I doubt this is going to be published by ST, but I have gotta get it off my chest anyway. Here’s the letter I sent them:

I refer to the letter, ‘Retain call bookings but abolish surcharge’ (ST, Dec 7). I believe it would be unrealistic to completely abolish surcharges while expecting taxi companies to maintain the call booking service. Why punish taxi companies for something that is a result of the surcharge system?

However, since passengers can’t help but believe that cabbies are given too big a carrot by the surcharge system while no viable stick is keeping them in check, the surcharge system must be further fine-tuned. The reason being that not only passengers attempting to flag down a cab are penalised by the surcharge system, even passengers who booked for a cab can some times suffer from it.

Let me first relate several bad experiences I have with call bookings. They usually happen if it is 15 minutes before the peak hour surcharges kick in. I shall keep the company’s name out of this since this would happen no matter which one I called. It all happens this way:

A booking confirmation for a cab is receive about 10 minutes before peak hour. But after 15 minutes of waiting, the cab didn’t turn up and I will have to call the operator to inquire about my ‘lost’ cab. And as if that isn’t bad enough, the operator told me she was unable get hold of the cabbie who took my booking or this particular cab is now too far away from my pick up location. To her credit, she offered to get me another cab. Since it isn’t the her fault that the cab didn’t turn up, I will just allow her to find me another, which means now I have to pay the $4 peak hour booking surcharge plus another $2 as my trip starts during peak hour. By the time the second cab arrives, I would have wasted a total of 20 – 25 minutes of my precious time. On top of that I now have to pay an extra $3.50 in surcharges because of one irresponsible cabbie. And if you asked me why I didn’t try flagging down a cab instead, let me just say that if I could I wouldn’t be calling for one in the first place!

Thus, I suggest that cabs must arrive within the time span it indicated during the call booking, so cabbies who arrive late will lose the call booking surcharge. This will subject cabbies to the mercy of traffic conditions and make it fair to the waiting passenger as well. I believe this can be easily done since the satellite booking system can track the distance of the cab from the pickup point and the time the call is confirmed can be logged.

I understand that there would be concerns that accident rate for cabbies might go up because they might rush to arrive within the time required. A good way to prevent this would be to remove the current multi-tiered waiting time for call booking, ensure that the cab is about 5 – 10 minutes travel distance from the caller, and given them 10 – 15 minutes from booking confirmation to arrive at the pick up point. For the cabbies who insists that this system is stacked against them, they can always stick to street pickups.

Next, make it a punishment for irresponsible cabbies who failed to turn up to pick up passengers after taking up a booking. A good way is to lock his the satellite booking console for an hour or two to bar him from accepting bookings within that period.

I understand that a system in already in place against drivers who constantly ignored call bookings so it is not impossible to have such a system in place. On top of that, the company should charge whatever fee it would have earned from the failed booking to the cabbies who failed to turn up. I believe this is a fair system to compensate the taxi company since either their phone operators have to face the wrath irate passengers or having to deal with their written complaints later.

This is a win-win solution that can be considered since taxi companies will not need pass the cost of operating the call booking system to the passengers or the cabbies because fares and rental costs can be kept as they are.