Taxi Driver Online

Where to start with some of this?

Actually, can't be bothered, but the thread title maybe conveys my own take on this.


Plymouth taxi drivers turn away passengers who cannot pay in cash

https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/p ... ay-5636225

One man was appalled to be refused by three cabbies on the same rank as the city suffers a huge decline in the number of vehicles

Plymouth taxi drivers are turning away passengers because they don't have cash - with one man refused three times because he could only pay by card.

Brett Squance, aged 50, said he and a friend were sent away by three cabbies on a rank on the Barbican on a Saturday night.

Brett had to walk to a cash machine and by the time he returned the rank was empty and they had to wait another 20 minutes.

He said: "This is appalling and a terrible advertisement for Plymouth."

Brett has reported his concerns to Plymouth City Council as the licensing authority.

It comes after a steep drop in the number of hackney carriage and private hire drivers after the pandemic and Brexit.

One company boss has already said that drivers could pick and choose when to work and so avoid late night city centre shifts.

But a spokesman for the hackney carriage or black cab sector said that drivers had to pay bank charges on card transactions. He added that some drivers refused fares in the same way as shops would not take card payments unless they were of a certain level.

Mr Squance went out for a meal with a couple of friends and then went to watch Hairspray at the Theatre Royal on Saturday July 3.

They were surprised to see no taxis on the rank outside when the show finished at 10pm.

Mr Squance, who works in retail, said it was quiet in town generally and he walked to the Barbican with one of his friends while the other made his own way home.

He added he asked the first driver on the rank to take them to Tamerton Foliot, where he lives.

Mr Squance said the man refused, claiming he only wanted a local fare because he had another booking soon afterwards - and driving to the outskirts of Plymouth and back would take too long.

He added: "He should not even have been on the rank if he had another fare waiting."

Mr Squance said the next three drivers turned them away because they wanted cash.

He eventually went to the machine next to the Co-op in Southside Street but by the time they returned all the taxis were gone and they had to wait another 20 minutes.

Mr Squance said: "In this day and age you get used to paying by card, whether you go to a pub in the middle of nowhere or to a beach hut. I think it is appalling.

"To think that the city centre is trying to attract people. I saw at least one of the drivers had a card reader."

But Roy Hamilton, Secretary of the Plymouth Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, said drivers had to pay card fees and their fares were set by the Government and the council.

He added: "We are not like private hire, we cannot charge what we like and simply put another £1 on the fare to cover the bank charge.

"We are like shops. A shop may only accept minimum £5 and £10 card payments because they want to make a profit on the sale."

Mr Hamilton said that shorter fares were particularly unprofitable when the payments were taken off.

Mr Hamilton told PlymouthLive back in February that he was aware of 40 licences being handed back to the council since the Covid pandemic.

Private hire drivers - booked in advance over the phone or via an app - have reduced in number from 803 to 690, according to official figures.

But company bosses reckon the decline is far higher with some drivers remaining licensed but not actually active.

It has led some regular customers struggling to get a ride home during the evenings.

Think we've been through this umpteen times before, but is it legal for HCDs to refuse card jobs below a minimum sum?

Anyway, hope the HMRC people processing the SEISS 5 applications aren't reading this kind of stuff

This is why council’s, and London, make accepting card payment a condition of licence. To refuse a fare because it is below a minimum sum is cherry picking by any other name. The minimum payment the card processors will accept. One pound. The charges are by percentage, around 1.5% wether the fare is one pound or a hundred pounds. So if a driver pays one hundred pounds into his bank account via sumup or square for instance, he will be paid £98.50 into his account, the next day. If however, he his paid £100 in cash, he will be charged £3 to pay this amount into his business account. However, he probably won’t put any of this into his account, for “accounting” reasons, will he.

Perhaps it should be made a condition of licence that drivers must accept card payment, with councils insisting that a £30 a month plus charges terminal into vehicles, and there is no minimum payment.
To stop the cherry picking.

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Former taxi driver

We did car payments the other day of £176 and paid under £3.00 in the fees, I think we can stand that.

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Grandad,

By the way, in the thread title I may have overegged the thing about card refusals being because it's a short distance.

According to Google the trip is around 6 miles to the city boundary, which I'd guess is a reasonably decent job.

But it certainly seems the case here that drivers sometimes refuse short card runs, while they'll do a run if it's lucrative enough.

And, as per what Jimbo was saying, obviously it's not a fixed card transaction fee thing either, since I'm guessing most drivers are now doing the 1.7% charge via Zettle, or a similar system.

Look forward to seeing articles in the future bemoaning the fact that Uber and the app companies are decimating the taxi trade.

The council need to act and mandate card payments.

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IDFIMH

There really is no pleasing some drivers. FFS.

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IDFIMH

Indeed, and possibly just a cock-and-bull story to broom the run.

Of course, the driver would be within his rights to refuse the job if it was out-of-area, but from what I can see the village Tamerton Foliot is within the city boundary.

But as the punter (almost) said, the driver shouldn't have been on the rank if he didn't have time to do a job within the city boundary before his booking.

Suggest the local trade get a new spokesman.

Sometimes it pays to say nothing.

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IDFIMH

By the way, I was maybe reading too much into the article as a whole by suggesting that the punter was refused service because it was a short card job - maybe it was the comments by the HC rep about charges that gave me that impression.

But there's actually nothing in the piece to even say he was refused because it was a card job per se - the first driver may have genuinely had a pre-booked job, and was just chancing his arm by hoping he'd squeeze in a short hop from the rank before his booked run, so genuinely didn't have time to do the rank job.

And the three HCDs behind who also refused the punter may not even have card readers - the article doesn't specifically state whether they did or not, and just stated that the passenger had to get cash.

Another thing too which I think has been mentioned in previous similar threads - even assuming the three behind did have card readers, they may have done the job if they'd been in pole even though they may have preferred another job, but maybe didn't think they should be obliged to do the job if they thought that by rights a car in front of them should have done it.

But I'm kind of guessing from the piece overall and the various comments that the drivers are using the undersupply to cherry-pick, essentially, both in terms of length of job and/or whether they'll accept cards.

Or mabye I'm just being overcynical, as per...

This makes it look like Mr HC isn't aware that that charges now are a quite modest 1.7% or so, so his implied point about short runs isn't credible.

But I suspect he knows that, and is implying that there's a £1 charge per fare for defensive propoganda reasons.

Also, he's trying to make it look like PHDs charge £1 extra for card jobs.

Only mentioning this because noticed quite a lot of comments on the Plymouth Herald's website last night, which seemed to be from the private hire trade fuming that Mr HC was claiming PH charged an extra £1 for card runs.

In fact it looked like there may have been a threat of violence posted, but the comment had been deleted.

But there were around 100 comments on the site last night, so obviously this has stirred up something of a hornets' nest

First, I have a Card Reader and I don't refuse jobs for Cash or Card.

Second, I have a bigger than allowed HC specially designed to deal with large Wheelchairs.

It is VERY rare that I turn down any job within the Plymouth City Boundary, but, if I have a Wheelchair booking coming up, I tell the the Driver behind that I can't deal with out of the City or a long or multi-drop within the City. Invariably they don't mind. When I explain, pleasantly, to the intending passengers, they don't mind either.

I think that the majority of independents in the City do not have card readers, I am often the first on the Rank that has one. The HC that are on the circuit usually only Rank at the Station.

Biggest problem at the moment in Plymouth is no Cabs or PH in the evenings. A lot, and I mean an awful lot, of HC and PH drivers now work for delivery companies. I think, without checking, that 20% of the "Limited" HC Plates have been given back to the LA, and about the same percentage of PH.

Hard to get Drivers to deal with the Drinkers when they are busy enough all day with the nicer passengers.

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Chris The Fish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdlyi5mc ... re=related

Thanks, Chris, obviously when I read the piece I did wonder if you were the errant driver, but thought I'd keep my thoughts to myself *

But suspect it's a similar tale the length and breadth of the country where card readers are optional, and everything becomes very messy. Or even messier than the normal scenario.

(*Joke, obviously. In fact assumed it wasn't Chris, equally obviously )

I am strictly a "Knight Errant".

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Chris The Fish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdlyi5mc ... re=related