a taxi service's obligations?

muddlemand

I'd imagine so, but it makes a mockery of being able to tell how good the teaching is at any institution, doesn't it!

SailorSam

As an ex-taxi driver i think you'll find most taxi drivers are self employed and only rent their radios from the taxi company, so i doubt you have a lot of comeback. No matter how early you book the driver wouldn't know that. For example if you booked a taxi for 7am in a months time they only start 'calling it out' on the radio at say 6.50am and if nobody answered, perhaps all the drivers were out on other jobs, perhaps they were still in bed. You can't blame the driver he only answers calls if he's there. I doubt to you could blame the radio company.
You probably couldn't claim if your bus or train was late, and there's little differenc.

muddlemand

SailorSam wrote: »

As an ex-taxi driver i think you'll find most taxi drivers are self employed and only rent their radios from the taxi company, so i doubt you have a lot of comeback. No matter how early you book the driver wouldn't know that. For example if you booked a taxi for 7am in a months time they only start 'calling it out' on the radio at say 6.50am and if nobody answered, perhaps all the drivers were out on other jobs, perhaps they were still in bed. You can't blame the driver he only answers calls if he's there. I doubt to you could blame the radio company.
You probably couldn't claim if your bus or train was late, and there's little differenc.

Thanks, an an ex-taxi driver is exactly what we need. Do you know who I made the contract with when I booked the service - the taxi company (which is an agency, if the drivers are self-employed), or the individual driver? (I'm guessing the company, since it wasn't decided at that point which driver would be allocated.)

Your parallel isn't exact: if a bus is late, no contract (= agreement) is broken. At least I imagine their terms include unforeseen circs, but either way their contract will be with the Council or someone, not the individual passenger. Whereas when booking a taxi to arrive (not pick up) by a certain time, punctuality, within reason, is part of the contract. (See earlier replies on this thread.)

However this is NOT (I repeat!) about blame. It really makes no difference to me whether the company or the driver or some individual in the office is at fault, "to blame" - this was always about not being obliged to pay for a service agreed but not provided.

SailorSam

Yes Muddlemand i suppose there is a verbal contract between you and taxi company. You could try phoning your local licensing office of your Council to see if they set-down rules which these firms are suppose to stick to.As for rhe driver, when a job was called out over the set you may get half-a-dozen or more answer for it, and whoever was the closest would get it. We never got told where a job was going, so when we got it we could have been going 5 minutes down the road or 100 miles. The only time the operator would tell a driver was if he said something like i'm finishing my shift in twenty minute, or i have to pick my wife up ...... Have i got time to do this job and get home. I know i always hated being given a job to the airport or somewhere important, in case i was late or broke down.

muddlemand

SailorSam wrote: »

Yes Muddlemand i suppose there is a verbal contract between you and taxi company. You could try phoning your local licensing office of your Council to see if they set-down rules which these firms are suppose to stick to.As for rhe driver, when a job was called out over the set you may get half-a-dozen or more answer for it, and whoever was the closest would get it. We never got told where a job was going, so when we got it we could have been going 5 minutes down the road or 100 miles. The only time the operator would tell a driver was if he said something like i'm finishing my shift in twenty minute, or i have to pick my wife up ...... Have i got time to do this job and get home. I know i always hated being given a job to the airport or somewhere important, in case i was late or broke down.

Thanks! I won't need to pursue this, but as it's the second time a taxi company has let me down, I'm glad to be given the info on where to begin. If my health hadn't also let me down, I'd never have let the other occasion go as we were stranded at the airport and it was a question of £250...

This is a company which do airport runs all the time, and this half-hour trip is what their website calls "Other". And the receptionist told me on the phone that they'd given all three occasions to one driver, so it's more that kind of set-up with them. But she still talked about things coming up on her system x minutes before pick-up. Maybe they stuck to the same driver because we're in a village and therefore tricky to find, potentially - although round here, 60% of people are in villages, and we're across the road from a pub that has brown signs on the main roads, so not all that tricky!