Dial-a-Cab and Minicabs
Prompted, as always, to peruse any article with the mention of cabs, the strap line “Hail the cab crusader” in a recent edition of the Financial Mail not so much grabbed my interest, as the accompanying photo of Orson Wells and Addison Lee’s John Griffin - aka Citizen Kane reincarnate - who is launching a magazine investigating the bad practices of his competitors! Exactly how close he hopes to emulate the financial success of the fictional publishing tycoon Kane, I’ve no idea, particularly as the readership is likely to appear of interest to the odd English speaking asylum seekers driving rust buckets cum minicabs and the various scribes in our own trade papers who appear to agree with some of his views, particularly those concerning the denigrating of the radio circuits.
   I have never met Mr Griffin, so have no personal view of him as an individual. However, so far as his company is concerned, their name has cropped up probably more than most within the PH industry when being compared with on-cost. In fact, as many of you already know, only very recently we lost one of our longest serving and lowest charging clients to Addison Lee, only for them to lose it themselves - so it alleged - within a matter of weeks. And thereby lies the damage done to our industry by certain PH companies who win contracts with all sorts of ambitious claims, only to discover they cannot be met – especially when trying to match our ASAP times. Unfortunately, it’s only when a client experiences this fact that they realise their error, but are then reluctant to admit it by asking us to reopen the account. So we all lose, which is not exactly good business practice and one example Mr Griffin could well use in the first issue of his magazine.
   Obviously I feel aggrieved at losing a valued client to any competitor and particularly a valued one who we have serviced for over 25 years, but losing it is not the reason I am mentioning Mr Griffin, it’s his published comments concerning Dial-a-Cab, our Concierge system and the allegations that we supply minicabs. You’ve probably read enough about Concierge in Call-Sign over the past few months to bore you to tears, but surprisingly there are still quite a few of our members who through repeatedly reading articles such as Mr Griffin’s and those in the trade press, are not entirely sure or fully convinced about our role with private hire and worse, I personally am regularly being accused of marketing a service that just does not exist.
   So for the record yet again, as the person responsible for marketing I would like to state categorically that no promotional material of any description, advertising or sales brief has ever gone through my department promoting, encouraging or even intimating the supplying of any vehicle other than a recognised licensed London taxi. However having said that, there is no knowing what the future holds, and if it means our very existence is dependant on a change of policy then a change it must be.
   Unfortunately, any mention of change and up go the arms of the militants and those still stuck in a time warp whose gripe is nothing more than age-old principles - principles based in the main on arrogance, short-sightedness and ignorance. Arrogance, because they have a badge and with it a dogmatic belief that nobody should encroach upon what they believe is rightfully theirs. Short-sightedness because they cannot see beyond today and ignorance because they do absolutely nothing by way of learning the facts. I have often heard it said that the appeal in DaC remaining a Friendly Society is that the drivers have control. It’s a good point, but how much do they know about what are they controlling? In all the years I’ve been on the Board, I’ve have never had even one driver ask to visit Brunswick House to view, for example, the Sales & Marketing department, to see what we do and how we do it.
Principle is a wonderful word, but how many can afford to have them? More importantly, how many have allowed principles to cloud their logic and have it jeopardise the future of our Society? I would guess that the most, if not all, of the present group of so-called militants were not members when our Society nearly closed, or have yet to experience the damage to their pockets that principles, short-sightedness and arrogance can cause. The following two of many examples during my time on the Board, just might make them view things a little differently.

How to Lose Accounts!
My very first experience came when I’d been on the Board just a few months. Our then largest and most valued client was the BBC in Wood Lane. Work was called from the Bush rank, which was always busy because many of the journeys were lucrative and

 regular - so regular that many took them for granted. Then one day all hell broke loose and not just with the drivers but also by members of the then-Board at the news that the Beeb were putting the account out to tender. Even worse, the Beeb wanted to share the account between two circuits and put a rank outside their premises to reduce their run-in costs. Being a new Board member who for the previous 20 years had been running my own business, I couldn’t believe the attitude and the arrogance of our negotiating team at what they believed was the BBC’s audacity at making such an unacceptable proposal! Not once was there any thought put to at least salvaging some of the business, instead their logic and anger was dictated purely by principles. It was no surprise to see that arrogance result in us losing the account completely.
   The second example again concerned our then largest account. This one was based in the City and was one that I personally nurtured for several years and played a big part in retaining when continuous problems were threatening its closure. The account was very lucrative -particularly for those who worked the Finz. But as with many large taxi users, their taxi expenditure eventually becomes an issue and cuts needed to be made. On being made aware of this fact and the figure they intended to achieve for the following year, plus to avoid forcing them to put the contract out to tender, we offered a reduction in our gratuity from 12.5% to 10%. This they accepted and we retained the account, but the opposition by a section our Society was beyond belief, I was verbally abused for months for no other reason than on principle and arrogance in the belief that the driver’s gratuity was sacred and should never be touched. There was no thought at all to what I had achieved, only to the 2.5% they had lost.
   Unfortunately, the abuse didn’t just stop with me, our then little group of militants felt it just to voice their displeasure at the passengers as well. That, together with other issues, resulted in us eventually losing the account completely.
   When one considers the length of time we have been in business servicing the corporate and private sector with taxis, had we been a private concern our fleet size by now would probably be well in excess of 5 - 6000 vehicles and would have played a major role in restricting the growth of minicabs to what they are today. But instead, we have plodded along, being governed by our members, many of whom have not a clue of what’s happening at the sharp end of running our business. This is not a criticism, just a statement of fact.
   Let me give you a typical example: One year at an AGM a driver proposed that every client should pay waiting time, I argued that it would take away my ability to negotiate. My plea fell on deaf ears and the proposal was carried by a huge majority, indicating that those voting in favour could see no further than their pockets.
   They just couldn’t see the advantage this gave our competitors and the damage it was going to do to us - and it did!

Why Clients Use Private Hire
Now to the principle factor which concerns the supplying of PH. Some of you may prefer to think otherwise, but cost is not always the reason why clients want to use PH. In many instances, it is simply as a back-up supplier to their primary vendor. Clients who spend £millions on taxis want a 100% service all the time, not just when it suits our drivers. It may interest some of you to know that in Sales there is a word we have never been able to use to our clients. That word is guarantee. We cannot guarantee a service and not just we at DaC, but also our opposite numbers at the other radio circuits. This is a major weakness when doing a sales pitch to a client who is offering a taxi contract valued at several million pounds. Try explaining to an irate client, who having booked a cab two weeks in advance, is being told 20 minutes before the cab is due that we have nothing in the area! Fortunately, this doesn’t happen often, but it can happen and when it does we are in no position to be bolshie and possibly lose all the business when the client informs us that we cannot be relied on as sole vendor and that they intend using PH as a back-up. Obviously, any company - whether PH or even ourselves - when acting as back-up to the preferred supplier, push continuously to increase their share of the work, so it isn’t difficult to see how some of the PH companies have grown to the size they have and how they have secured a foothold in many large clients.
   Like it or not, PH is now legal, they are licensed by the PCO and they are here to stay. Little - or I should say nothing - was done

during my years of writing in Call
Sign of the dangers threatening our industry from minicabs. I gave
the facts as heard from countless clients, I begged, whinged, moaned and insulted to get many of our members attention and for
them to realise the need for change. I was a one-man crusade on a pointless campaign and for my efforts, I created a reputation
as the Society’s Aunt Sally, the Board member everybody loved to hate! The only beneficiary was the editor of Call Sign, whose mail box was rarely short of letters slagging off ‘Toggers’.
   Now of course, the inevitable for doing nothing is that some of those PH have now become giants - and how do you contain a giant? Well interestingly enough, whilst I had little success in getting all of our individual members to act of their own accord to contain the threat of PH, our Concierge system is the next best thing. So I’ll finish this little missive as I started ie with the mention of one such giant - namely Addison Lee. For those who haven’t read Mr Griffin’s article in the trade press, he is whinging about the much sought after one-stop-shop package that many of the large corporates have been pushing for several years and which the radio circuits are now offering clients - including private cars. Our two main competitors now have their own fleet of cars, so have no need to sub-contract out that work. A number of senior clients already have contracts with PH firms, but still need the one-stop principle, which is where our Concierge system comes into its own. Through innovative and brilliant technology developed in-house, Concierge is able link the clients PH company/s - assuming they have the technology - with our own and thereby allowing us to manage the complete transport usage. There are only so many PH firms that can be part of this package, which means there are quite a number of these PH giants – including I suspect Addison Lee - who having no licensed radio circuit to get into bed with, will be left out in the cold.
   With this being the case, we should all take advantage of it. So could I respectfully suggest, particularly to those members of ancient principles and those handy with the use of clipboards and handing out letters, to realise the enormous benefits that can be gained by being receptive to what their Society has to offer, what power their Society has by being on the inside controlling the situation with Concierge for example, and how so much more progress could be made and quicker if we ALL played a constructive part in keeping our Society not just at the top, but even more successful still.

Barry’s Lesson in Radio Circuit History…
And finally, whilst I rarely comment on specific articles in the other trade papers, I do on this occasion feel it prudent to correct certain facts of one article in Taxi by Barry Hooper, who by co-incidence just happens to be amongst those scribes I mentioned earlier concerning the views of Mr Griffin. Barry, on this occasion, uses his regular spot in Taxi to give a history lesson on the birth and fate of radio circuits. He starts by stating the difficulty for drivers getting on those circuits then and in this instance for DaC it was because of the short-sightedness of those running the circuit. Well, as that same short-sightedness still applies to this day and, being part of the present Board, I feel qualified to inform professor Barry that had he undertaken a modicum of research, he would have discovered that the reason Dial-a-Cab have always had a waiting list for drivers - something Com Cab or Radio Taxis have never had - is because our policy has always been to have a fleet size proportionate to the volume of business, thereby guaranteeing each of our drivers x number of trips each per day. At any time in our history, we could easily have had and boasted at having the largest fleet in London, but it would have been to the detriment of our members. Prof Barry then goes on to criticise the manner in which Radio Taxis and Com-Cab are now run and then considers it his business - no doubt on the basis of his remarkable foresight and expert opinion - to warn our members of the fate that lies ahead for our Society should we ever decide to change our status of trading. Barry, if you are reading this, I mean no disrespect to Taxi, but you are wasting your talents. The Economist is one of our clients and I’m sure our Chairman - who you know very well - would be happy to give you a reference!

Allen Togwell
DaC Marketing
allent@dialacab.co.uk