Warning!! Took a black taksi with yellow taksi light sign which looked like a regular cab that costed us 80€ for 16km from Santa Claus village to our hotel. It turned out to be some company called A&L VIP Taksi. Driver was very unfriendly when questioned.

We avoided a €45 fixed cab offer to choose the metered cab and got the first shock of our new year.

We had a great experience with a similar looking metered black taksi the day before, hence why we opted for the same. Didn’t know these practices still occur in such a beautiful country.

Any suggestions for reporting this to prevent others from facing the same misfortune? Thanks in advance and happy new year!!

by thelosthideout

37 comments

  1. Use only taxis from bigger companied. Check what they are in your specific city.

    ALWAYS check the price before getting in the cab. Even If you don’t take fixed price, you can ask for an estimate based on the distance.

  2. Rovaniemi, like many tourist destinations worldwide, unfortunately suffers from scammy taxi services. Like anywhere you go, do research on what are considered the proper/official taxi services in that area. Never respond to someone offering you a taxi, go to the regular queue and grab one there.

  3. If you are being scammed, don’t pay. If you agreed to the price then it was just a poor choice by you. Finland is a country, where if you had to call the cops, they are just not automatically on the side of the “locals”

    Unfortunately our taxi market these days is full of people who’d rather cheat their customers than do a decent job. Many, like yours by the name of the driver (by the company info), likely brought these customs from their MENA homelands.

  5. This time of the year there are a lot of taxis coming from different cities, and some have come just to basically rip off tourists :/

    As a local, just before the season I had used two different taxis, and I talked with drivers. Both had come from Helsinki just to drive for the peak season. Though both were friendly, and weren’t overpriced.

    But with the season there are a lot of drivers, so they are competing with each other. And even though there are a lot of tourists, also because of lot of drivers, it can sometimes be hard to get rides. Some outside drivers may have expected easy money, so when their own rent is pricey and not getting that many rides, they opt to try get their moneys off from rides they get.

    But these are just my assumptions, I don’t really know the actual situation, as I usually just drive my car. But the city centre is awful to drive during the season 😅

  7. Lesson learned, check the price beforehand, or get a fixed price, or be “ripped off”. According to the second picture you paid the right sum.

  8. I’m wondering if it’s even possible to report taxi drivers like them who are clearly ripping people off

  9. You didn’t look at the price list before agreeing to the ride? I don’t think they are really scamming you, if they have their price list available and charge accordingly.

    It’s an extortionate price, but it was information that was available to you. I rarely take a taxi but when I do, I always get a price estimate beforehand.

  10. 80e for 16km sounds about right.
    I pay regularly 25e for 5km trip.

  11. The price seems to be according to their price list. What is the ripoff you are talking about?
    In Finland you have the right to let dumb people pay excessive prices if they want to. Your writing however, might be considered defamatory.

  12. The taxi literally has an example of a price list on the dashboard. In my opinion the steep price shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

    Like others said i would use either a large local taxi company or bolt/uber in app. So you’ll get the price before you take the ride.

  13. In Finland we had working system but it was destroyed by right wing government.

  14. Use the apps (for example menevä, in Rovaniemi’s case also use Taksi Rovaniemi), use only taxis with taxi company logos on the car side panels etc. Also ask the driver before you leave what it will cost and don’t take a taxi that doesn’t have a receipt machine.

    Once took a taxi without the receipt machine, got slightly ripped off and now I only take local taxi company taxi or menevä.

  15. Luckily our government wants to impose meters to all taxis to avoid these scams. No, wait 😂

    Download Uber or Bolt and if you don’t get a ride from those, Menevä Taksi seems to operate in Rovaniemi and they also have an app, which most likely allows you to see the price in advance and you won’t get ripped off (this is just my assumption, I’ve never used taxi up there and here in the capitol area I use mostly Uber or Bolt since they are cheaper).

    edit just checked the price calculation from the sticker and jfc that’s their price. Anyway, not gonna change my advice lol

  16. Big cities pretty much always have expensive taxis, in Oulu and Tampere I’ve had to pay over 20€ for a 3km ride.

    Granted Oulu has what they call a taxi monopoly, only little competition here.

    Once I got a taxi in Kiiminki to Oulu, that’s around 25km and cost me only 50€

  17. To be honest, I prefer taxis who are not run by immigrants. In this case, like in many other, they go to popular festivals and tourist destinations from another cities (like this company as it’s registered in Helsinki), and their fares are way higher when compared to local taxis.

  18. Probably one of those trap taxi companies of Rovaniemi area

  19. It was NYE, of course it was going to be expensive. I used Uber yesterday night and it was 30e for 6km. Bolt was even more expensive.

  20. Same in Helsinki. It’s wild west in Finland with taxis since some sort of reformation a few years back.

  21. Taxis in Finland have always been expensive. After deregulation, there is a wider variation in price, because taxi firms are free to choose their price. They charged you exactly the marked rate on their sign, so their isn’t much to dispute.

    10€ starting cost. This is close to what other companies charge

    19 minutes at 2€ per minute =38€ This is about double what a lot of companies charge

    16km at 2€ per km 32€ Probably 1.5 times a more standard Finnish company.

    Total 80€.

    If your group size was 4 or under and you went with Taksi Rovaniemi that has more industry standard pricing, you would have paid:

    8€ starting price, 1.43€x 16= 22,88€ 0.95€/ min x 19 =18.05€ = 48.93€

    You’ve got some good tips in the thread about choosing taxis, but don’t expect affordable taxis.

  22. How is it a scam? Given the information in the receipt, everything is exactly as the price list in your own image says.
    I mean, yeah, it’s expensive sure and I’d never have taken that ride seeing the price list, but you can’t really say it’s scam if you still decided to go with it.

  23. A lot of taxi scammers here. Only use taxis from Lähitaksi, Menevä and Taksi Rovaniemi.

    Check for proper teipings since some scammers try to emulate the look of the official taxis.

    The prices are taped to the side of the car, if you get in the car you approve for the prices they have listed.

  24. >If the fare for the example journey in a taxi company’s price list exceeds EUR 47, the driver must always agree on the price or the grounds for determining the price separately with the customer.

    >If the service provider cannot prove that you had expressly agreed on the fare or the grounds for determining the fare, the fare cannot exceed the EUR 47 limit set for the fare given as an example.

    >In this case the service provider consequently cannot charge you more than EUR 47, even if the distance or the time taken is longer (more than 10 kilometres or 15 minutes).

    https://www.kkv.fi/en/consumer-affairs/travel-and-accommodation/taxi-services/pricing-of-taxi-services/

  26. Yep, total ripoff, in other words “questionable business practices.” Taxis are free to set prices any way they want as long as they are visible.

    Never go into a taxi in Finland without agreeing on the price ahead of time.

  27. They literally have the price showing on the dash. What about this is “rip off”?

  29. At this time of year here in Rovaniemi there are a lot of foreign scammer taxi drivers. Take a look at the taxi driver’s face and you’ll know immediately what I mean.
    We see and hear bad stories about these scammers all the time. Take a local taxi and you’ll be safe and //get a normal, fair, competitive price.

  31. Enjoy the taxi sector liberalization. Lobbied by the best, fucking up the rest.

  33. Use uber/bolt or known taxi companies/brands. Never ever go into an untaped random taxi which has no known company logos on it. If you have to use an unlabeled taxi, agree on a price beforehand instead of using the meter.

    You probably know this but if not, you can go into any of the taxis at a taxi stand. No need to go to the first one in the line.

  34. is that your home address btw? stop being this naive… you’re now exposing yourself to the whole world.

  35. In Rovaniemi only use taxis with Menevä or Taksi Rovaniemi stickers on the sides. Those are legit and trustworthy companies. Most taxis here currently are unfortunately fake ones or ones from the south looking to make easy money.

  36. Btw this is about same price this ride would cost before the taxi change that Berner made like 2017 or something. If you want cheap rides use the apps.

  37. Only ever use bigger companies and pre-agree the price before. Since the taxis were deregulated, it is the promised land of scams.

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