WATCH ABOVE: Frustration from a city senior has compelled her to speak out about how she was treated by two cab drivers. Vinesh Pratap explains.
EDMONTON — Ann McDougall has lived in Mill Woods for years. Recently, she’s had to use taxis several times a week, especially to get to and from the hospital after having glaucoma surgery.
“I rely on cabs because I don’t drive.”
McDougall, who will turn 71 in August, was leaving the Royal Alexandra Hospital last week after some medical work on her left eye when she asked a taxi driver parked out front if he was waiting for someone or if he could drive her home. She says he told her he was waiting for her.
“I got in his cab. He drove a ways from the hospital. He was on the cell phone the whole time… Then he turned to me and he said ‘I’m going to have to drop you off and you’re going to have to get another cab. You’ll be safe because another cab, same company, will be outside the hotel.'”
McDougall says she was dropped off in an area she wasn’t familiar with.
“I got out of his cab because he told me he had to go on an airport run.”
She says she approached another Capital Taxi driver and asked if she could be taken to Mill Woods. McDougall says the driver said yes but, as she was getting into the taxi, she says she was dismissed for another person going to the airport.
“I was just about to get into his cab when a man came out with suitcases and he said to my cab driver, ‘can you call me a cab?’ and the cab driver said ‘well where are you going?’ and he said ‘to the airport.’ So he said to me ‘well, this is my ride.’ So I was ditched again by the same company.”
“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know where I was.”
Finally, she says a third driver from the same company took her as a fare and was shocked to hear her story.
“That should have never happened to you,” she remembers him telling her. He “was very, very, very nice,” says McDougall. “He was very good and he couldn’t believe what happened.”
McDougall explained how the third driver wrote down the cab number of the second driver and gave it to her. When she got home, her daughter called the taxi company to complain.
“My whole family was upset. They were shocked.”
McDougall says the company told her daughter it would look into the driver.
No one from Capital Taxi was available for an interview Tuesday, but the operations manager tells Global News a different version of events.
Gord Beatty says the first driver indicated to McDougall when she first approached him that he had a booking and that he took her to Sutton Place Hotel downtown without charge, coordinating to have another cab pick her up.
Beatty indicated the first driver seemed extremely forthright in his explanation.
He says Capital Taxi still has to speak to the other two drivers.
McDougall just wants to prevent something similar from happening to anyone else.
“What if someone is coming out of the hospital and they were suffering from dementia or something? They might disappear forever.”
“This shouldn’t happen.”
To report a concern about an Edmonton taxi driver to the city – or to praise a driver – click here.
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