Wednesday, December 12, 2007

i am confused but damn the increased taxi fares

"As part of responding to customer feedback that taxis are hard to come by and the surcharges are confusing, ComfortDelgro taxi company added MORE surcharges effective Monday, 17 December 2007.

For fun and laughter, here is a summary of the review:

City Area Surcharge: up from $1 to $3, effective 5pm and midnight from Mondays to Saturdays.

Late Night Surcharge: up from the staggered 10% to 50% current one, to the flat 50% extra for rides between 12 midnight to 5.59am daily.

The fun part is, this 50% more at midnight deal was the original plan before going staggered. Neither solved the problem of disappearing cabs at 11pm to 11.59pm.

And if you think the silly $3 City Area surcharge is going to solve things, good luck to you. And also, what about the disappearing cabs OUTSIDE the CBD?

Peak Period Surcharge: up from the $2 flat fee now in effect between 7am and 9.30am on weekdays and 5pm to 8pm from Mondays to Saturdays, to 35% of the metered fare.

And the company says, a detailed breakdown of this extra "premium fare" will be shown on each receipt "to ensure transparency".

Why is it called a premium fare? Does the cab become a first-class cabin at those surcharge hours? Does the driver speak nicer to you? If anything, the surcharges are not premium fares, but just punishment fares.

Flag down fare: up by 30 cents from $2.50 to $2.80 for the first kilometre.

Distance fare: up from 10-cent jumps to 20-cent jumps.

Waiting time: up from 10 cents per 25 seconds to 20 cents per 45 seconds.

Only the prime time booking fee is going down from $4 to $3.50.

So if you call for a cab from the city, at 8pm on a Friday night, you are going to pay $10.30 even before the cab moves off ($3 City Area surcharge, $2.80 flag down, $3.50 call charge, $1 or 35% of metered fare for Peak Period surcharge).

If you happen to be in the city on a weekday, only 8.5 hours of your day is surcharge-less.

Between 5pm to the next morning from Monday to Saturday, you only have a four hour window, 8.01pm to 11.59pm, where you don't get charged an extra % of your metered fare."

-Quoted from mrbrown

Labels:

Posted by juni @ 19:06

Listening

I don't want you to think of me as an eavesdropper so I'll just say that I'm listening to music instead of my neighbour's maid flirting with my other neighbour's driver.

Reading

I like it when people think of me as an intellectual so I will list a bunch of intellectual-sounding books here, even those I don't plan to read.

Viewing

Since I can't list my porn collection here, I'll just leave it this way until I can force myself to watch non-pornographic stuff, which may or may not happen.

Clicks


Links