11 September 2006

Canberra Cabs offers helpline for phone service

| johnboy
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The ABC has the happy news that Canberra Cabs have set up a helpline for those of us struggling to get anything useful out of their automated phone booking line.

The monopolist taxi company also claims that they have been meeting their targets for the last two months, which could just be that people have figured out they can get the taxi driver to take them anywhere as long as they can hammer their departure point into the system.

Listening to ABC radio it seems the company is claiming the problem is an inconsiderate public using mobile phones to call taxis from noisy places. How dare we!

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Yep like the shonky radio cabs in London. A lot of people have bad words to say about those operators in London. But I tell they have helped me out a few times. Its great coming out of a dodgy night club at 3am and paying some of these guys a fare in advance to go home. I havnt had any trouble with them.

I actually enjoyed my little bus ride.

Im back in Canberra for a little while in October missing out on the bike ride pub crawl again. Oh well. If I get a cab Ill use a couple of mate’s in the Industry and pay them cash off the system.

This would be the perfect time for action busses to pick up a few mini-busses and re-start that after hours system they had where you ring a bus.
pity they’ve chosen to downsize right now too.

Well Thumper, it’s obvious that you will have to change your drinking habits to suit Canberra Cabs. 🙂

thumper that is genius.

The upside of all this was I actually caught a bus for the first time in ages. I was at Canberra Uni and couldn’t for the life of me get a cab. The machine kept asking me if I was in an embassy in Yarralumla. So I strolled up the road and caught on a bus.

It’s bog standard for a monopoly.

This is an interesting new slant on marketing that they are pursuing. If the product doesn’t suit the customer – try to make the customer change!

Absent Diane9:03 am 12 Sep 06

will the help line be automated?

anyway never fear I have a plan….. Lets call a boycott canberra cabs night….. and we get as many people as we can involved and then we all drive home off our chops in protest…. that will disrupt the system… almost ghandi-ish in its perfection…

la mente torbida8:38 am 12 Sep 06

A help line that you can call? What are the odds that this will be outsourced to an overseas call centre? 🙂

I thought the comment about customers being inconsiderate enough to use mobile phones to book taxis was a gem. What sort of IVR software developer doesn’t anticipate that a large number of customers will want to use their mobiles? What does Canberra Cabs expect us to do – carry around a portable cone of silence for when we’re out and need to book a taxi.

When I was back in Canberra first half of August I gave up after 3 or 4 attempts and they lost probably 20 plus cab rides out of me. Why this bloody government insists on a bloody monopoly is beyond me.

i email them ahead of time since the idiot sytstem was introduced. no probs so far.

guess i’ll be screwed when im pissed up after a night out at mooseheads with lurkergal.

“yer honor, i had to drive home pissed as i was unable to book a taxi..”

I tried really hard to get it to recognise Manuka. It just didn’t happen.

Thank you to whoever said “Press 9” in the previous thread. I would have gone nuts (or called the disabled taxi service line) without that.

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