Taxi's Don't Take Credit!!!

I had to blog about this and I know that there are probably many out there that have faced this situation....

You're running late... you don't have enough cash on you and you have to get to your next appointment so you hop into a cab, give your directions and sit back.. and when you get to your destination, you whip out your credit card to pay and the taxi uncle looks at you and says "Credit card don't accept!" or "Machine spoilt" You look at him shocked! And then you try to argue your way or find some way to pay him and get out.

Well.. I have encountered that once and today.. I was running late.. and had to get to the bank to check on some things before they closed... and I literally hailed 5 taxis, opened the door to ask "Can I pay by Credit Card?" only to hear the same excuses - "Machine spoilt", "Machine not installed", "Credit card.. no no no", "You can try lah". And all those taxis had the sticker that says 'We accept the following credit cards..'

The 6th taxi I got finally said yes of course! And this is what I found out!!!
1. Taxi's cannot refuse a fare just because you are paying by credit card, even if you ask before or at the point of payment. They have to accept.
2. If the machine is spoilt, they have the traditional method - transaction slips to do the payment.
3. You can take down their number and complain, because if they get complaints, they will be called in by the cab companies for a 'chat'. And if they do this more than once, they can have their licence revoked or be put on suspension.

Now.. I won't go as far as option 3 because everybody needs their rice bowl. But I will from now on, insist that if their machine is spoilt that I want the transaction slip version.. coz I know they have a stack as back up should their machine be down.

As the friendly taxi uncle told me, ALL Comfort & City cabs should have both in working order. It's just that some well most of them are 'CASH' people, preferring the cash NOW instead of LATER. But, as he pointed out, if they rejected me because of that reason, then they are stupid because, their next passenger could be a half hour drive around the block later and for a short distance. Or for that matter, had I been that mad to take down the 5 taxi numbers, all 5 of them would have wasted a day's work sitting in the cab company having a 'chat' about refusing my credit card..

And the taxi uncles complain that they don't have many jobs blah blah blah... that's coz they're so PICKY!!!! Well.. it's their loss.. literally. I was glad to pay my S$6.00 plus 63cents service & gst to the nice Comfort taxi uncle I finally had today.

The taxi's that refused me were 2 TIBS cabs, 2 City Cabs & 1 Comfort cab.