Taxi Operators (Companies) stealing from their drivers, how to deal with it?

dillydully

Taxi drivers nowadays are going through a very thorough examination which is all useful and necessary, are having to pass quite difficult tests and spend thousands of £ just to get the badge so they can start their careers. 

As the next step, they need to find a licensed Operator which would rent out their systems through memberships and subscriptions in order to access a customer base and receive jobs through it. This costs around £1000 a month every month, no matter how busy or quiet the business is!! Then buy expensive insurance, fuel, and so on.

From this point, once every driver paid their membership and fees to the operator, they should receive jobs fairly via a queuing system. There are different zones, each zone has its own queue. The driver in position 1 would get the next job. There are cash jobs, and account jobs -paid monthly through the Operator.

Its all magical so far, as long as if it would work as we just depicted.

How it actually works:

Operators have their business partners, family and relatives working in the dispatch office, all of them one big inner circle.
They can see all the jobs, what and when they are coming through, the drivers can only see what the office wants them to see.

They bend and manipulate the system to their liking.

The dispatch office workers own multiple cars and have hired drivers on them, either 50/50 from earnings or paid by %. They want to keep the drivers, also cut a bigger share, so they will always favour them, especially when business is quiet. They send the better jobs outside the queue, over the other drivers head, or tip them off about the next better job coming up and the respective area to be in. This is obviously bad, as all drivers pay the same monthly great amount, should get the same service. Is a £1000 of one person worth less than a £1000 of anothers that `knows someone`? 1000 = 1000 when last checked.

Some drivers invest a lot of money to buy and drive their own car, start a small 'business' this way, however they get left behind and treated unfairly.

About account jobs:
An account job is pre-settled fare, drivers cannot influence it most of the time. What happens here, is that the job actually worth X amount, the office will quietly take certain % off, straight into their pockets. This is never mentioned openly. Drivers never agreed to this since all of them pay the monthly fees to the office and company owners which is said to cover the office related expenses.

The driver paid the office, went and collected the passenger, drove them to their destination and should get paid for it the full amount.

Therefore the Operator cutting the fare price is actually stealing, is that right?

Its seems to be predatory practice.

The question is, how could this be regulated, will it ever be? What one can do about it whilst seeing all this unfairness?

DE_612183

You probably can't do anything about it - the Operator ( owner of the business ) can do what they like within the realms of the Law.

The obvious thing to do would be for all the taxi drivers outside the inner circle to form their own operation and get a licence and then operate in the way in which they want to.

Marcon

dillydully said:

Taxi drivers nowadays are going through a very thorough examination which is all useful and necessary, are having to pass quite difficult tests and spend thousands of £ just to get the badge so they can start their careers. 

As the next step, they need to find a licensed Operator which would rent out their systems through memberships and subscriptions in order to access a customer base and receive jobs through it. This costs around £1000 a month every month, no matter how busy or quiet the business is!! Then buy expensive insurance, fuel, and so on.

From this point, once every driver paid their membership and fees to the operator, they should receive jobs fairly via a queuing system. There are different zones, each zone has its own queue. The driver in position 1 would get the next job. There are cash jobs, and account jobs -paid monthly through the Operator.

Its all magical so far, as long as if it would work as we just depicted.

How it actually works:

Operators have their business partners, family and relatives working in the dispatch office, all of them one big inner circle.
They can see all the jobs, what and when they are coming through, the drivers can only see what the office wants them to see.

They bend and manipulate the system to their liking.

The dispatch office workers own multiple cars and have hired drivers on them, either 50/50 from earnings or paid by %. They want to keep the drivers, also cut a bigger share, so they will always favour them, especially when business is quiet. They send the better jobs outside the queue, over the other drivers head, or tip them off about the next better job coming up and the respective area to be in. This is obviously bad, as all drivers pay the same monthly great amount, should get the same service. Is a £1000 of one person worth less than a £1000 of anothers that `knows someone`? 1000 = 1000 when last checked.

Some drivers invest a lot of money to buy and drive their own car, start a small 'business' this way, however they get left behind and treated unfairly.

About account jobs:
An account job is pre-settled fare, drivers cannot influence it most of the time. What happens here, is that the job actually worth X amount, the office will quietly take certain % off, straight into their pockets. This is never mentioned openly. Drivers never agreed to this since all of them pay the monthly fees to the office and company owners which is said to cover the office related expenses.

The driver paid the office, went and collected the passenger, drove them to their destination and should get paid for it the full amount.

Therefore the Operator cutting the fare price is actually stealing, is that right?

Its seems to be predatory practice.

The question is, how could this be regulated, will it ever be? What one can do about it whilst seeing all this unfairness?

I don't understand the point you are trying to make. So long as drivers receive whatever rate they are entitled to (and presumably they know what that is - and if they don't why are they working for a particular operator?), how can it be 'stealing'?

LinLui

I don't know what is like everywhere, but the issue around here (according to friends who have driven taxis for decades) is that too many drivers are chasing too little business because they all thought that taxi driving was easy and lucrative.

stu12345_2

this happened to me as a taxi driver many years ago, the office knew what cars were in the ranks as when you arrived at a rank you called in your position on arrival at the rank.
the dispatch office had the jobs in front of them and always gave the long distance job to their favourite drivers in the rank.

a way to get around this was not to work for any company at all and simply drive the streets with your taxi light in and get  random street hires.
one guy did this, the only downfall of this is if his cab broken down he didn't have the support of a taxi company to take over his hire to another driver and thus  ensure the passenger would complete their journey 

and also you could complain that the taxi company were taking on too many new  drivers thus diluting the number of hires that came out., especially when the drivers will still charged the same weekly rental.charge to the taxi company 

and in my experience you only make money on a Friday and Saturday nights, but you have to pay a weekly rental to taxi company , you can't join them only for Friday and Saturday night work only.

DullGreyGuy

The chap in our local did the opposite when he was a taxi driver... arranged all his own jobs so the operator got nothing more than his rental fees from him, also with it all being cash in hand jobs his declarations to HMRC were inevitable. 

Ultimately you need to read the terms you signed up for... if they guarantee XYZ and they aren't doing that then you have a case to argue. Assuming they are more sensible terms then what they are doing will be perfectly acceptable and its up to you if you are better off staying with this outfit or looking for another and trying to get into the inner circle. 

stu12345_2

what I did is when I had a hire , and the person wanted a return journey later, and it was a good hire, I gave the person my mobile number and asked them to call me directly  and not via the taxi company .

I would then make sure I didn't take any other hires around the time I was to go back and collect the person 

you make sure you don't queue up in the rank around the time you go to collect the person or the other drivers will get suspicious of why you suddenly leave the rank when you don't have a hire to go to from the office 

LinLui

a way to get around this was not to work for any company at all and simply drive the streets with your taxi light in and get  random street hires.

You can only do that if you have a hackney licence or a dual licence. Hackney carraiges have to be badged as such - most taxis cannot pick up fairs on the street or at ranks.

These days many people would need their heads testing to get into a random car that looks like a taxi which is just driving around looking for a fare!

DullGreyGuy

LinLui said:

a way to get around this was not to work for any company at all and simply drive the streets with your taxi light in and get  random street hires.

You can only do that if you have a hackney licence or a dual licence. Hackney carraiges have to be badged as such - most taxis cannot pick up fairs on the street or at ranks.

These days many people would need their heads testing to get into a random car that looks like a taxi which is just driving around looking for a fare!

Whats required to sign up for Uber etc? Would have thought many hackney and private hire firms have lost direct business to apps

stu12345_2

yeah the guy had his light on or off if he had a hire or not, it was perfectly badged and licensed, the only thing that was missing was a two way radio in his cab that would have been used if he was using a taxi company.

off course private hire cars can't do that, they must use hires from a base given out to them by radio, they dont have ranks

 and yes Uber drivers have completed changed the landscape, but where I live they don't exist, it's a rural county I live in now.

nor do private hire cars exist either where I live, it's taxis working for a taxi company and that's all there is.

I can say it's dog eat dog in the taxi world when I did it, seen drivers threatening each other over suspected lying about their position, this was before sat tracking, it was 1st call, 2nd call, 3rd call and 4th call, some folk may know what I'm talking about.

penners324

You can make a complaint to the licensing authority, with all the evidence you have.

Or the Ombudsman if there is one.