A Singapore Cabby and the future of the taxi industry

Lim James on the left and blogger Genti on right

Lim James, the Diary of a Singapore Cabby blog was recently let go by the largest taxi company in Indonesia. It seems out of the 50,000 customers he has picked up over the years, one of them put in an exaggerated complaint. His blog is very successful worldwide and he has a large readership. He let his fans know what happened on his blog but first lamenting how he is getting older (he is 67) and how life is an injustice we never asked for, but must face on our own terms.

"Sometime I felt a tinge of sadness and misgivings. I wonder and so do many elderly people, how did time sped away so quickly? Wasn't it just yesterday that my eye sights and legs were stronger? My hair is still reasonably black but my skin is crumpled with age spots. Yesterday, my memories were like daylight. And climbing, running, jumping and squatting were taken for granted? Today, aches, pains and comatose are my un-welcomed friends. I learn to be philosophical and accept these changes that are beyond my control.
Growing old is like a journey on a train. You want to stay on to watch life pass by but your ticket has expired and the ticket inspector expelled you. Though I cannot resist growing old or avoid been eventually expelled, I hope to be as active as possible in my remaining years. "

Comfort Cab in Singapore does have nice cabs

He then exposes the Comfort cab company for the greedy bastards that they are. They are only interested in corporate profits and only make a pretense of caring about customer service. Poor customer service gives the company an excuse to let drivers go. This way they can get another driver to take over under a higher lease agreement. This practice is now becoming common in the taxi industry and can lead to millions of dollars in additional revenue for the taxi company.

"You might think that Comfort is strict with drivers so that passengers will get better customer service. No, I wish to differ. Please allow me to explain:
Firstly, if a hirer of Sonata taxi who is paying a rental of $105 is sacked, Comfort can immediately re-lease out the same taxi to a new hirer at $115...an additional rental income of $10 per day. In a year, Comfort gets an additional income of $3,600 per taxi. If 3,000 Sonata taxis are recycled to new hirers, an additional income of $10.8million is generated annually. Comfort has about 12,000 Sonata taxis to recycle and a large pool of anxious taxi drivers waiting to join them. Recycling only 3,000 Sonata taxi is an easy target to achieve. Therefore, in reality, they egregiously sack many of their Sonata drivers for the lucrative millions and certainly not to improve better customer service for passengers. 
Secondly, Comfort has a department delegated to handle passengers complaints. It is staffed with 3 or 4 executive officers, each with a private office and assistants. Most of these officers are long service old-timers. Day in and day out, they handle routine complaints of almost similar nature, like driver is rude, taking longer route, refusing to pick passengers, rejecting cashless payment, overcharging, late pick-up, silent-treatment, reckless driving and the list of complaints goes on and on.
My point is "Routine work breeds complacency and mediocrity". These Comfort officers hardly conduct thorough investigation into a passenger's complaint. They never leave their comfortable chair and desk to seek evidences, witness or visit the site of complaint for collaboration. Usually, after receiving a telephone or written customer's complaint, they will just call up the driver for their explanation and at most, they invite the taxi driver to their office to hear the driver's side of the story. Thereafter and inveterately without further ado, they will issue the driver with a STANDARD warning letter stressing that the driver had committed a "service lapse" and failed to uphold the company's good image. They never give a second thought as to what would be the traumatic emotional and finance impact of their warning/termination letter on their drivers. Needless to say, these affected Comfort drivers either swallow the indignation in silence or leave the company to join another taxi operator.   
In the taxi market, every taxi driver knows that Comfort would only accept the passenger's side of the story and penalize their drivers unreasonably. They unconditionally side with the passengers in all complaints. In addition, any passenger who made a successful complaint gets rewarded with free taxi vouchers."

He then goes on - with glee - to underscore how Uber and other ride shares are going to kick Comfort cab in the nuts in the coming years. Because of the dynamic that exist in Singapore (no real regulations), Comfort will become a non-factor, as the tech savvy Pan-Pacific population prefers to use the apps. 

I just hope Mr. James does all right with his new limo job and lives long enough to see the bastards that own Comfort cab suffer. Oh, how the worm turns!

What you see at the Singapore airport

taxi drivers in Singapore are incentivized and bombarded with an explosion of third-party taxi booking Apps like GrabTaxi (Malaysia, Oct 2013), EasyTaxi (Brazil, Dec 2013), Uber (USA, Sept, 2014) and Hailo (Nov, 2014). A lot had been written about these Apps in the press and blogsphere. You may want to read them at these links..(Boom In Taxi Booking Apps) (Vulcanpost - GrabTaxi) ( Say-Hello-to-Hailo-Apps ) (Mr. Tan Kim Lian Apps)