Canada is in the same position. Cab drivers regularly take longer routes than necessary to drive up the meter and often pretend their card machines aren't working to force cash payment.

most taxi services in Europe are quite bad and hugely overpriced due to artificial monopoly, to the point that I try to stay away from the countries without Uber

From your description and my personal experience, only London falls under this category. What other cities do you have in mind?

In my opinion as a local, Lisbon is pretty bad. Scamming and rude drivers, unreliable when requested by phone, forget about paying by card (now some have apps, but that's a post-Uber development), plus the organization leadership is very corrupt (getting around licensing limits by putting them under their families names, outright snatching licenses from members when they ask for help renewing them, leaving small towns without cars by using the licenses to drive in big cities, etc).

Before Uber, I already avoided taxis as much as I could, only taking a couple per year.

Athens, Greece is one obvious example; also Brussels. And Amsterdam. And a lot more. And I _love_ Vienna.