BTV Taxi News

Ask Dear Cabbie, for answers pertaining to our region, or even general travel advice.

Fair Warning:

It has been brought to our attention by BTV Director of Operations, Rick Varney that the post (below), “Meet ‘Danny Ardesh’” has been copied to paper and is being distributed at Burlington Int’l.

Supposedly -based upon a variety of feedback- Danny must have annoyed Chicken Man because a paper copy of Meet Danny Ardesh is reported to be distributed all over Burlington, throughout the Airport and on parked cars too.  It’s Everywhere.
(That seems farfetched but maybe it’s true…and wouldn’t that be great Danny!!).

Although we thank you for helping us get the word out about Mr. Ardesh; do be careful where you distribute this information -when in doubt, get permission- because BTV’s position is, anyone caught distributing anything without permission on airport property, will be arrested.  Ayup, arrested!

Finally, may we suggest, as alternatives: post this story to your favorite list(s), or notify your city counselor, or other less risky means.  We’d hate to see anyone arrested, although it might bring more attention to the deeds of this louse*.
* a contemptible person, not the wingless, parasitic insect, and yet….

(Mind you, no interest was expressed in determining the validity of the information).

12 Jan., 2012 UPDATE

Apparently Williston Taxi was rather suddenly renamed Williston Transportation and after numerous reports we have seen Danny “Fraud” driving both Williston Transportation and Vermont Tour & Charter vehicles.

~ ~ ~

Danny Ardesh -a seemingly amiable sort- is?(was) the owner of Friendly Fare Taxi.  In more recent times Mr. Ardesh  has been representing Vermont Tour & Charter, presumably because its owner, Mr. Bill Cross, his working partner of many months,  has been barred from the Burlington International Airport (BTV), by way of a no trespass order, for repeated solicitation in the airport terminal.

Present dots connected, four years ago at this time*, we were able to bring to a halt Mr. Ardesh’s most  ambitious web publishing program.  Unfortunately there were, and apparently still are not any laws in place, to reward Mr. Ardesh his just due.

* this only came to our attention in late June of 2007 while performing some basic company name web searches.  We have no idea how long Mr Ardesh had been attempting to defraud legitimate existing businesses, though the copies of the material we retain read: © 2006.

Mr. Ardesh perpetrated a fraud in that he published a minimum of 16 web sites wherein he led the viewers to believe that legitimate businesses -in no way affiliated with Mr. Ardesh- were in fact associated, if not owned, by his Friendly Fare Taxi operation.  Which might explain why that company name is no longer displayed on his vehicle, and in fact, someone sharing his surname, at his residential address, has recently registered ‘Williston Taxi‘ with the Secretary of States office.  In some instances, when one googled the name of one of those legitimate businesses, the search result would list the fake Friendly Fare Taxi site as the #1 search, the  legitimate company site being further down the top 10 list.  Nonetheless, his fake sites generally appeared in the Top 10.

When contacted about this fraud in 2007, Mr Ardesh laughed in our face, stating the sites were hosted offshore, and nothing could be done to stop him.  Which is essentially what we discovered when contacting the Vermont Attorney General’s office, among others, in July 2007.  Unless we wanted to waste a boat load of money, in hopes of getting the courts to address this problem, we didn’t have a leg to stand on, per Mr. Ardesh’s immediate, and subsequent, ear to ear taunts.

Furthermore, there wasn’t much chance of raising funds from the affected businesses because those contacted didn’t understand the technical nature of the problem.  They had paid for advertising, they had advertising, where’s the problem.

However Mr. Ardesh was wrong, in part.  Once the hosting service was contacted and made aware of his fraudulent shenanigans, they removed in excess of four dozen of his sites from the web, which at the time, seemed the closest thing to justice available.

However, another remedy escaped us at the time which earlier this year we have attempted to utilize.  Which was to bring this situation to the attention of the licensing agencies, specifically to the BTV airport administration charged with taxi and contract carrier licensing.  Unfortunately, no response has been forthcoming, not even to see the evidence.  Our hope, given the evidence available, that Mr. Ardesh would be denied the privilege of being re-licensed.

How was this fraud perpetrated?  Mr. Ardesh used the basic template from his actual web site: a vehicle photo across the top with his business name and phone number overlaid, with several dead links in the left column navigation bar.  But! near the bottom in the body of the page, one would see the name of the business for which they had searched, underscored, by what appeared to be some sort of graphic design which when the font size was increased several times(which most viewers -unaware something was amiss- probably would not bother with), actual text would be discovered(purporting, in butchered English, that the named company was actually associated with Mr. Ardesh’ Friendly Fare Taxi company).  The trick was that the text was rendered so small, it was unreadable, except by search engines which analyzed the underlying HTML programming code.  (These days, search engines will no longer be fooled by this sort of trickery, as font size is now analyzed since their algorithms have been adjusted to disallow text sizes unreadable by the human eye).

My apologies for not publishing these facts before now, it simply never occurred until recent months, when Mr Ardesh -while representing himself as Vermont Tour and Charter- again taunted us, by denying his fraudulent behavior ever occurred.

We’d love to see you in a court of law Danny ‘Fraud’, perhaps you’d be kind enough to arrange it.

Waterbury, Vermont – August 31, 2010

Police say a taxi driver was drunk on the job. Waterbury police say passengers called for help early Sunday morning, claiming their taxi driver seemed more drunk than they were. Police arrested Michael Weber, 42, of Cambridge, after a breath test showed he was more than twice the legal limit. He was cited to appear in court next month.

Weber was employed by Blazer Taxi Cab at the time of the incident.

Courtesy WCAX

http://www.wcax.com/global/story.asp?s=13078587

The following has come to our attention.

The Problem: Some airport taxi operators are turning their meters on before passengers enter their vehicle.

The Immediate Solution.  If, when you settle into an airport metered taxi the meter is already displaying the $8.50 minimum figure(which is correct), request the Operator reset the meter in your presence.  If you are refused, please exit the taxi and hire another who waits for you to get settled in before starting the meter.

[Should time allow, please advise an Airport Ambassador of your reasons for changing taxis, and better yet, take note of the company and please contact BTV Operations Manager, Mr. Rick Varney with your experience, at: rvarney@btv.aero.  He'd be most interested.]

The Why’s.  Some of the Operators are priming their meters in hopes of beating customers out of a maximum of $5.  So we’re only talking short sighted crooked, LOL, but nonetheless the sorts who should be weeded out of the airport, as the airport taxi Operators are quite often Vermont’s first representation to the outside world(whose patronage, frankly, we all rely upon to one extent of another).

How it works.  The $8.50 minimum fare includes up to 2 miles of travel and/or waiting time.  So some Operators who think themselves clever souls have begun starting and then pausing(Time Off) their meter when they calculate that the $8.50 minimum is just about expired.

A sure sign the Operator is cheating you is if the meter begins accumulating dimes as you’re rolling out the exit of the airport.  Meaning the Operator has timed it well enough to get the whole fiver, and more telling, that he/she is practiced!!  In which case, for one reason or another,  ask the Operator to swing back into the airport, then refuse to pay, and immediately report the incident to an Airport Ambassador while requesting the presence of a Burlington Airport Police Officer -if you would please- followed by a note to Mr. Rick Varney, as noted above.

If nothing else, it should develop into an entertaining story you can share for years to come.

At the very least! there will be some “instant karma” as the Operator will lose your fare and thus the hours spent awaiting his turn.  Followed, at the very least -assuming he is not immediately suspended for the remainder of the day or pending a hearing- by having to start over at the back of the queue.

As always, we here at BTV Taxi News subscribe to the premise that it’s the buyers responsibility to beware.  That said, as these sites came to our attention through a trusted source, we hope these links will help you save on your flight costs:

AirFareWatch.com

FareCompare.com

Please enlighten our readers with your experience.

In the flood of media information that has nothing to do with your life, perhaps you missed the news about the new Airline Passengers Bill of Rights the U.S. Congress has been taking the credit for.

Whatever your situation -whether you are a jaded frequent flyer or merely the occasional victim- you owe yourself to stop by FlyersRights.org to learn about all the new resources and options available to flyers.  The big splash being flyers must be allowed off an airliner after 3 hours of non flight … but there’s more.

Should you care to hear interviews with two of the heroines who provided sustained impetus for the enactment of the Airline Passengers Bill of Rights, simply follow the link option below you find most suitable.

Access the on demand archives or download the podcast. Either instance will require choosing Jan., 2010, followed by selecting hours 2 and/or 3, of the 19 Jan.(011910 +2 or 3, designating the program hour).

Both interviews require perhaps 90 minutes, the latter 30 minutes in hour 3 being devoted to Muslim issues as represented by a Muslim woman whose carry-0n containing multi-generational family jewelry disappeared while in airline custody.  Both ladies are well worth listening to, especially if you want to be inspired by a story of common people achieving uncommon results (which should benefit us all!!).

Montpelier – As of this Wednesday past, the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles announced the names of a couple of fraudulent web sites intent on separating Vermont driver license holders from their cash.  In essence, a couple of fake sites were set up in order to collect credit card information of those wishing to renew their Vermont Drivers License online.

When you want to do business with our DMV utilizing the internet, accept no substitutes: www.dmv.state.vt.us.

For tips on information security, visit the Vermont Information Security Web site at itsecurity.vermont.gov.

We’re not going to bother with the names of the crooked sites, but we do tip our hat in thanks -first & foremost- to the observant citizen(s) who enlightened DMV of this scam; who thereafter spread the warning!