The man whose business is travel: we need to take a stand against shoddy service

Never a promising way for a journey to begin: a taxi driver who turns up 15 minutes late. Such a delay is especially aggravating when you have a train to catch.

Without a word of apology, the tardy taxi driver invited me to load my own bags into the boot. As I did so, and he watched, I re-stated my destination - as it happens, the tuneful-sounding German town of Bacharach - and specified the exact location in that Rhineland beauty spot: the Bahnhof, whence I intended to board a train in the direction of Frankfurt airport.

Now, I have never owned a vehicle with more than two wheels while in the UK, so I may lack many of the instincts of car drivers. But I believe I can tell when someone is driving in the wrong direction - particularly when all the destination signs are have a radically different bearing to the trajectory of the Mercedes.

Taxi drivers, as you have probably determined for yourself, do not always take especially kindly to customers suggesting they have made an error. So as it became clear that something was going awry, I meekly tried a couple of approaches. First, expressing surprise with the direction in which he set off, which was counter to what the map suggested. He declined my help, and we drove on, the distance to Bacharach increasing with every click of the meter. When, a few minutes later, he took the worst possible option at a complicated junction, I finally said "Are you sure this is the way to Bacharach?"

"Bacharach?", he retorted. "I thought you were going to Oberwesel." As he started looking for somewhere to turn around, he added "It is only three extra minutes".

This was, of course, a fib; and the meter suggested that the cost of this unexpected diversion was a lot more than €3; indeed, in getting us further away from Bacharach the reading had gone into double figures.

Ah well, I concluded, he'll probably knock €10 off the bill at the end.

Dream on: after watching me retrieve my belongings from the boot, he pointed at the meter and cheerfully charged me the full amount. I could have objected and tried to reach a negotiated settlement, or just handed him a flat €30 for a circuitous ride scoring €40 on the meter.

Yet I did nothing of the sort: at the end of this disagreeable drive I paid him then full amount and thanked him for his trouble, before sprinting for the train.

I blame our national insularity. Because Britain still does its best to remain aloof from Continental Europe, many of us have little understanding of the way things are done once you fly across the Channel or North Sea. Add to this a profound distaste for any kind of confrontation, and you have the recipe for being mightily messed around all around Europe in all kinds of settings.

Hotel doesn't have your booking? If you are anything like me, you will assume that this is an oversight on your part. (If, as happened to me once in Amsterdam, they then offer to pay for a cab to take you to another hotel, you can be fairly sure that the mistake is theirs.) Poor food or shoddy service? Perhaps because we're used to it at home, we put up with it abroad.

A quiet life, but not as rewarding as it might be - for either party. If someone is failing to deliver, constructive criticism is a more useful policy than simply walking away and vowing never to return, because it gives the "offender" a chance to improve. Oh, and one more piece of advice: move that taxi booking 15 minutes earlier.