With the Christmas party season in full swing, questions are being raised about a number of recent incidents involving taxi drivers refusing to accept vouchers.
Last weekend, a Surrey woman had to look for another ride home after her work Christmas party in Burnaby because a Bonny’s Taxi driver refused to accept a voucher provided by her employer.
Abigail Fougere says the voucher accidentally ripped while she took it out of her purse. She says the driver became extremely hostile and told her to be more careful, and then began yelling after hearing she needed a ride to Surrey. In the end, he refused to honour her voucher and kicked her out of the cab.
Bonny’s Taxi has now told Global News the driver involved in the incident has been suspended.
In a different case last week, a Kelowna mother and her six-year-old child with cerebral palsy were kicked out of a Black Top taxi in Vancouver because the driver refused to accept a taxi voucher given to her by B.C. Children’s Hospital. Michelle Gibbons and her son Brody have now received an apology and the driver in question was suspended indefinitely.
Carolyn Bauer with the Vancouver Taxi Association says they had an emergency meeting after the incident and it was decided all Vancouver taxi companies would now accept each other’s vouchers.
“We recognized that there was an issue and we rectified it immediately,” says Bauer.
Bauer says the reluctance of some drivers to accept vouchers comes down to education.
A voucher is as good as cash. It is just the matter of educating the drivers it’s good, says Bauer. Some of the drivers don’t quite understand what a voucher is.
She says if a driver is not informed about what a voucher looks like in advance, they can often get confused.
“For us, all the vouchers that we have that are attached to Christmas parties, we give copies of those to dispatch, so if any drivers have questions about the vouchers being used, it is there right in front of our dispatcher.”
Bauer says if drivers are not informed about conditions attached to vouchers and the dispatcher is not made aware of all the vouchers, what they look like and where the parties are happening, there could be a problem.
“There are certainly things you have to discipline your drivers for, but if you have not given a proper education to your drivers to begin with, then it is pretty hard to discipline them,” she adds. “It is like sending kids to school: you can’t put them in the corner if you have not taught them properly.”
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