grandad wrote:
Sussex wrote:
To me it's quite simple.
If you are a hackney working within your borough you follow the approved tariff chart.
If you have 1-4 people in your cab you charge them the 1-4 people rate.
If you have 5-8 people in your cab you charge them the 5-8 people rate.
Doing anything else is surely a breach of your bylaws, no matter what the customer booked.
So at what point do you change the rate? Or do we just refuse jobs that have multi pick ups or drop offs?
I would say the correct rate is that that applies to the *maximum* number of passengers at any point during the journey, irrespective of the number in the vehicle at any other point during the trip. Which seems to be what your LO advised.
The thread seems to have gone a bit off topic because your initial question was about anticipating a certain number of passengers and setting the rate accordingly, but then that number didn't materialise.
In which case I would say that because it's an HC then the applicable rate is that for the actual number of passengers carried, not the number anticipated, because you can't charge more than is allowed by the HC tariff card (which would defeat the purpose of setting maximum fares).
As others have suggested, if it was a PHV scenario then contract law would be a more appropriate way of looking at it, because it wouldn't have been your fault that the other party didn't fulfil their side of the contract.
But you can't contract to charge more than what the HC tariff allows, because that would defeat the purpose.