Taxi Driver Online

Voucher users left in the lurch by cabbies


DISABLED shoppers are being left stranded in central Cambridge by taxi drivers' refusal to accept their discount vouchers.

Each year, people on low incomes who cannot use public transport are given 100 Taxicard coupons, which give them £2.40 off a journey.

But the scheme has run into trouble because many Hackney Carriage drivers have stopped taking the tokens. Several years ago, accepting them was a condition of taxi licences, but imposing this was found to be unlawful.

Independent cabbies prefer to get cash in hand, and are believed to be concerned having to collect 25 vouchers before they can exchange them.

The News has learned one pensioner was told by six taxi drivers at the rank opposite Christ's College they could not take the coupons.

And Cambridge City Council says only five cabbies have redeemed vouchers at the Mill Road depot since March last year, from a fleet of 286 Hackney Carriages. The situation leaves shoppers facing the choice of paying the full rate or struggling home on the bus.

Cllr Margaret Wright, who represents Abbey ward on the city council, said taxi drivers should accept the tokens.

She said: "A meeting between all parties concerned needs to be held urgently to thrash out the difficulties.

"Taxis are here providing an essential service - they are not a luxury, and the service must be reliable."

Shoppers do not have a problem getting into town because the trips can be pre-booked, but getting home from a rank is difficult.

Eileen Oliver, who manages Taxicard for the city council, said: "This has been happening for a while but there seems to have been a push recently - we are getting a couple of complaints a week.

"If you're a one-man band you want to go out, do your work, and go home - you don't want to fiddle around with bits of paper. But this is letting down vulnerable people who desperately need help."

Ms Oliver added the council paid drivers as quickly as it could, and would hold a meeting in an attempt to find a solution.

Sid Couzens, chairman of Cambridge Licensed Taxi Owners' Association, said it could take some drivers 18 months to collect 25 vouchers.

But he added: "Taxi drivers should take them. The city council and licensing department need to get together to find a solution."

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

A possible solution might be for drivers to pay their licence fees or council tax after collecting 25 vouchers, they can then be offset against payment

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you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Whatever the moral rights or wrongs of this scheme the fact is that it is a third party scheme which would appear to be unpopular with cab drivers throughout the country.

I'm not surprised the courts found the token condition unlawful and I'm not surprised these councillors tried to illegally force cab drivers to accept them.

Perhaps the council should stop issuing tokens and give pensioners the cash. That way the problem would dissapear and everyone would be happy.

The time and effort involved in reclaiming 2-50 will in most cases far outweigh the cost of the voucher. I'm not surprised cab drivers refuse to accept them. Councillors like to think that because they are empowered to issue licences they have the power to tell cab drivers how to run their business. Cab drivers shouldn't pussy foot around over this issue, they should inform councillors that are not opting in to this poloicy and they should issue pensioners with cash and cut out all the red tape involved in token redemption.

No doubt some cab drivers don't mind these vouchers but all in all cab drivers aren't here to pander to council policies, councillors should realise that when they come up with unworkable programs such as this.

Regards

JD

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Copyright notice © The contents of this post are copyright of JD and are not to be reproduced outside of TDO without written permission.

While I agree with you here, the likelyhood is they would use their free bus pass and spend the money on something other than a taxi.

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http://wingsoverscotland.com/ http://www.newsnetscotland.com/

I made the mistake of citing pensioners when it should have been low income disabled persons. Regardless of that, if these people in their wisdom decide the money is best used for something more needy then I trust their judgement. If they are entitled to it then how they spend it should be up to them.

I fully understand your point and I did consider it. I also expected such a valid point to be raised because it is pertinent. If the council don't bite the bullet and revert to cash payments then they are never going to resolve the matter.

Regards

JD

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Copyright notice © The contents of this post are copyright of JD and are not to be reproduced outside of TDO without written permission.

I think that's such a common sense answer it has no chance.

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IDFIMH

In London we have the Taxicard scheme, a much better and more popular scheme than vouchers.

The passenger pays a flat fare and the council pick up the rest, the driver is paid regardless from their radio circuit who in turn bill the local authority.

ComCab service the account, and I believe Dial A Cab service the Westminster taxicard scheme.

The system may work well for a large concern such as com cab but it is the small one man band that will always suffer with any of these schemes because there is either a minimum that you have to send in or you have to wait for the council to pay.

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Grandad,

Reminds me of when I'd just started about ten years ago, and the day flagfall in East Fife was only £1.55 and it didn't start clicking until the mile mark, so we had quite a lot of fares under £2.

The voucher scheme paid the punters half fare, so we could quite often end up with less than a pound cash and a voucher for the same amount

Anyway, we got a mega-fare rise, and one regular - who travelled about a mile - was faced with a fare of £2. So I got a voucher for a pound and the lady had to hand over a whole pound - she went ballistic

Needless to say, after my first few months I never did another voucher job

If a punter off the street came up to you and said I want to pay 2.50 off my fare with this piece of paper valued at 2.50 which you can redeem from my company but you will have to go down to the office and collect it, what would you say? lol

The extended problem the council has is that some councils will only accept large amounts of vouchers and it takes weeks to get the money. For the majority of drivers the system is unworkable.

Why don't the council have a scheme where those holding the vouchers reclaim the money from the council themselves by paying cash for their journey and using a receipt from the driver as proof of journey? Alternately the driver could sign the voucher and the passenger could then send that voucher in to the council for payment.

The council wan't to place the burden on cab drivers, which is not on.

Regards

JD

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Copyright notice © The contents of this post are copyright of JD and are not to be reproduced outside of TDO without written permission.

A lot of councils in our area use National Travel Tokens. I accept them quite happily and redeem them, to a maximum of £100, when I pay the council tax. I find it works well.

Eastleigh have their own version which are different to the others and will only redeem to locally badged drivers. Ergo, I don't take Eastleigh's tokens.

See that makes sense, but if that option is not available then why should drivers have to do all the donkey work for the council?

That said, I suppose in these credit crunch days every little helps.

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IDFIMH

Wasn't there something long ago, I think it was called the trucking act or something like that, wherby payment for work had to be made by monetary means and not vouchers or goods? Would this not apply to these vouchers?

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Grandad,

Quite right, Grandad - there have been numerous Truck Acts in the UK, and the word truck comes from the French for barter, and it has nothing to do with HGVs or whatever.

However, I suspect it only applies to an employment relationship, not a normal commercial contract or transaction; after all, what would you do with the Argos vouchers you get at Christmas?

Yes I sort of see what you mean but the difforence to me would be that these vouchers are being used as a payment and the Argos (other gift vouchers are available) is that they are a gift.

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Grandad,