"My wife and I had booked a maxi-cab to take us from Clarke Quay to Changi Airport , on 7th May 2015, 0720am, as we had lots of luggage. The maxi cab taxi, SHB6723C was assigned to be our taxi that morning. As scheduled, the taxi came, and the driver reluctantly assisted me to place the luggage and boxes into the cab.
While on the way , he checked with us as to the terminal we were using at the airport. I informed him that as my wife was flying Korean Air & I was flying Singapore, ( I didn't know initially) we were using different terminals. T2 for Korean Air, & T3 for SIA. Taxi driver informed me that the booking was for one stop only and if i wanted to stop at T2 & T3, i have to pay an extra S$10/- on top of the S$50 booking fees. I protested as both terminals were close by. He informed me that normally it would be a S$20 extra and I was lucky that he was asking only S$10! I refused.
And what happened next was extremely scary. He stopped the taxi , opened the passenger side doors , and he got out of his seat to try to evict us! It was in the middle of a busy road section and it was really dangerous with all the buses and other vehicles weaving about us. Not only was it dangerous, we know with the amount of luggage we had, we would have a difficult time getting it all onto the sidewalk and calling another taxi, let alone one that was big enough to carry our huge bags (that was the reason we had booked a maxi cab the night before). My wife was frightened to tears as he shouted for us to get out of his cab. By then he had opened the trunk to remove our things.
Under extreme duress, i quickly told him to just drop us at T3 only. He muttered, "thats better". We were terrified and we frentically tried to contact the coordinator whom we had booked this taxi from. She did not reply me even when i pleaded with her to help resolve the matter with the taxi driver immediately.
The harrowing 15 mins to the airport was extremely traumatic for my wife and I .We were like sitting on the edge of our seats.We breathed a sigh of relief only when we reached T3 without any more incidents. I asked for his I.C but he gave me a receipt and said "go and complain, my details are in the receipt". I told him I would be contacting the police also, and he chuckled,"go ahead".
I am a Singaporean,now living in Korea. I am totally shock from this incident how this could have happened. I have checked that there should be no extra charges within a 2 KM range and Terminal 2 to Terminal 3 does not exceed 2 km. I hope the authorities can look further into these very traumatizing experience. and that errant taxi drivers should not be allowed to ply the roads. (still distressed after 2 days, whenever i recall the journey)"
This is precisely why we encourage all commuters to not give the benefit of the doubt when faced with these ruffians on the road. Imagine if the many passengers who experienced his escalating behaviour had promptly reported him previously, this idiot would either been scared straight or removed from the roads altogether. This gangster didn't wake up one morning and become so daring -it was a step-by-step, incident-by-incident progression as he became bolder with each instance where he got away with being a crook. Eventually, it has come to a point where he can behave more like a kidnapper rather than a driver and laugh off threats of complaint on such a serious incident. We remind all commuters to immediately go to the LTA online feedback portal and lodge a complaint for all instances of criminal-like behaviour by these drivers so that it isn't your mother or child that eventually ends up in a situation such as this. The cab companies are well known to drag their feet so LTA is the best option, always.
