Taxi Driver Online

Customer complaints 'un-fare', claim cabbies
A ROGUE minority of cabbies in Peterborough are in danger of giving others a bad name, following a spate of complaints about taxi drivers.
Peterborough City Council has received a number of complaints about drivers over the past seven months, including allegations of overcharging, abusive behaviour, careless driving and using mobile phones at the wheel.

However, today cab drivers hit back at the complaints, pointing out that they are regularly abused by passengers.

The Evening Telegraph obtained a breakdown of eight different categories of complaints from the city council under the Freedom of Information Act.

It revealed that a total of 38 complaints were lodged against licensed taxi drivers between February 1 and August 31 this year.

Overall, the public made 21 complaints against private hire cabs and 17 against Hackney carriage drivers.

However, council officials pointed out that not all complaints were found to be justified on investigation.

City council principal taxi enforcement officer Ken Gray also pointed out that there are 898 drivers in Peterborough.

He added: “The number of journeys drivers make are literally thousands per week.

“It may look bad, but these are purely allegations in the complaints procedure. Many are unfounded.

“But out of nearly 1,000 drivers, there will be a minority who are disciplined as the majority do a very good job.”

Mr Gray added that the council insisted all drivers undergo rigorous tests, including passing a Criminal Records Bureau check every year. The city was also one of the first in the country to ask for a five-year certificate of good conduct if people from the former EU states applied for a licence.

Chairman of the Peterborough Taxi Forum Mahmood Khan said most drivers do act responsibly, and urged customers to do the same.

He said: “They say customers are always right, but they have no idea where they are going sometimes or they don’t have the correct fare.

“The majority of drivers are decent. Many have a family-run business and need to make an honest living.”

Earlier this month, the city council held a Taxi Driver of the Year competition to reward good practice among cabbies.

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

A tremendous amount of effort by the paper to attempt to bring the trade into disrepute

CC

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

Hold your horses there CC we have a large number of "peterborough" cabbies here in stamford and there is also a disproportionately high number of complaints against them unfortunately there is a section of the taxi driving community in Peterborough who do seem to take a see what i can get away with attitude into work with them.
some of the stories that you hear are frightening involving personal property left in taxis dissappearing through to sexual assault and of course the frequent upping of tarriffs and overcharging. the vast majority of these complaints don't reach the council because when it comes to putting pen to paper and giving real evidence people generally shy away.
several of the local "peterborough" drivers lost their badges in Peterborough so moved over here.
This does not surprise me in the least because we have the same situation over here with a section of the drivers having gained a bad reputation for all the asian drivers. In Peterborough the asian drivers make up about 95% of the workforce and so they would all get tarred from the same brush. Many are descent hard working drivers but there is that section many of whom are related to one another who do seem to think that they are doing their customers a favour just by turning up for them