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IT’S A SCAM: Distraught man charged £500 for ONE-MILE pedicab ride in London
A distraught man was charged a whopping £500 for a one-mile ride in a London pedicab trip last weekend.
The man visiting London was said to have been distracted by the unregulated pedicab driver when paying for the trip taken on Friday 29 July.
According to Local Democracy Reporting Services, the tourist took a pedicab from Mayfair to nearby Soho which lasted about 10 minutes.
At the end of the journey the man paid using a card payment device and it was only later that that the tourist noticed that the transaction amounted to £500.
The anonymous man called the trip a ‘scam’ targeting those that had been drinking while on nights out in the capital.
He said: "I'd had a few drinks, and I should have realised but I blindly put my card in the machine"
"He was good at what he did."
The Government looks set to bring in new laws to crack down on unlicensed rickshaws in central London.
Despite a Private Member’s Bill failing, a Government sponsored Rickshaw Bill instead featured in the Queen’s Speech session of Parliament.
A longstanding loophole which governs taxis and private hire vehicles allows pedicabs to operate without licences.
In the capital, Westminster City Council used anti-nuisance laws to prosecute rickshaw drivers. The rickshaws, often seen with flashing disco lights and sounding out loud music, are regularly in the West End targeting tourists, shoppers and theatre-goers.
Three rickshaw operators were recently handed fines worth more than £1,200 for playing excessively loud music late at night after a joint operation involving the council and the Met Police.
