3 years ago
Here is my complaint to Yellow Cab Houston, to whi...
Here is my complaint to Yellow Cab Houston, to which they never replied. I am still waiting...
18 Feb 2015,
On Thursday 12 Feb 2015, I booked a taxi from my home on xxx to go to 5015 Kirby Drive, Houston 77098. The taxi picked us up at 7.11pm, which I have documented because I called my husband as we got in the car. The journey is 11 miles, and without traffic, should take around 15 minutes. There was some traffic, but nothing out of the ordinary for a regular Thursday night. We headed east on I-10, but instead of going south on 610, the driver made a mistake and turned north on 610, then eventually northwest on 290. When I queried his route he said that he had chosen another way to avoid the traffic. I knew this not to be true (you don't drive north in order to get south!), and it was clear that he was lost. Due to road works, his GPS kept recalculating and when he finally did turn around we ended up going northwest for a while on Hempstead, then east, finally joining up with I-10 at Westcott. However, instead of staying on I-10 and going south on Shepard, (which would have been the shortest route at this point, and which is where I was telling him to go), he did a u turn and went back on I-10, then south on 610, another big detour. We arrived at our destination some 45 minutes (!) after we left home. This, again, I have documented because I called my husband. The meter had been running the entire time, and the driver said we owed him $46. I refused to pay that much, and asked him to please calculate the correct fair based on the pick-up price and the price per mile. He wouldn't do it. Instead, he offered to lower the price to $40, which I still thought to be way too high. We paid him $25 and got out of the vehicle at this point because we felt uncomfortable, and he still wasn't calculating the correct price. We walked over to the restaurant, and he called after us and said that we owed him more money. I said I would call my husband and get him to calculate it for me, which I did, and after a quick Google search my husband told me that the correct fair would be around $30. I then paid the driver another $5, and at this point the driver had finally made the calculations himself and agreed that $30 was approximately the correct fair. Another 15 minutes had passed after we arrived at our destination because the driver had refused to do this in the first place. We were late for our dinner reservation and we were, frankly, frightened by the driver's unprofessional and unfriendly behavior. I asked for a receipt and photographed his license plate. The cab number was xxx, driver number xxx, and trip number xxx. I am not disputing the price we ended up paying, but I would like to file a complaint about the lack of customer service we received. Had I not objected, we would have ended up paying $16 more for a trip we never wanted to take, and for which he never once apologized. He lied to us about trying to avoid the traffic, when, in fact, he was just lost. It was obvious that he was not a local and did not have sufficient grasp of the Houston road map. But it was more upsetting that he tried to cover it up and then charge us for it afterwards! It put a dampener on our evening to say the least. I look forward to hearing from you.