Anonymous wrote:
So really dusty. I dont see the point in you quoting this piece of news on here. Unless you are trying to show that there is a cartel working here. I mean.. the different prices quoted shows exactly that there isnt.
In reply to your post Mr Scanner, first of all please note that I didn’t claim there was a price-fixing cartel at Brighton Station, as your post seemed to imply – thus the use of the question mark in the title of the thread.
Also, cartels are not just about price-fixing – any type of agreement to restrict competition can be categorises as a cartel. Indeed the world’s most famous cartel – OPEC – does not fix oil prices, it influences prices by restricting supply.
Which brings us on to two (legal) cartels which we do know operate in Brighton and might serve to keep prices high, namely the restricted number of taxi licenses and the limited number of permits available to ply at Brighton station.
As for the incident outlined in the letter, I think that if the OFT (or whoever) were looking for evidence of restricted competition then I think they would jump at a scenario whereby the price of a product was twice that offered for a near identical product available nearby.
Indeed, around a month ago you seemed to think that some drivers at Brighton station might be acting unscrupulously as regards out-of-area unregulated trips (see below), which I think in OFT terms might be deemed as due to competition and/or regulatory problems. But now you seem to just dismiss this by saying that out-of-area journeys can be charged at any rate, which seems to contradict your earlier stance. Or how much higher than £70 for the trip would the driver have to charge (as compared to the ‘going rate’ of £35) before you thought it a rip-off?
As pointed out on here earlier, the total omission of unregulated fares from the OFT’s report seemed strange, and your attitude towards the scenario outlined in the letter seems to underline this – what’s the point of regulating fares at all if a major source of work is unregulated?
As regards what might or might not be happening at the station, please note that prices do not have to be identical for a price-fixing cartel to be operating, as you seem to imply – indeed, any sensible cartel would make sure that participants didn’t all charge identical prices, particularly when they are so obviously so far above the more competitive rate.
Of course there is no conclusive evidence that a price-fixing cartel is operating, but this business about the little books seems a bit iffy – surely the Gatwick run is a frequent trip from Brighton, and the driver would know the fare from top of his head?
As regards all hacks charging the same rate, well obviously they all tend to do so, but this often because people don’t have the opportunity to shop around, which would presumably have been the normal scenario but for the arrival of the taxi which was dropping at the station – many people presumably would pay the £66-£70 and be none the wiser – if this happened to you when buying something then I’m sure you would be apoplectic, and rightly so. Your point about the customer actually getting a very good price in the end and thus having no grounds for complaint also seems to completely miss the point, again how would you feel in similar circumstances?
I was surprised that the OFT didn’t have much more to say about taxi fares, other than the reproduce the top and bottom of the PHM tables and blabber a bit about LAs not having sufficient info to set fares. I suspect they knew that the system is flawed, but perhaps they were told that this issue was off limits, at least to the extent that it would require primary legislation to reform it. So they then came up with this idea to encourage price competition to ‘workaround’ what they considered to be uncompetitive fares, rather than tackling the issue head on – but they failed to address things like cartels and restricted access at uncompetitive locations such as transport termini, which would make their proposals irrelevant.
Dusty