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Comment by FreeRadical | Hacker News Reader

More UK cabs need to start allowing cars payments. Instead they use their local monopolies to force cash use and under declare taxable income.

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Had a terrible experience my first trip to London with black cabs. Headed to Heathrow express, late for flight as it is, He tells me 3/4 of the trip through, no cabs accept credit. We pull up to a stop light, and a cab directly to our left, has "we accept credit" on the window. So now I'm sitting here driving around with the cab guy to find an ATM at 5am just to pay him.

I've learned to always, ALWAYS ask when I first step into a cab whether they accept card payments, anywhere in the world. As far as I can remember, every time I've done this the answer has always been "yes" and the card payment worked without a hitch at the end of the ride. Yet just about every time I took a cab without asking about cards upfront, the driver would tell me his reader isn't working and he'd have to drive me to an ATM. Funny how conveniently finicky those readers are...

Many places (check in advance!) require the driver to be upfront if their card reader isn't working or you're not obligated to pay.

It's amazing how those finicky card readers miraculously start working when you say 'oh well, too bad I guess' and step out of the car!

That's a great strategy too if you know the law is on your side and are bold enough to pull it off. But I'm pretty non-confrontational (even when dealing with people I know are trying to cheat me) and when I take a cab I'm usually in an unfamiliar place where I didn't have the foresight to check on the cab regulations beforehand, so I'm going to stick with mine :)

In Berlin it's now illegal for them to transport passengers if their card reader is not operational.

Drivers have still pulled the ""my reader doesn't work" on friends.

I was half drunk / no sleep at the time. I probably did ask them, or just assumed like every other cab in the civilized world takes them. Anyhow, horrible.

Counterexample -- happened near London. I asked to the cab driver if he accepted card payments and he says no. I asked him if we could stop to an ATM machine on the way and he said no and had me leave the cab (it was raining and there was a huge queue to get a cab).

Fair point -- if cabs are in high demand / short supply (and/or you're in a hurry) my strategy might not be ideal.

All London black cabs must take card payments. If their machine isn't working, they're not allowed to be on the road.

And that applies to tips?

"Tips" are not a thing for London taxis. It's not the US, the price is the actual price.

Well you kinda do... If he's done a good job (direct route, not taken the piss, been polite) then the custom is to round up the fare to the nearest £1.

It's England. You don't tip here.

Apart from restaurants

Not really, it's a service charge that in most places is charged for groups over a certain size (4 or 5). There is no culture of compulsory tipping for anything, because it's ridiculous.

My experience does not match what you are saying. I was always taught that (unless a service charge is already included) you should tip 10-20% in good restaurants. Not to tip I believe is generally seen as rude/a sign that service was bad.

Of course, most of us don't regularly eat in "good restaurants" - pretty much anything on the high street/your local shopping centre isn't, and anywhere you can get a meal for under £15 a head before drinks doesn't count as a "good restaurant", in my books.

I mean where you draw the line is up to you, but if there are three of you x £15, plus drinks lets say total of £64 , I would normally round it up to 70. By good restaurants I meant anything that isn't fast food (Subway, McDs). But perhaps I am not a typical customer, I don't know.

Often I go out to a restaurant with a friend and order fairly common food - totalling <£30 including drinks, and not making many demands of the staff. I don't think tipping someone to do the bare bones of their job is reasonable.

On the other hand, if I were to go with a reasonably sized group of people, had to get a table big enough for the lot of us, have people with dietary requirements or order cocktails or who otherwise make many demands of the staff... it's worth tipping as we're a pain in the ass, basically. And many restaurants automatically add a service charge in that case anyway.

Seems reasonable!

Sure, but you wouldn't leave a tip after getting a cup of tea at a wetherspoons, would you. I guess that's the UK equivalent of coffee at a diner.

Some places accept tips, and perhaps in some you should. The vast vast vast majority don't expect them as par for the course.

I have never heard of someone getting a cup of tea at spoons ;)

Ok, but I still think restaurant = tip expected. But hey, you are free to tip/not tip as you see fit.

In London I see this charge all over the place even for only two people... usually it's 10-12%.

Well, in restaurants now the tip's already on the bill, unless you want to make your entire group or date uncomfortable by "talking to the waiter about taking it off".

To be fair, I've only ever seen this in expensive restaurants.

Really? I rarely have dinner over 20 pounds a person (which isn't cheap, I get it, but for London prices it's also not expensive), and I haven't seen a bill without service charge added in months (excluding Whetherspoons). As soon as I don't manage to order at the register, and instead someone brings a menu, there will be a service charge.

There was one restaurant recently that didn't have one, and we almost freaked out about it.

Really? I've seen it in heaps of places in London - adding 12.5% "gratuity" is common at many places where you'd pay ~£15+ pp.

http://www.visitlondon.com/traveller-information/getting-aro...

"You can tip taxi drivers as much as you like, but most people round up to the nearest pound."

I normally round up or if I have called a minicab in real bad weather I might add an extra couple of pounds to a £7 ride to say 10

Always nice to tip. Not expected or required.

Uber, it's worth pointing out, does not currently allow for tipping either, I believe.

It does now

Didn't in Delhi yesterday

True, but not taken seriously by cab drivers. I've had many broken card machines in a black cab, and when challenged, it almost always lead to a, "alrite, get out mate" — or a, "well I can try if it works again, it didn't earlier..." I didn't report them, and with their ongoing nonsense and this now, I'll definitely make sure I will from here on forward.

I have the same experiences.

You absolutely 100% must report them. Seriously. Every time. It's the only way we make it better for everybody.

The requirement for it to always be available is a new one - it was introduced in recent months. So if your experience pre-date that, that behaviour may have changed.

If it hasn't you absolutely 100% need to report the driver to TfL.

Was after October last year, I should've reported and will do so now. It's a bit intimidating to take a photo of the license, but I guess it's easier when outside the cab. Which is, again, one more thing I like about Uber, I open the app, and it's all there. If a driver takes a wonky route, I complain and don't need to proof it much and get into an argument with the driver, the evidence is there, I merely deal with customer support, and I always get my money back.

> It's the only way we make it better for everybody.

Not true. Alternatively, you can have competition and consumer choice which can also make it better for everybody. Not everyone wants to be a squeaky wheel on these things, nor should they be forced to.

> It's the only way we make it better for everybody

All the reporting in the world didn’t help my black friend hail a yellow New York City taxi. You know what did ? Uber exerting competitive pressure on the Taxi & Limousine Commission and its drivers.

There is a much easier way to make things better for everyone.

The easier way is to use a service that doesn't suck, and let the services that DO suck go out of business.

I see cab drivers in my city have gone to the same cab driver school.

"You wanna pay £8 with card? Really?"

That's when I stopped using black cabs.

"Yes", or if they make a fuss, report them - you've got their license number on the plate right in front of you, and actual accountability rather than an unaccountable star-review system.

Yeah, except most people won't bother. So it gives in fact less accountability.

If this is a problem, write an app that emails/faxes/whatever a report to TfL? Could even integrate some CV stuff to read a license plate number from the phone's camera. This is the sort of thing that takes large organisations a while to build, but could be a weekend project for an interested developer.

Still would need to be popularised to actually give any benefit (i.e. similar levels of accountability for minor shittinies as uber's ratings). people are lazy. Rating an uber takes seconds, and is built in to same app you need to order it. I am guessing many people don't rate anyway. Also, making an app that that does this well is NOT a weekend sized project.

Especially because the fees have been lowered specifically for taxis, so fees from the approved payment providers top out at like 3%.

Why would I pay more money for a higher chance of getting into an argument with some asshole cab driver instead of using Uber, saving money, and avoiding the hassle entirely?

So on-point. Let markets figure it out.

All this central planning is annoying me a lot these days

Safe driver-hiring processes are a lemon market.

https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/taxis-and-private-hire/accepting...

If the anecdote and the law are both accurate, then that certainly goes to show exactly how effective all those stringent regulations are. It seems like this one would be simple to check.

You can just refuse to pay any other way except by card. There is not much a black cab driver can do in response to that, since they are now not even allowed to be on the road accepting customers if they don't have a working card machine.

Can you? I would think common law would take precedence over taxi regulations.

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