Have you ever felt pressured to pay cash for a cab? Taxi association calls it unacceptable

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – We often pay with plastic. So, when you take a taxi, there’s a good chance you want to use your credit or a debit card. But do you ever feel forced to pay cash instead?

We put the question out on social media, and it seems lots of people have. Among the responses were: “All the time,” and “That only happens EVERY single time.”

Evan called us with his story and says he’s been told three or four times in the last couple of years the machine isn’t working. He says when that happens, he asks the driver to call dispatch and run his card manually.

“And I mean of the like four times it’s happened, two of them just said ‘Okay, I’ll just check the machine.’ It started working again,'” he tells us.

“I’d much rather them be upfront and ask me ahead of time before I get into the cab, ‘Can you pay in cash?’ If you don’t take a credit card, then I’ll find someone else,” adds Evan.

Carolyn Bauer with the Vancouver Taxi Association says she has gotten complaints.

She advises to always take note of the taxi number before you get in, so if you suspect the payment machine really does work and you’re told it doesn’t, it can be looked into.

“If someone has that complaint, they need to call. They can call me directly or they can call the taxi refusal line and leave a message. We call everyone back and we’ll deal with that.”

“If the machine is down, we know right away. All our machines are hooked up to a computer, so we know right away if the machine is actually down or not,” she notes.

Bauer says a driver has to accept all major credit cards, debit cards, and cash. She adds a lot of people use vouchers as well.

She says there is disciplinary action for a driver who claims a machine is down when it isn’t. “If it’s a first time offence, it can go where the driver will be off the road for four hours to you know, almost termination for this. It’s not acceptable.”

“I just want the people to remember to note the vehicle that they’re riding in — the taxi number that they’re riding with — and [the] location that they maybe got dropped off at. Some of the complaints that I have received have been maybe on a Friday night or a Saturday night, but they’ve been picked up in the Downtown Granville district where the GPS will show 249 taxis all buzzing around there. It’s very hard to see which taxi picked that person up.”

She notes there is not backup system for when the machines go down.

“The problem that we do have is we’re all on the pin/chip system right now, and we need that pin/chip for protection for the customer, as well as the company, [and the] driver. There’s so much fraud in the credit card world,” says Bauer.

“But certainly, if you swipe a credit card like we did in the old days — if you just took it and swiped this card in the old days — there’s no guarantee that you’re going to get paid. The credit card company will say this card has been swiped. So, if the customer phones in and says “I never took this taxi” even though they may have, the credit card company will not pay for it; they will not allow that transaction to go through. So, that’s why we tell these fellows that they must use the pin/chip cards.”

Bauer adds she knows of one driver who was disciplined earlier this year. She tells us there is no backup system if the payment system goes down.