After a solid year spent fighting against ridesharing services like Uber-X, it has finally dawned on the taxi industry why customers are seeking an alternative: their service sucks. From The Age:
There is no doubt that #YourTaxis will go down as the Australian marketing fail of the year…
By now you’ve probably heard all about #YourTaxis – the social media campaign designed to promote Victoria’s taxi cab industry. The hashtag was meant to promote a broader digital strategy in which the yourtaxis.com.au website helped to restore the ailing reputation of Victoria’s yellow cabs and rebuild trust as the industry fights back against Uber.
But instead of a steady stream of supportive stories from satisfied customers, the hashtag quickly became a rallying call for disaffected Victorians – and many others – who have endured decades of poor service and dodgy dealings from a surprisingly large proportion of their taxis…
Around Melbourne there is still an enormous prevailing disgust at the state of the taxi industry…
The Daily Mail has more:
The responses came quicker than an airport surcharge, with stories about everything from customers being forced to wait while drivers cleaned up vomit, to driving on the wrong side of the road and borderline stalking being shared….
‘It smelled like a wookiee’s armpit. I was preached at about how Somali immigrants are destroying Australia for 25 min,’ Leigh Stillard added…
‘I left my camera in a taxi and it was impossible to retreive. Ex taxi drivers comfirmed stealing rife hence why I now use Uber,’ Bea Fisher said.
‘That time I got home & the driver told me eftpos was unavailable. Drove me back to an ATM, which he charged me for,’ Aidan Hathaway tweeted.
Rather than continue fighting the public and Uber, Victoria’s Taxi Association has accepted that it has been delivering poor service and promised to lift its game. From The Guardian:
“In 2015, if we’re not providing a service people want to use, then the amount of competition will see our industry decline,” Samuel said.
“We won’t let that occur. We’ve been around for about 150 years and have responded to many challenges over that time, and we’ll do it again.”
But to remain competitive, the industry had to act on criticisms and understand where it was failing, Samuel said.
“Being heard is one thing,” he said. “Being responded to and seeing change is something different. It’s all very well to accept criticism, but there has been a failure in the past to dig down into the problems and to try to understand them and respond to them.
Still, not all taxi drivers are on board. Check-out the below video of a taxi driver abusing and threatening an Uber-X driver in Melbourne:
It seems the Victorian Taxi Association has a battle on its hands weeding-out bad drivers and improving customer service levels.
In the meantime, passengers will continue flocking to Uber.
