her credit card statement and noticed a $777.44 charge from Sept. 13. It was the taxi ride — fare, tip and sales tax — between the Miami airport and the Crowne Plaza in Hallandale Beach, a ride that should have cost around $70 and included no sales tax.

Though unique in scale, their story mirrors the 114 other passenger overcharge complaints filed against taxi drivers in Miami-Dade County between Jan. 1, 2017, and this month.

Many are disputed, seemingly small amounts — $5, $10, $15, but a few claimed drivers overcharged the customer by larger amounts, sometimes more than $100, either by double charging — saying the credit card did not go through and charging cash as well — or simply by refusing to turn on the meter and demanding cash.

Only nine complaints resulted in a refund, with more than $600 being returned. But most frequently, the cases were closed because of “insufficient information.”

It’s not easy to prove an overcharge. Without a cab number or at least a company name, Luis Espinoza, from the Department of Transportation and Public Works, said it’s difficult to get a refund for lack of proof.

“We were stupidly oblivious to be honest with you,” Barrington said. “In our defense, we’ve never run across this before. We’ve traveled all over the world.”

When the taxi driver missed the obvious exit, the Barringtons began to feel something might be off. By the time they were slowly driving through residential streets with the driver saying their high-profile hotel was “around here someplace,” Barrington said she felt they were potentially being “taken for a ride.”

She used her cellphone’s GPS to guide the driver the rest of the way to the hotel. Still, she wasn’t very worried.

“I just figured she was a substitute driver or something,” Barrington said. “You guys had just been through a hurricane. I didn’t expect things to run like clockwork.”

In the end, they were lost only for a few minutes, and when Barrington

looked at the meter as she exited the cab, she said it indicated something around $70 — expensive, but about what she’d expected.

When her husband went to swipe his card, however, there was no card reader in the back of the cab. Not having one is illegal.

The driver is not supposed to touch the passenger’s credit card. But the Barringtons didn’t know that, so they followed the driver’s instructions.

They said the driver took their card and swiped it through a little white square attached to her cellphone. The screen on the phone was so dark he said he couldn’t see the amount he was being charged. But the couple had no reason to think the charge was anything other than what they saw on the meter. Mr. Barrington said he added $7 for a tip and signed.

Then he asked for a receipt — also a passenger’s legal right in Miami.

“Oh, I don’t know how to do that,” his wife remembers the driver saying as the woman hopped back in the cab and drove off.