Taxi Driver Online

Re some recent threads, and an exchange of emails, I wonder what proportion of the public know that the taxi fares are controlled by the council, for example, or even that LAs license the trade at all?

Someone suggested the figure of around one per cent, but I suspect that's a bit of an exaggeration

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

I'm of the view that 1% isn't that far off the mark.

When I speak to anyone over fares they are nearly always amazed that it's the council that set taxi fares.

Also how many people ever object to advertised increases? Next to none, and one would asume that if people knew they could object, then many more would.

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IDFIMH

I agree to some extent, but then again I think that the ones that you don't speak to about fares may well be the ones who know more about what's going on, thus the clueless ones may give you a false impression.

As for the fare increases, this is another thing that's more theory than reality, particularly since these adverts are usually tucked away in a part of the paper that very few look at.

And it then comes down to the fare card scenario - even if they read it, it probably makes little sense to them, and it's only when they next get a cab that they realise that their fare home has gone up 50p (say).

And there's also the hassle factor - I mean, you may be offered or buy an extended warranty, but did you contribute to the Competition Commission's investigation into them a couple of years ago? Probably not, and ditto the rest of the population, even assuming that they knew about it.

There's also no organised consumer representation regarding the trade, unlike the railways and postal services, for example.

I think some kind of more formal consumer representation was part of the Irish regulation blueprint (a taxi council or something like that), but of course the UK is a few years behind in that regard.

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk