A few weeks ago I dropped a young couple at a hotel in Carlton. She was on the phone the whole ride. He was sitting in the front, watching the meter like he was expecting it to bite him. When we pulled up I said the fare, he nodded, and she leaned forward to tap her card. He put his hand over hers and said, "let's use the chip". Then, to me, apologetically, "sorry, mate, we got skimmed last time".
That is the shape of scams at Melbourne Airport now. The first piece in this series was about staying out of a fake cab to begin with. This one is about what can still happen after you have climbed into a real one, or after you have tapped your card at the end. The tout game has not gone away, but the more expensive game has quietly moved indoors. Into the meter. Into the EFTPOS terminal. Into the card stored on your phone.
Here is the full list of what I see, what it costs you, and the exact thing to say that kills each one.
How the scams have shifted since 2019
The old scam was simple. An unlicensed bloke in arrivals, no meter, $120 flat rate. Parliament made that illegal in 2019 and the fines now run up to $10,904.40 per offence. Safe Transport Victoria still runs undercover sweeps at Tulla, though they are patchy.
What has grown instead are the scams that happen inside a legitimate-looking car. The driver has a licence. The plates are real. The meter is on. But something else about the trip is rigged. These are harder to spot, because by the time the scam shows up, usually on your bank statement, the car is long gone.
The "EFTPOS is broken" swipe-and-inflate scam
This one has been running for ten years in Melbourne and it still works.
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Fixed price, all tolls and GST included. No card required.
The meter reads, say, $52.70. You hand over your card. The driver taps, or pretends to, and then tuts. "Machine's playing up, mate. Hang on." He pulls out a second terminal, or an old carbon-copy imprint slip, and asks you to sign. The amount he writes in is not $52.70. It is $58. Or $90.09. Passengers in Australia have reported a $10 fare showing up as $90.09 after a "broken" machine swap. Australian Frequent Flyer has the receipts.
What to say: "No worries, I'll wait while you get the main machine working. I've got time."
Eight times out of ten the main machine comes back to life. If the driver insists the backup is the only option, ask them to radio head office to process it over the phone. They can do it. They hate doing it because it creates a paper trail, which is precisely why it kills the scam.
Credit card skimming at the end of the ride
This is the newer one, and it bites after the fact.
Westpac put out a warning that some Melbourne taxi drivers have modified NFC readers stuck to the back of their EFTPOS terminals. When you tap your card or phone, the reader behind the one you see copies the card number and expiry. The fraudulent charges usually show up within 48 hours, often from a card-not-present transaction (an online order, a dodgy top-up on a gift card). The copy does not include the CVC, so the scammer cannot use it in a chip reader, but plenty of merchants still do not require CVC at checkout.
What to do: insert the chip and type your PIN. Do not tap at a taxi. Even if the driver sighs. The extra fifteen seconds of typing is cheaper than a replacement card and the phone calls that follow.
If you have already tapped and something weird shows up on your statement in the next two days, ring your bank, not the taxi company. Ask for a chargeback, not a dispute. Westpac, CBA, ANZ and NAB have all seen this pattern before and the process is quick.
The Uber-at-arrivals impersonation
A driver stands at the T2 or T4 arrivals exit holding a small cardboard sign with a name on it. It is sometimes a real-looking name, sometimes a blurred photo printed off someone's LinkedIn. They wait to see who looks up, then call the name. If you are the Sandra Chen the sign is addressed to, or you are willing to be, you follow them to a car.
The car is not your Uber. It is a private car, or an off-app rideshare driver, and they will charge you cash at a flat rate you did not agree to.
The tell: real Uber, DiDi, and Ola drivers do not meet you inside the terminal. They message you a pickup bay number and wait there. Melbourne Airport is very clear about this, and the pickup zones are documented on the airport's site.
What to say: "Sorry, wrong person." Walk past. If you are actually expecting an Uber, check the app for the bay number. If you are expecting a pre-booked taxi, your driver has messaged you their name and rego. Anyone who cannot tell you your own booking reference is not your driver.
The long-route scam (Bell Street vs CityLink)
From Melbourne Airport to the CBD, the fast route is the Tullamarine Freeway onto CityLink, straight down to the Bolte Bridge or into Flemington Road. In normal traffic it is about 25 minutes. The CityLink toll out of MEL is around $12 to $13.
The long-route driver will tell you the toll is not worth it. He takes the Western Ring Road, or Bell Street through Preston, and turns a 25-minute run into 45. You add $15 to $20 to the meter. He saves the toll. You do not.
A Queensland passenger caught a driver running the same scam in Brisbane last year. The meter showed 39 minutes of running time for a trip he recorded at 17 minutes. The driver admitted to it on camera, the cab company refunded him, and the driver was stood down. The same pattern runs at every major Australian airport, including ours.
What to say, before you pull out of the rank: "We'll go CityLink, thanks. I've got an app tracking." You do not need an app. The phrase is what matters. Most drivers will not fight a passenger who has telegraphed that they are awake.
The double-terminal overcharge
This is the subtle one, and it catches experienced travellers out.
Some cars run two EFTPOS terminals, one from a legitimate taxi network, one from a second merchant account. The driver taps with the first machine, it "fails" on the screen, but the charge has already gone through. He then taps with the second machine, which succeeds. Your statement the next day shows two charges, often from two different merchant names so it is not immediately obvious.
What to do: take a photo of the final screen that shows "Approved" with the amount. If the first tap "fails", check your phone or the app for a transaction notification before agreeing to a second tap. Modern banking apps ping within seconds.
If both go through, dispute both with your bank. The driver cannot explain two merchant accounts.
How to pay so none of this touches you
The short answer is that how you pay matters more than which cab you get into.
The rules I give my own family when they travel:
- Chip and PIN, not tap. Every time.
- If you have to tap, use Apple Pay or Google Pay, not the plastic card. The tokenised number on your phone cannot be cloned the same way.
- Watch the meter reading and the final EFTPOS amount. If the two do not match within a dollar, ask why.
- Ask for a printed receipt. You are entitled to one by law in Victoria. The receipt has the driver number, vehicle number, pickup time, and fare. It is also the single most useful piece of paper in any later dispute.
- If you want the whole category of scam to go away, book a fixed fare in advance. The price is agreed, tolls and GST are included, and the payment runs through a logged operator account instead of a windscreen terminal. It is what I tell my sister-in-law to do every time she flies in. See our airport taxi booking guide or Melbourne Airport fares by suburb for the actual numbers.
What to do the same night if you've been scammed
Speed matters here. Stacked evidence within 24 hours is much stronger than a complaint filed a week later.
- Save the receipt or the SMS booking confirmation. If you did not get a receipt, take a phone photo of the meter, the driver accreditation card, and the plate.
- Ring your bank. Not in the morning. That night. Most chargebacks started within 24 hours are approved in a week.
- Note the time, the terminal, and the drop-off point. The more precise, the better.
- Lodge a complaint with Safe Transport Victoria on 1800 638 802 or through safetransport.vic.gov.au. Real complaints drive the undercover sweeps. If people do not complain, nothing gets audited.
- If you felt unsafe during the ride, call 000. Victoria Police have a dedicated CPV liaison and the airport is a joint AFP/Victoria Police jurisdiction.
None of this gets you home any faster after a long flight. But the drivers who run these scams are running them because most passengers do nothing. The cab I drove for years before moving into dispatch ran on the same rank as two drivers I watched get struck off. It happened because one passenger, one night, wrote it all down.
That is the whole point of knowing the scams before you land. Not to be paranoid. Not to turn every Melbourne cabbie into a villain, because we are not. Just so that on the night something dodgy happens, you are the passenger who makes it cost the driver, and not the other way around.