WTF is up with taxi services these days?Follow

OK. I don't normally call or need a taxi. Until today. What a disaster!

Car breaks down. I get it towed. I'd like to get to work, so I try to get a taxi from home (not too far from the shop). Apparently, since I live in the "north county" of San Diego, I get a yellow pages that serves only the areas near me. Unfortunately, most of those areas as in Oceanside and surrounding areas (which is a different county).

Apparently also, some dipstick passed a law at some point that prevents taxi services from crossing county lines. Why? Don't know. I'm sure I could find a way to blame liberal nutjobs on it, but I'm too tired to bother at this point. As I go down the list of taxi services in the area, I avoid the ones with the 760 area code, since that's Oceanside. And after spending over an hour running through the rest, not a single service would actually pick up in the area I live in!

So I try information. Surely, they'll be able to put me through to a cab company that'll manage my area, right? Nope. They keep handing me numbers that are either 760 numbers, or ones I've already tried. Sigh. Eventually, I just gave up. Working from home I guess...


Here's what I don't get. I remember back in the day when you could literally walk up to any phone booth, flip through the book there, put in your coin(s) and get a taxi to come get you, day or night, anywhere, and take you to anywhere. What's changed? You'd think these guys would be in competition and would work hard to get your fare or something. What's even more surprising is the attitudes I got. Most of them were actually rude about the fact that they wouldn't pick me up. No: "Sorry. We can't pick up there, but I could give you the number of a company that can...". Just a half intelligible "No cabs for you!" and a hang up.


Is it that we have too much regulation on these businesses, so they can only operate in very narrow economic range (and apparently picking someone up in the burbs isn't cost effective or something)? Or is it that there's not enough of them, so they don't feel they need to compete for our dollars? Dunno. Just dont get it. I was willing to pay for the trip, but no one wanted my money. That just seems wrong to me...

Third possibility: outside regulation.

I know the cabs up here will cross county lines, and that stood out as being kind of arbitrary. So I'm guessing it's some sort of local legislation.

Not a California law. Like I said, they'll cross any number of lines up here.

Yeah. Probably a local law or something. Don't know who's or where it came from. But I had at least a half dozen different people tell me it was illegal for them to pick up a fare on the other side of the county line. Which would not have been a problem except that every single taxi service listed "locally" was on the other side of a county line...

Heh. You are correct about that. When I lived in Santa Cruz, I remember it had a really good bus system. You could get from anywhere to anywhere easily, quickly, and cheaply. There aren't even busses that run where I live at all. Ok. That's not totally true. There is one bus route that runs along Torrey Pines past UCSD and up to the Del Mar fairgrounds (about a mile or two from where I live). But absolutely no busses running around on the surface streets in between.

But that's why you'd think that there'd be decent taxi service or something. I thought about a shuttle service, but they take freaking forever to get you where you're going (and I didnt see any for my area either). There were several limo services, but I'm pretty sure those were not going to entail a 20 buck ride. They're more aimed at the "rent a sedan and driver for the day" kind of thing.

Here in the UK, I have a single national number that I can call wherever I am in the country. They then find and send me a cab.

Don't you septics have something similar?

C'mon people. Can no one see what is going on here? Probably no parents in the group. When my kids asked to do something I didn't want them to do, I told them "no" and when they asked why I told them "because people bleed when they're cut." They would, of course ask what that meant and I would tell them: "Any excuse is good enough if you don't want to do something."

Cab companies, appliance repair people, car repairmen, and all other funcioning members of society learn a standard litany of excuses why they can't do what they don't WANT to do. You can't argue with them because their rationale is bogus.

BTW these are all more signs of the decline and fall of the service economy in the US. Personal service and excellance are not provided because we don't think we ought to have to pay for them. End result is help desks run out of India and Pakistan, shirts that are made in the Phillipines, etc, etc. When you buy things based only on the price, you can't expect to get the outstanding service and support you used to get when you paid more for the product.

PPS Taxi service sucks because no one uses taxis anymore except the poor and disadvantaged who can't afford to pay decent prices for the service...

I think its more likely that the cab company cant cross the county line because of some stupid licensing regulation and a cab company that he wasn't referred to covered the area he in which lives. I have seen this in many service related areas, especially if franchises are involved.

Years ago my friend and I tried to order a pizza. It was 10:30PM and we decided to call Dominos. They told us that they could not deliver to us because we were now in the delivery area for new Dominos. The problem was I was under construction and wouldn't be opened for 2 months. So we called another pizza place across the street from the first Dominos. They said, in a snide manner, they had turned off their oven early so we were "out of luck." So now we were ticked off at these guys. One won’t deliver because we are in the delivery area of a Dominos that isn't open yet and the other was rude and closing early.

Being the vengeful person I am I called the Dominos and spoke with the manager. I told him I was the manager of the other pizza place and asked if they could make the pizza and we would have our driver deliver it. He agreed if we would pay them when they brought it over in 20 min. I told him that would be no problem. My friend and I then drove down to the Dominos and waited. We watched them drive the pizza over to the other pizza place and get in a heated argument with the staff. After watching them nearly come to blows, we went to Denny's.

Someone should tell New York that, the whole "more taxis than normal cars" thing in there is somewhat confusing

Maybe there's just more poor and disadvantaged people than normal people in New York.

Bah. Finally figured it out. It's not about crosing county lines. It's about licensing for the *city* of San Diego. Since the area I live in is not an separate township, it's technically part of the city of San Diego, even though it's nowhere near it (I'm literally 20+ miles away).

What's really bizaare is that there are two taxi services that are located just 2 major streets down in my "town". But they're not licensed to operate in the city of San Diego, so they literally can't pick up a fare in their own parking lot. Go figure...

So the problem with the local phone book is that it only lists "north county" services, none of which operate in San Diego city, even if they are physically located in an area defined as San Diego city. I have to go online and look up numbers for services centered in the downtown area in order to get a cab. But at least now that I know that, I can avoid some of the hassle.

It's still pretty darn silly IMO...