On 2015-10-06 15:40:00 +0000, Roland Perry said:

And roaming data?

£2/day if you're an O2 user. It's getting more sensibly affordable.

Neil
--
Neil Williams
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On 2015-10-06 08:03:31 +0000, Roland Perry said:

In message , at 21:02:52 on Mon, 5
Oct 2015, Neil Williams remarked:

They could be taking off their Uber-hat for that trip.

Then you report them and refuse to pay.

Why would someone do that, especially if offered a discount fare?

Because I booked Uber to pay, stress and negotiation free, by credit
card. That's one of its big selling points. I might not even be
carrying enough cash for a supposed cash fare.

I take great pleasure in telling people to get lost when they try to
offer me money to end an eBay auction by adding a buy now. I put it on
auction for a reason. FWIW, every time I have got more than I was
offered.

Neil
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Neil Williams
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On 2015-10-06 10:38:53 +0000, Basil Jet said:

Having people in non-wheelchair-accessible cars surrounding venues,
charging 20 or 30 pound minimum fares and threatening to behead any
taxi drivers who try to get near the venue isn't quite as convenient to
the user as you seem to imply.

There are perfectly good criminal laws to deal with threatening
behaviour and menace. And if they charge £20 or £30 minimum, perhaps
they wouldn't if passengers told them to get lost.

Neil
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Neil Williams
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On 2015-10-06 15:04:48 +0000, said:

When is the PRT in Milton Keynes sue to start operating, BTW?

Don't know, but it's a ridiculous idea. Moving vehicles on pedestrian
walkways are not welcome.

The money would be better spent on more of the electric buses being
trialled on route 7. They are very nice indeed - the atmosphere on
board is vastly superior when things don't rattle you to bits nor stink
of diesel fumes.

Neil
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Neil Williams
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What fake taxis are you talking about? I'm not aware that
Uber deploy fake taxis and TfL are not either. To the best
of my knowledge Uber drivers use conventional saloon cars
like the Toyota Prius.

Uber is a minicab firm that has analysed the market with great
precision and has worked out how to tap into that market by
utilising modern technology that happens also to be fashionable.
As I said earlier I have no connection with Uber and I don't use
them, so I don't care what they charge. It's a free market and they,
like anyone else, are entitled to charge what the market will bear.
If people don't like or don't approve of surge pricing, they shouldn't
use Uber when demand is high, e.g. during a tube strike.

Uber are not disrupting other service providers. They are competing
with them and they are not unregulated. TfL have confirmed that Uber
are conforming to the same regulations as other London minicab firms.

I admire any company that can analyse a market shrewdly and enter
that market late in the day and quickly outperform longstanding players.
I don't necessarily like such companies but I respect them.

How this eventually plays out, no-one knows. The black cab trade
clearly hasn't the first clue how to compete with Uber and I suspect
that small, local minicab firms do not realise that their days are
numbered. What I do not want is Uber to have a near monopoly.
I hope that the more alert minicab companies, like Addison Lee,
Keen and Greyhound will offer the same app-based service that
Uber are providing and give Uber some real competition.

On 2015-10-06 18:36:20 +0000, Robin9 said:

I hope that the more alert minicab companies, like Addison Lee,
Keen and Greyhound will offer the same app-based service that
Uber are providing and give Uber some real competition.

Apparently Addison Lee have:
http://www.addisonlee.com/apps/

They appear to be specifically pushing the lack of surge pricing as a
selling point.

Neil
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Neil Williams
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In article ,
(tim.....) wrote:

I enquired about booking cab from the office to the station one day
and when I got told it would be 18 quid for a 6 mile journey. I
politely declined

I was expecting pre-booking to offer a discount, not in Cambridge it
seems

Where from? Must have been outside the city.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article ,
(JNugent) wrote:

On 06/10/2015 01:09, wrote:

In Cambridge the station forecourt taxi rank is not public highway. This
means the railway charges taxi drivers a tidy annual sum for access and
limits it to only some hackney carriages. Any activity with queues could
only happen with the co-operation of the railway company. I tried to get
the council to insist that the new rank being created in the current
station redevelopment would be public highway but this was successfully
resisted by the railway industry.

There has to be another taxi rank further from the station but on the
public highway to allow for the next time the railway company tries to
raise the charges excessively to a level the trade won't pay. Happened
in BR days and again 25 years later.

It stinks but the local authorities seem powerless to stop the scam.

I have heard of these "pay to get onto the rank" schemes before.

BR don't do it everywhere (not in London or Liverpool, that's
certain), but it always causes bad feeling when they di it.

Whether it's done presumably depends on the presence of railway-owned land.
Did they do it at London termini in the days when taxi ranks were between
the platforms? Isn't it done at Heathrow?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at
16:17:43 on Mon, 5 Oct 2015, remarked:

The USP appears to be a much larger pool of available drivers nearby
than ringing the phone number of some random minicab company.

Not so great when the local hire car and taxi trade is concentrated into
an operator as large as Panther in Cambridge?

I did say "nearby". Anecdotal evidence from Cambridge suggests that
if you order a Panther car it's not very likely to turn up within
five minutes, or even sometimes twenty-five.

Not so from family experience. We have found Panther reliable and
professional.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message , at 19:21:45 on Tue, 6 Oct
2015, Neil Williams remarked:

And roaming data?

£2/day if you're an O2 user. It's getting more sensibly affordable.

That's only in Europe. Their standard rates outside Europe are £1/MB it
seems.
--
Roland Perry