Prepaid Taxi Woes at IGI Airport

The prepaid taxi service at Indira Gandhi International Airport, in my opinion, is the ultimate 'pain - in- the - backside' for travellers. On 21 December I landed from Muscat at around 9.00 PM and the experience I had was nightmarish. The service is suposed to be run by cops (Delhi Police) who only dole out receipts after charging rounded off fares for the farthest point of any area where one wishes to travel. After that the traveller is left to fend for himself clutching his receipt and pushing his trolley trying to find out where the hell to board the taxi from. I was told that the taxi would be available outside Exit No.2 but when I reached that point I found that taxies arriving were already occupied. Enterprising travellers had made a beeline right upto the taxi stand and grabbed the cab there. I found that there were no takers for short distances and foreigners were being given preferential treatment by touts and hangers-on who were helping them find their cabs in the hope of a hefty tip. There was no cop in sight to regulate this chaos. A couple of them were sitting in a kiosk mechanically noting down names of those who were lucky enough to get the cabs. I refused to budge from the point from where I was supposed to get the cab and wasted an hour in the process. When I was sufficiently pissed off by the proceedings, I went back inside the terminal and got back my fare after arguing with the cops for another half an hour. I then rang up a friend and asked him to pick me up - having wasted nearly two hours at the airport. This was the first time I tried to take a prepaid cab from the airport and it will surely be the last.