Friday, May 06, 2016

Poor taxi service

I wanted to take a taxi from Chinatown to my office this afternoon. Most of the taxis had red signs, indicating that they are busy, hired or on call. A taxi with green sign came along. I signaled it to stop.

Driver - where are you going?
TKL - Upper Thomson Road
Driver - sorry. out of the way.

The taxi driver is either changing shift or have to pick up a family member from shopping or school.
I did not wait for the next taxi. I took the bus.

I get the impression that taxis are expensive and the standard of service is rather poor.

Another issue is - too many taxis are queuing for about 1 hour at the airport. Why are we so unproductive?


4 comments:

fairplay said...

The taxi industry is OUT OF CONTROL.
The garmen is too weak to control for fear of losing popularity.
Drivers cherry-pick to optimise their earning.
Authorities counter with sweeteners(surcharges) thus making fares more expensive.
Drivers keep playing the same game with the garmen and the public.
This cycle keeps repeating.
Only Driverless cars can save us.

Anonymous said...

The first thing that came to my mind was: you were also at fault. You should have opened the door and get in the taxi without giving him a chance to choose. Taxis are not allowed to choose passengers or destinations, period. If he refuses to bring you to your destination, then lodge a complaint right away. We need to weed out such black sheep in the taxi industry. Why complain about unfair competition from private hire companies like Uber when taxis provide such lousy service!

Anonymous said...

Taxi drivers have enough to eat.
They are not hungry.
Do not take taxis unless you have luggage.

Tan Kin Lian said...

@10:38 PM

There is no need to "find fault". We have a broken down system.

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