Have you ever driven a taxi? How would you have handled this?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I am surprised by this post.

I used to drive an Airport Limo part time while I worked a full time job. As I recall, the issue of “legal” or “illegal” never played a part in our (the other drivers) decisions as to how to conduct our business.

We would just make a cash grab and in a case like this, we would ask for a whole lot of cash - often more than what the recommended amount was - in fact, it was **almost always **more than the recommended amount.

It all depended on the factors in play. For example, how busy were we at that time? How much money had we earned so far that day? Did this customer appear to be willing to pay more than the recommended fare?

I feel guilty to tell you this, but we had a list of recommended fares and mileages between cities and we were given a mileage rate. I forget what it was but suppose it was $2 per mile. Then, if the trip was 100 miles, we were supposed to charge $200.

But if the customer appeared to be at all naive and it appeared we could “take them” for some extra money, we would tell them the round trip was 200 miles and therefore, the fare would be $400. IOW, we would charge them for the round trip which was incredibly illegal. We were only supposed to charge the one-way mileage - in other words $200 and not $400.

But if the customer appeared to be from out of town and did not appear to be “on the ball” (meaning they would not have a clue that $400 was much, much more than the true amount), we would say any incredible crap and charge them whatever we could get away with.

When they entered the car, we would ask, “and how are you today, Sir?” Of course, FYI, no one ever cared at all how they were. That was a question designed to give us some info as to how much we could possibly cheat them.

If they were in a big hurry or if they did not appear to care about the money, we would make up any ridiculous crap we could get away with and charge them exorbitant amounts of money. It was just the way the business was conducted. It was very much like a Piracy business where the drivers would try to get away with as much as they could.

I suspect that business is still run in the same way. I can’t imagine any reason why it would have ever changed.

I’m quite certain that anytime you go into a service station, for example, you are just asking to be cheated and cheated a whole lot!

22

I wanted to add that this was pretty much a case of all drivers behaving in the same way.

I can’t recall any individual drivers who did not engage in this kind of chicanery. It was a universal technique and considered a normal way of doing business.

Certainly, some drivers were occasionally caught - usually if they tried to cheat a reasonable clever and adept business person out of way too much money. That was an almost certain way to get caught and when they did, they got fined and fired and sometimes even imprisoned. Although prison was almost unheard of.

But, my point is that this was the way business was conducted by most everyone. Drivers basically insisted that they all behave in the same way because they did not want any one to be caught and then reveal the secrets of how business was done and the entire public was cheated.

I’m fairly certain the kinds of cheating that occurred back then are still going on today. I can’t see any reason why they wouldn’t be.

The public should know that when the go to a service station or call a Taxi or a Limo, you have to know how these businesses charge customers. If you don’t know and you are not on top of it, you will almost certainly get cheated.

In most cases, the amount of money you are cheated is very small. It’s only when you take long long trips that the cost can approach hundreds of dollars.

For the most part, I was very happy to charge maybe double on a $4 or $5 fare. In that way, at the end of the day, I would make a whole lot more money than I was entitled to. And people would almost never care about being overcharged $4. What is $4 to the average person taking a limo?

I would advise anyone engaging in certain businesses to be very careful they know the amount of money they should pay and to double check their money.

Supermarkets and Shopping Centers are another prime example. People make lots of extra money there - usually by “short-changing” the customers. The stores don’t really care too much because they are not being cheated. The customers don’t care too much if they are overcharged a dollar or two. But the cashiers make out like bandits because the make an extre $5 or $10 per hour by over-charging or short-changing.

When is the last time you double-checked the change you received from a cashier? Try it and you will be shocked how often they short-change you.

The most obvious technique is if the total is something like $7.85, they change it to $8.75. That is an extra dollar for them and if they do that maybe ten times per hour, they will be earning more than double their actual salary because the extra money they pocket is all tax free.

Please don’t be angry with me. I didn’t invent these techniques. I’m just telling you how they work and hope you will use this information to prevent yourself from being cheated. In fact, I wager that if someone started a new thread on this topic, we would all learn many other techniques that people use to cheat the public - especially when cash is transacted.

Before you go to a cashier, make sure you figure out what you expect the total will be. If they try to charge you any more, ask to speak with the manager and if enough people do that, it will put a stop to it at that store. Also, when they give you your change, do not just pocket the cash without even looking at it. Count it and double check it is the correct amount.

You will be flabbergasted at how often they short-change you. Really and truly!

23

I want to add something. It was another very common technique used to cheat the public by taxi drivers and limo drivers.

When picking people up at the airport, if they wanted to go to a place that was fairly close to the airport - for example, an airport hotel - meaning a hotel that was near the airport. The fare to those hotels were all preset flat rates - say $6.

But if there was more than one customer - and very often we would ask people, “Is anyone else going to the Airport Hilton”? or even wait until some more people arrived …

Then we would charge the flat rate all right. When arriving at the hotel, if we had three people in the car, we would announce, "OK folks, this is the Airport Hilton. The fare is $6 each.

That word “each” was like the magic word. It enabled people who did this regurlarly to earn maybe 3 or 4 times as much money as they were legally entitled to earn because of several reaons. Like whenever there were 3 or 4 people going to different hotels, we would charge each one the $6 fare and every penny we charged above the legal fare was all tax-free. Therefore, we made out like bandits. We earned and earned and earned.

If I had more time, the things that I could tell you. Oh my gosh! The things that I could tell you!

24

Sacramento doesn’t have a lot of Americans there? Or maybe that isn’t a contributing factor at all. Maybe he wasn’t used to dealing with dicks, American or otherwise.

25

My intent there was suggesting that he may have recently moved to Sacramento from a non-English speaking country. I sure didn’t intend to offend anyone who did not speak English well and I’m sorry if there was any misunderstanding.

26

It was a Doonesbury story arc too.

27

Even if the story was legit and the guy got paid. He still had the long trip back with no fare to pay for it. Seems to me you would have to charge the round trip miles PLUS over night stays and meals.

28

Not quite as long a trip, but for a while my aunt would regularly hire a taxi to take her and my grandmother from Montreal to Ottawa to visit my uncle. For medical reasons both my uncle and my grandmother had extreme difficulty walking. Even getting to the bus station was too much for them. And my aunt didn’t have a car herself. So the taxi was the solution, even though it was very expensive.

29

Oh my! I bet it was expensive.

If anyone reading ever has to do a similar thing, it would be best to find someone who would be willing to do it for cash. There are some advantages to using a taxi service. But that trip is approx 150 miles (just guessing) and if they found a reliable person who owned a comfortable car, I’m sure they could pay only about half as much (maybe even less) to have them drive.