4 February 2007

More taxis for Canberra

| johnboy
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No sign of it online but we hear on the wireless that a Queanbeyan outfit has won the right to offer a competing taxi service in Canberra!

Cue riotous rejoicing throughout the Territory! Canberra Cabs you can take your crappy service and stick it where the lighting is minimal.

Thank god for John Hargreaves’ great need to take taxis himself.

UPDATE: The ABC now has a story online. Salient details include:

– To be called CabXpress (I think in my phone I shall just call it “Taxi”)
– Human operators, different booking system to the chiselers at Canberra Cabs
– 60 cars
– On the road in about eight weeks (end of March?)

If anyone of our dear readers knows anyone involved with this mob could they send us some contact details please or pass this on? We’d love to talk to them. ( johnboy@the-riotact.com )

Another Update They have a website shame about the typos but who are we to judge?

By using our online system, you will have so much more control over your bookings that you have never seen before.

(either that or the cabbies are writing the copy for the site)

ANOTHER UPDATE: The ABC reports that Canberra Cabs Mark Bramston says he isn’t worried by losing his monopoly. He also says we’ll choose his stupid computer over talking to a human so take it with a grain of salt.

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Name of the bloke to talk to is Les Wassell, don’t quote the spelling, ex CC driver as will be most of the drivers. Best of luck to them.

VYBerlinaV8_now with_added_grunt2:57 pm 03 Feb 07

About time. The issue here could come down to $$ of respective fares. But one thing is for sure – businesses WILL NOT CARE!

Woohoo!

Sounds like my kinda company!

Yes but Aerial/Canberra Cabs idea of profit could be soaking their feet in buckets of champagne while snorting coke off the buttocks of virgins.

One of the many benefits of competition is if one side goes too far with maximising profits they’ll lose business.

Aerial are constantly crying that a cab company cannot be profitable unless it employs technological expense savings, such as the computerised booking system.

I really hope the new operator can prove them wrong.

Not being a monopolist trying to screw the public for every possible cent is probably an excellent start.

They have a website, but it’s just a bit of fluff.

No actual information, other than an address and phone number.

I’m really interested to know how they can make a human-driven operation work, where Aerial have failed.

The new network is called Cabxpress.

Will QBN taxi drivers know their way around Canberra? I mean, it’s a loooong way away…

ABC news said QBN cabs will use a human phone operator.
Canberra Cabs stated tht when they did this people had to wait 18 minutes to get thru and it is unviable. But admitted to losing up to 100 bookings at once on the compute system.
We’ll see.

was on win telly news tonight.

looks like they are going to corner the wheelchair access market.

starting with 20 cabs.

no mention of humans answering phones – which would definitely be a factor in my choice of tumbril.

I believe someone else stated QBN uses actual people. One can certainly hope that if that is the case that they keep it up.

Don’t the Queanbeyan taxis use the same booking system. Hardly seems like good news.

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