03-10-2008, 03:44 AM
I know that many people have expressed their dissatisfication with the taxi service in Melbourne. I just wanted to make it clear that rude, impatient, or lost cab drivers should be the least of your worries.
I was travelling in Melbourne a few months ago and took a cab from my hotel to Tullamarine Airport. The cabbie said the electronic payment system was down and used a manual swipe machine to take our credit card info. When we reviewed our credit card statement there was a mysterious charge 2 weeks after we had left Melbourne, for a 'limo' ride in north Melbourne. This was obviously fraudulent. I googled "melbourne taxi fraud" and found out that MANY people have had similar problems. The transaction comes up as:
CAB ACCOUNT AUST BRUNSWICK AU or
ARDEN TAXIS LIMO NTH MELBOURNE
The amounts have been anywhere from $20 to $190 - small for one transaction but certainly adds up after dozens of people get ripped off. One lady said the day after she used her card to pay for a cab ride in Melbourne over $16,000 was frauduently charged to her card! It is apparently a wide spread scam. The terrorists that planned to blow up the AFL finals in 2005 used stolen credit card #'s that they purchased from Melbourne cab drivers, to fund their activities! According to testimony in that trial, taxi drivers sold the terrrorists card numbers/info for $10 per number! So who knows who actually gets a hold of your credit card info.
The moral of the story: keep your receipts and check your credit card statements after using your credit card in a Melbourne cab. I disputed the charge with my credit card company and have been refunded but I am still very upset that this is an ongoing problem that no one is doing anything about.
If something like this has happened to you, please report it to the Taxi Directorate (even though they told me it was not their problem) and anyone else you can think of (police, member of parliament, etc). The more noise people make about this scam, the more likely something will actually happen to correct it. Right now no one seems to care that dozens (probably hundreds) of people are getting ripped off by crooks disguised as cab drivers.
I was travelling in Melbourne a few months ago and took a cab from my hotel to Tullamarine Airport. The cabbie said the electronic payment system was down and used a manual swipe machine to take our credit card info. When we reviewed our credit card statement there was a mysterious charge 2 weeks after we had left Melbourne, for a 'limo' ride in north Melbourne. This was obviously fraudulent. I googled "melbourne taxi fraud" and found out that MANY people have had similar problems. The transaction comes up as:
CAB ACCOUNT AUST BRUNSWICK AU or
ARDEN TAXIS LIMO NTH MELBOURNE
The amounts have been anywhere from $20 to $190 - small for one transaction but certainly adds up after dozens of people get ripped off. One lady said the day after she used her card to pay for a cab ride in Melbourne over $16,000 was frauduently charged to her card! It is apparently a wide spread scam. The terrorists that planned to blow up the AFL finals in 2005 used stolen credit card #'s that they purchased from Melbourne cab drivers, to fund their activities! According to testimony in that trial, taxi drivers sold the terrrorists card numbers/info for $10 per number! So who knows who actually gets a hold of your credit card info.
The moral of the story: keep your receipts and check your credit card statements after using your credit card in a Melbourne cab. I disputed the charge with my credit card company and have been refunded but I am still very upset that this is an ongoing problem that no one is doing anything about.
If something like this has happened to you, please report it to the Taxi Directorate (even though they told me it was not their problem) and anyone else you can think of (police, member of parliament, etc). The more noise people make about this scam, the more likely something will actually happen to correct it. Right now no one seems to care that dozens (probably hundreds) of people are getting ripped off by crooks disguised as cab drivers.
