My biggest nightmare was when I was delayed at LaGuardia and arrived at O'Hare around 1AM on a Thursday (so Friday at 1AM) and had a conference call at 8AM. After getting back to Lakeview around 1:30AM, the cabbie said his credit card machine broke and offered to drive me to an ATM. I lived literally next to a Jewel, so I went there, and took out the money (with the ATM fee).
My cab ride was 41 dollars, and he received 43. I said "if you would have let me pay by credit card, I would have gave you a nice 20% tip, but because you wanted cash, and made me walk to an ATM at 2AM, I deducted my ATM fee and some extra". Boy, was I pissed...if I wasn't so exhausted, I would have called 311 on him...I know he could have called it in. It was 2AM, I had been in a suit since 7AM the day before, and I couldn't wait to get home!
My advice? Always bring extra cash for cabs...it makes it a lot easier all the way around.
Current process for Charging a Credit Card
First, let’s review the current process for those of us who try to pay for a ride around the city with plastic. After the jump, of course. You won’t regret it.
- 1. Try and determine if the cab has a VISA sticker on the outside.
- 2. Get in the cab and tell the driver first that you have to use a card and risk being told that they don’t accept cards. OR wait until payment time comes and risk being told that “it don’t work” and is magically broken today.
- 3. Threaten to simply not pay for the ride or to report them to the taxi cab authority (which I doubt would accomplish much).
- 4. After they begrudgingly agree to take your card, they take no less than 4-5 minutes to find a pen and start to fill out the little form. This often requires you to tell them how much you want to tip before they have even run your card.
- 5. NOW the fun begins. They then pull out the 1980’s style, absolutely archaic slider machine that creates a carbon copy of your card info by manually moving a heavy piece of metal and plastic over the top of it several times (and they usually do is lots of times just for effect).
- 6. Next is time for them to hand you the form and your card…and for them to drop the pen. Once they’ve found the pen again, you can sign the form. Sometimes, if you are lucky, they even ask for your phone number so they can call you if “they have any problems”.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)