Drivers Payments
If a weekly-paid driver completes a credit
journey by Thursday midnight, the money will
be deposited in his bank by the BACS system
8 days later on the Friday. Drivers
who are paid fortnightly or monthly will be
paid for any jobs completed on the Thursday
8 days prior to their payment. Occasionally,
due to the hard work of the girls in
Driver’s Services and the bank, it is
deposited by the following Thursday.
Some drivers seem to have taken this early
arrival as the norm and telephoned if it
isn’t in their bank a day early. Please do
not phone in to complain until after midday
on the Friday your payment is due if it has
then not yet arrived.
Finsbury Square Rank
We have had a
continued string of complaints from drivers
that the rules appertaining to EC5 are not
being adhered to during the hours it is in
operation. On checking, we have found some
drivers booking into the rank as they enter
the square or even earlier. This is not
permissible and causes confusion and chaos.
We also have drivers who have worked from
this rank for some years and who think they
can use their own rules by pulling to the
opposite pavement in the square and hold
meetings whilst booked in. There are others
who are parking at the tea stall or even
pulling out of the square once they have
booked in. The Board have decided that this
must stop immediately and have implemented
measures to bring any driver who continues
to break the rules to a complaints meeting.
Booking-in Procedure for
EC5
To book onto EC5
between the hours of 21:00 to 06:00, you
need to follow these procedures.
* The rank starts by the horse trough on the south side of the
square, or as near as you can possibly get
to it.
* When the first cab pulls on, books in and receives their queue
position, he or she should switch on their
hazard lights to inform the next cab on the
rank they have now booked in.
* To book in you must be directly behind the taxi flashing his or
her hazard lights; your wheels at that point
in time should be stationary.
* You should then follow the proceeding taxi as they move down the
rank towards the horse trough, which is
designated as the point of the rank.
* Once booked onto the rank, you must not pull away to sit at the
tea stall or at any other point around the
square. This causes confusion and arguments
ending in drivers putting one another on
complaint. The only exception is when
directed to move by a Dial-a-Cab Marshal.
If drivers comply with these rules and do not leave gaps between
taxis, it will not allow taxis from other
circuits to get in the queue and disrupt the
smooth flow of our taxis. Any subscriber who
fails to comply with the correct procedure
will be put on complaint and judged at a
complaints meeting.
Door Logos
We still have a
few drivers who are happy to try and cheat
the system by not having their door logos
attached to both front doors whilst working,
but happy to claim reduced subscriptions.
To combat this cheating, the Board have decided that if a driver is
caught without logos on both front doors,
for the first time he or she will have their
subscriptions increased to the higher rate
until the complaint is answered. If the
complaint is proven, then they will get a
reprimand, if caught again they |
will go straight to a
complaints meeting.
The panel of shareholders who sit on these meetings have the right
to impose a suspension or expulsion if they
deem this as a fit punishment.
Proprietors Licenses
When your taxi has
passed its yearly overhaul, you are supplied
with a proprietors licence. It contains the
taxi details associated with your name. Within
the following 14 days, you should send or
bring a copy into the office to enable us to
update our files and prove that a subscriber
is still eligible to be a shareholder of ODRTS.
We have, in the past, had drivers who do not
own a taxi still trying to retain the share
they were issued with on entry to the Society.
Failure to produce this licence is also a
complaint on the procedure sheet.
The Data Terminal
Some drivers are still unsure of all the
functions of the Data Terminal in their taxi.
I know it’s hard for new drivers to retain all
the instructions they are given on their day
of training. But some drivers are just unsure
of new procedures and so avoid them possibly
cutting down on their earning potential. If
you fall into any of these categories, do not
be embarrassed to contact either Allan Evans
or myself and we will arrange for a one-to-one
training session on the points you are unsure
of.
Board Members are Human!
We have some drivers
who want to come to the office and speak to a
particular Board Member. Indeed, we are the
only taxi company who encourage drivers to
partake in the running of the Society. Board
Members are usually available during normal
office hours excluding times when they have to
attend meetings. If you would like to speak to
a Board Member, it is advisable to phone
first to find out the availability of that
person. We have drivers who just turn up -
usually at lunchtime - and get annoyed when
told the Board Member is trying to get
something to eat. We are the same as you and
need to eat during our working day. Most Board
Members spend at least eight hours in the
office on any given day, so you should get the
opportunity to see one. But please show some
consideration…
St Georges Day
Once again on Sunday
14 March, Mr Livingstone put on a spectacular
show for St Patrick’s Day closing off streets
and erecting stages. We also had extra police
to make sure that traffic avoided the area,
albeit to get jammed up in the surrounding
areas!
Now knowing that Mr Livingstone is the Mayor of London - the
Capital of England - I await with baited
breath to see the spectacular show he will be
putting on for St Georges Day! I am sure he
will be supplying plenty of white flags with
red crosses, shutting streets and hanging
bunting from every lamppost. Then he’ll
arrange for bands to play on street corners
with wandering street entertainers strolling
through the crowds and all down to London
taxpayers.
Surely he wouldn’t
support |
foreign Saints days
whilst leaving out the English patron saint?
Westminster Parking Tickets.
One of our drivers went
to pick up a disabled person in Page Street,
Westminster. The person had a Westminster
disabled persons card, an idea that originally
came from Mr Livingstone. The person needed
assistance so the driver got out of his taxi
and started to walk to the client’s door,
however, a parking warden approached the taxi
and started to produce a parking fine.
The driver informed him of the person’s
disability, but the warden told him that once
you get out of the taxi, wardens have been
told to issue a ticket.
I would like Mr Livingstone to inform me how a disabled person is
supposed to get out of the house, across the
pavement and open the taxi door on their own
with no help from our driver?
They want our drivers to do the job, but it seems that NCP need
more money to pay their wardens the promised
incentive bonuses! What is the next stage?
When ambulance attendants or undertakers are
carrying people from their house or flat, a
warden creeps up alongside the front hedge to
issue a ticket? I think Mr Livingstone had a
great idea, but little tyrants in back street
offices have found a way to make bundles of
money on the back of it.
Outer Zones
We have a group of
drivers who are booking into outer zones to
hang up for account jobs that will bring them
into London. The jobs, of course, are rather
lucrative which is an added reason for these
drivers to hang up in the area. But those
drivers are now overstepping the mark and
blocking up the zone, stopping mobile working
drivers the chance of getting a job as they
pass through the zone. Drivers are breaking
the rules and booking into these areas and
waiting up to 5 or 6 hours. As you can well
imagine, these drivers are not in their cabs.
They are either taking a chance of being
number 1 for when they are ready to go to
work, or they have the taxi parked under an
open window of their house so they can hear
the bleep. Others have their child’s baby
alarm in the cab!
These zones are monitored by DaC dispatchers who firstly look on
GPS to where the taxi is
parked. If it is outside the driver’s home
address, then they put test trips into the
system to see which drivers gets booked off
due to not accepting or rejecting. I sat with
a dispatcher recently whilst he completed this
operation and 12 taxis were knocked off the
system! This means that 12 minutes were lost
due to unattended terminals. If this had been
a real job, the driver accepting it would have
lost a minimum of 12 minutes from his
running-in time.
Ok, so I’m being Mr Doom and Gloom again, but we must take action
over these drivers. Our balance sheets are
currently well into the black, but by their
selfish actions, these drivers could change
that and we could begin to lose accounts due
to bad service. And it would all be down
to those drivers greed.
Tom Whitbread
DaC Complaints |
