bickster Posted December 26, 2011 Moderator Share Posted December 26, 2011 It's not just NYE that taxi drivers in Brum take the piss. Yes, you could decide not to get in the taxi and risk getting mugged or glassed at 3am. You have of course checked out how much Taxi Drivers pay for insurance and you can't have failed to notice how much fuel is these days, then there's the repair and maintenance costs of vehicles…. (average taxis does about 80-120,000 miles a year) I honestly think if taxi's were the price you'd liike them to be, there'd be no taxis, it wouldn't be viable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coda Posted December 26, 2011 Share Posted December 26, 2011 I'd be happy if prices were consistant. The same journey shouldn't jump from £9 to £20 depending on the time of day (not NYE). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted December 26, 2011 Moderator Share Posted December 26, 2011 I'd be happy if prices were consistant. The same journey shouldn't jump from £9 to £20 depending on the time of day (not NYE). Yes it should, especially in a hackney carriage, you pay waiting time at every set of lights / traffic jam / roadworks, so peak times will cost more. If it takes the driver much longer to do the fare he needs to be paid more otherwise he'd never make any money, also later at night, unsociable hours and increased danger need to be factored in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coda Posted December 26, 2011 Share Posted December 26, 2011 I'm on about private hire. They take the piss late at night/early hours. They're happy to pick up a fare without it being booked (no insurance). I don't mind paying more due to the late hour but I resent being ripped off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Rev Posted December 27, 2011 Share Posted December 27, 2011 Vote with your wallet then. Nobody is forcing you to take a taxi. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDon Posted December 27, 2011 Share Posted December 27, 2011 Most taxi firms have published rate cards. It's not hard to find out how much a journey should cost and avoid being ripped off by knowing the price they should be charging. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MMFy Posted December 27, 2011 Share Posted December 27, 2011 My car broke down at work a couple of months back, and while I was off the road the company paid for a taxi back to my house for three nights in a row. Castle Cars I think, but the fare was £35, and that was from Moor Street station back to Nuneaton. It is a good 25 miles if you go via the motorway, which is the route the taxi took every night. That was after midnight too, albeit midweek in October. **** me, that's cheap! They used to charge us £40 from town to M42/J10 in 1998, then an extra £10 per drop for each passenger... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gavin@villatalk Posted December 27, 2011 Share Posted December 27, 2011 I might drive up and charge my mates a lift back home.... easy monies for a night which is overrated :-) I may have no mates for 2012 tho Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted December 27, 2011 Moderator Share Posted December 27, 2011 I'm on about private hire. They take the piss late at night/early hours. They're happy to pick up a fare without it being booked (no insurance). I don't mind paying more due to the late hour but I resent being ripped off. If you get in a private hire without pre-booking you really only have yourself to blame. They are ripping you off because you want to beat the system of phoning up and waiting and in doing that you are sacrificing your own safety. The driver is in the wrong but so are you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Rev Posted December 27, 2011 Share Posted December 27, 2011 My car broke down at work a couple of months back, and while I was off the road the company paid for a taxi back to my house for three nights in a row. Castle Cars I think, but the fare was £35, and that was from Moor Street station back to Nuneaton. It is a good 25 miles if you go via the motorway, which is the route the taxi took every night. That was after midnight too, albeit midweek in October. **** me, that's cheap! They used to charge us £40 from town to M42/J10 in 1998, then an extra £10 per drop for each passenger... Yeah, I thought so too. It is almost certainly a discounted rate because of the amount of work we put their way. It is paid for by an account, if we book the taxi ourselves then we have to give a password, but they still have the meter running during journeys. Dunno whether Bicks' lot do account work for the railways too, but perhaps he could shed light on the discounts that are given to companies who use lots of taxis every day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dont_do_it_doug. Posted December 27, 2011 Share Posted December 27, 2011 I've not paid more than the fair amount of an extra £2 for at least 4 years now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted December 27, 2011 Moderator Share Posted December 27, 2011 My car broke down at work a couple of months back, and while I was off the road the company paid for a taxi back to my house for three nights in a row. Castle Cars I think, but the fare was £35, and that was from Moor Street station back to Nuneaton. It is a good 25 miles if you go via the motorway, which is the route the taxi took every night. That was after midnight too, albeit midweek in October. **** me, that's cheap! They used to charge us £40 from town to M42/J10 in 1998, then an extra £10 per drop for each passenger... Yeah, I thought so too. It is almost certainly a discounted rate because of the amount of work we put their way. It is paid for by an account, if we book the taxi ourselves then we have to give a password, but they still have the meter running during journeys. Dunno whether Bicks' lot do account work for the railways too, but perhaps he could shed light on the discounts that are given to companies who use lots of taxis every day. We don't discount account work, the company makes money out of the admin fee plus we think our fares are competitive enough anyway to balance this out we give account work a vip rating, increasing the priority on their work and making sure we ring each job that a driver can't get mobile on. I've seen a few companies that do discount account work though and they tend to be desperate for the work but have higher prices in the first place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturdaygig Posted December 28, 2011 Share Posted December 28, 2011 I hate the way it's legal to totally exploit people an rip them off. Same goes for when you are trapped at something like a gig so you get charged double price. People are money grabbing scum. A rip off is when you are conned into not getting something you pay for. All we have here is an instance of something costing more than you think its worth - in which case just don't buy it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amsterdam_Neil_D Posted December 30, 2011 Share Posted December 30, 2011 It's just another addition to the argument against going out for New Years Eve - It's a horrible night and **** expensive. Go to a (reasonably local, probably) house party, or just stay in. I used to love NYE but the reasons to stay in out way the going out these days. (They are obsessed with fireworks over here on NYE, and I mean obsessed. I know a few people who have driven to Belgium and Poland to get non approved fireworks. It's the blokes not the kids in the main also. Absolute child minded idiots the lot of them. Nothing makes a Dutch guy prouder than creating a 1 ft hole in the road with a firework. C**TS the lot of them. + My dog cries and barks for 10 hours (They start at about 3.00pm), I can't even go to the window to watch as my dog then loses his mind if I go to close to the edge of my house. In the middle on the sofa OK, move to the edge NO GOOD...ABORT ABORT Paying top dollar for everything and not knowing if and when you can get a taxi, tickets for Pubs ffs. The list is endless now. I suppose after the millennium NYE, everything is a bit meh anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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