When we were in Delhi, our driver of the car rental service kept insisting to drive us to somewhere for shopping, in despite of our fully scheduled one-and-only day in the city. He kept saying, “listen to me…you have the time…” Well…glad that we didn’t listen to the driver and refused to get off the car (he ignored our refusal and drove us to the shop anyways), else we wouldn’t have the time for Qutab Minar. And because we didn’t listen to him, he got all sour for the rest of the day and tried to find excuses not to drive us for dinner before dropping us at the airport.
And there was Vijay, another driver of the car rental service who tried to rip us off by aggressively selling us an Rs200/hour camel ride, while the market price we later found was only Rs50-100/hour. Luckily, we had learned our lesson early enough in Fatehpur Sikri when we found out that the Rs100 tuk tuk ride Vijay got us actually should cost no more than Rs40. Being a little wiser this time, we didn’t take Vijay’s recommendation right away, but did some shopping first and found a very good deal of Rs 50/hour later in Pushkar market by ourselves.
This is just two of our many stories of drivers in India, and one could find many similar stories posted online. Don’t get me wrong, there are also drivers who are genuine and won’t drive to places without their customers’ compliance. And I blame it on the commission system in India. Come to the end of it, these drivers aren’t any bad people, but just like everyone of us, want to earn more rupees for a better life.
So if your driver do this to you, take it easy and don’t get too upset. Just stick to your guns by firmly declining and saying “no” without losing your temper or feeling guilty.
