London Black Cabs - fiddling the fares?

[Deleted User]

or.. phone for a mini-cab.. it'll probably be their minimum fare (i like in zone 6 also, and our mini-cabs have a minimum fare of £3.50)

elisebutt65

baza52 wrote: »

less than a mile.
why not walk?

I was going to say that! I walk to work there and back - it's about 1.2 miles away from home and I drop littlie off to school en-route. Never takes me more than about 14 minutes and that's a slow walk as I have to trundle my laptop wheelie with me.

shellsuit

Deleted_User wrote: »

Yes, 100%. The minimum fare in London is £2.20.

Well either London is cheaper than I thought or we are getting ripped off here lol

adouglasmhor

Semi rural I probably wouldn't fancy walking in the dark that much, unless there were good pavements/footpaths all the way.

[Deleted User]

Not a safe area to walk at 11pm, I'm afraid. Pretty much unlit and various nasties lingering around. I do walk in the morning. Plus, I carry heavy kit (20kgs) with me and although I can cope with lugging it to the station, the last thing I want is to lug it home at the end of a 14 hour day.

The issue here is not that I actually care about saving the (on average) 60p each trip - like I said, I bill the taxi fare back to my client anyway. The issue is that there are several hundreds of thousands of customers using these taxis every year and these odd 60ps all add up to perhaps many tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds every year.

It's not about moneysaving - it's about the total inconsistency in what you're being charged because one device does one thing and one does another.

I'm assuming by these comments you would all be happy if your gas supplier overcharged you by 33% because there's 'a margin of error in their readings'? Of course not. So why should you accept the same inaccuracy from a different service provider?

Just to confirm: there are no traffic lights. There is almost always no traffic (and I'm only talking about the times when there is no traffic anyway) and every taxi I get never stops - it's a fast, uninterrupted journey down 3 straight roads for a grand distance of 0.88 miles.

The reason I started thinking about this was because I normally find myself with just a fiver in my pocket at the end of the day, and so I would normally know this is enough to get a taxi home and leave a small tip for the driver. But sometimes, this isn't enough and I have to ask the driver to pull up early because I haven't got any extra cash, leaving with a few minutes walk home. I couldn't understand why some days £5 gets me to my door (with a tip for the driver) and other days it doesn't even get me to my street!

I wouldn't care if this was a 30 minute journey, but the point is that it's three roads and just 0.88 miles. There shouldn't be a 33% difference here.

MrsE_2

Deleted_User wrote: »

Yet the fare I get charged at the end varies wildly. The cheapest it's been is £4.20, whereas the most expensive I've been charged is £5.60 - that's a 33.3% difference!

On a short journey of 0.88 miles this makes no sense. I can understand some drivers cut corners, put their foot down etc, but for the distance to be out by 33% would require the driver to cover 1.173 miles, or in other words they'd need to go around the roundabout near my home 20 times to make the distance up.

.

For any hiring between 10pm on any day and 6am the following day or at any time on a public holiday (Tariff 3):

• For the first 219.6 metres or 47.2 seconds (whichever is reached first) there is a minimum charge of £2.20;
• For each additional 109.8 metres or 23.6 seconds (whichever is reached first), or part thereof, if the fare is less than £19.40 there is a charge of 20p;
• Once the fare is £19.40 or greater then there is a charge of 20p for each additional 117.7 metres or 25.3 seconds (whichever is reached first).

So if it goes up in 20p's, then it varies between 7 lots of 20p's
As you get 23.6 for each 20p, then it varies between 165.2 seconds, less than 3 minutes variation.

Wow massive variation in journey time:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

MrsE_2

Deleted_User wrote: »

Not a safe area to walk at 11pm, I'm afraid. Pretty much unlit and various nasties lingering around. I do walk in the morning. Plus, I carry heavy kit (20kgs) with me and although I can cope with lugging it to the station, the last thing I want is to lug it home at the end of a 14 hour day.

The issue here is not that I actually care about saving the (on average) 60p each trip - like I said, I bill the taxi fare back to my client anyway. The issue is that there are several hundreds of thousands of customers using these taxis every year and these odd 60ps all add up to perhaps many tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds every year.

It's not about moneysaving - it's about the total inconsistency in what you're being charged because one device does one thing and one does another.

I'm assuming by these comments you would all be happy if your gas supplier overcharged you by 33% because there's 'a margin of error in their readings'? Of course not. So why should you accept the same inaccuracy from a different service provider?

So get out after the £4.20 & walk the rest:D

[Deleted User]

MrsE wrote: »

For any hiring between 10pm on any day and 6am the following day or at any time on a public holiday (Tariff 3):

• For the first 219.6 metres or 47.2 seconds (whichever is reached first) there is a minimum charge of £2.20;
• For each additional 109.8 metres or 23.6 seconds (whichever is reached first), or part thereof, if the fare is less than £19.40 there is a charge of 20p;
• Once the fare is £19.40 or greater then there is a charge of 20p for each additional 117.7 metres or 25.3 seconds (whichever is reached first).

So if it goes up in 20p's, then it varies between 7 lots of 20p's
As you get 23.6 for each 20p, then it varies between 165.2 seconds, less than 3 minutes variation.

Wow massive variation in journey time:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Blimey, why are people so abusive here?

The whole journey is perhaps 60 - 120 seconds. I don't walk it not because I'm lazy - I flippin go to the gym every day - but because it's just not safe and because I'm carry a rucksack, travel case and a set of mini-peavey speakers which all combined weighs a significant amount.

0.88 miles lasting 2 minutes is only 26 mph average.

Let me repeat this for those who are struggling to understand:

It's a 2 minute journey by taxi.
It's 0.88 miles.
I can't walk because I have heavy kit to carry and it's not safe to do so.
The price varies by 33% depending on which cab I get into.

What's wrong with questioning whether these devices are accurate?

[Deleted User]

MrsE wrote: »

For any hiring between 10pm on any day and 6am the following day or at any time on a public holiday (Tariff 3):

• For the first 219.6 metres or 47.2 seconds (whichever is reached first) there is a minimum charge of £2.20;
• For each additional 109.8 metres or 23.6 seconds (whichever is reached first), or part thereof, if the fare is less than £19.40 there is a charge of 20p;
• Once the fare is £19.40 or greater then there is a charge of 20p for each additional 117.7 metres or 25.3 seconds (whichever is reached first).

0.88 miles is 1.41622272 kilometres = 1416.22272 metres.

Remove the first 219.6 metres @ £2.20 leaves 1196.62272 metres

Divide 1196.62272 metres by 109.8 metres = 10.898

Multiple 10.898 by 20p = 217.964p, or £2.18.

£2.18 + £2.20 = £4.38 expected cost for 0.88 miles.

Sometimes it costs that, other times a little bit less, but it has cost up to £5.60 (stress: without any traffic or interruption). That - according to your sums - would be incurred by increasing the distance by 669.78 metres which is over a third of the total distance travelled.

Nukumai

Deleted_User wrote: »

Blimey, why are people so abusive here?
What's wrong with questioning whether these devices are accurate?

bungle - ignore them. There's nothing at all wrong with your question, IMHO, and I enjoyed your analysis of the fare-variance. Then again...I'm a Chartered Accountant by training

Seriously though, why not politely ask one of the cabbies who charges you the lesser (normal) fare about the variance. I used to use black cabs on a daily basis the same as you (after work) and wouldn't think twice about raising this topic with them; as I'm sure you know, they generally tend to be good, honest guys...and, of course, never short of an opinion...