Sunday Afternoon Back Home in Malaga; Taxi Scams Two and Three

They say once bitten, twice shy. After my experience of rogue taxis in Prague, I spotted the taxi scam at the Saint James & Albany Hotel a mile off. I asked reception to organise me a taxi to the station. Moments later, Romain, the young concierge, told me that it had arrived. I was about to get into the car when I noticed it did not have a ‘Taxi Parisien’ light on top, nor a meter. I asked the driver how much the fare would be. He said €40. Having checked with the taxi which brought me to the hotel, I knew this to be a complete rip off. I asked the concierge why he had not got me a normal taxi and he told me that none was available and that the price being quoted was ‘the normal price’. The driver, realising that he was losing the job, suddenly offered to do it for €20. At that point, I went in search of the duty manager, to discover that Romain had already realised the game was up and alerted him.

I am sure that by the time I make my formal complaint to the Saint James & Albany Hotel General Manager, Romain Allard, the night manager and young Romain the concierge will have concocted some story to protect their shameful scam.

But it is disgraceful that a reputable hotel allows this sort of thing to go on and I will be making the point strongly to both to their senior staff and to Great Hotels of the World who market this hotel.

Interestingly, it was the same night duty manager who, supposedly, was going to report the problems with noise on the previous night to the general manager. I will also be making sure he did. Just for the record, the normal taxi that took me to the station charged me €11 and told me that, far from there being no taxis available, there were nine showing as free in the immediate vicinity of the hotel. He said that companies like Capital Shuttle would give €10-15 in commission to the hotel staff for each job. Such scams are nice little earners indeed.

Dinner on Elipsos was very good and I shared a table with an elderly Argentinean Couple and a GP from Birmingham whose Spanish made mine look positively fluent!

Taxi scam number three came en route from Chamartin to Atocha stations in Madrid. The driver, Licence 02698, Registration 2046 DXD kindly offered me a non metered journey for €30. I insisted on the meter and the fare was €14. The relevant Madrid authorities will be told.

I was early at Atocha station, so managed to get an earlier train and RENFE kindly upgraded me free of charge to Club Class as First was full.

As the lovely AVE High Speed train reached 300KPH after leaving Cordoba, I turned on my iPod and selected classical shuffle mode. How weird that it should come up with Memories of the Alhambra.

Clearly, it’s journey’s end.