WATCH: BC Children’s Hospital apologizes to Okanagan woman for rude taxi driver experience

KELOWNA – A Kelowna woman was driven to tears when a hostile Vancouver taxi driver refused to take her and her sick child to the airport for a flight home.

Michelle Gibbons was recently at BC Children’s Hospital where her six-year-old son received treatment for seizures.

The hospital gave her a taxi fare voucher, but when she gave it to a Black Top driver, he refused it because someone had hand-written Yellow Cabs on the slip.

Michelle and her son were taken back to the hospital where she says they were rudely dropped at the curb.

“He said ‘I need a paying customer. I want you to get your son out of my car.’ He opened the door and roughly threw my bags on the road, not even on the sidewalk. (My son) was quite sick and he said to me ‘I won’t help you.’ I asked and he said ‘No, I won’t help you.'”

A sympathetic nurse summoned a different Black Top cab. That driver accepted the voucher and Gibbons was taken to the airport. She later complained to the taxi company about the first cabbie.

But the Black Top manager says his driver was right to refuse the voucher because of the Yellow Cabs notation.

“He did a good job. He took her back, didn’t drop her where he was, took her back to the hospital and said ‘Please take a Yellow Cab.'”

Gibbons and her son will almost certainly make future trips to BC Children’s Hospital. Black Top voucher or not, she says she’ll never use the company again.

“I tried to rectify the problem and talk to them but they didn’t bother with me at all. It should be dealt with in a way that it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

The hospital’s vice-president says the first Black Top driver should have accepted the voucher. The hospital is looking into the situation and on Thursday apologized to Gibbons.