Comfort Taxi SH3265 – ★ Bad, taxi ride should be fuss free with no stress to customer

Dear Comfort,
Every weekday morning I take a cab at 8.30am from Simei St 1 to my office at Amoy Street. And would reach around 9am and the fare with the gantry charges is around 24$.

I so happened to encounter a ‘Just my bad luck’ incident on Monday 5 March 2018. Boarded a Comfort Blue SH3265 and told the driver, as I always do to all the drivers – “Take PIE then to MCE and use Maxwell (to reach my destination).” The taxi driver said, OK, OK and of course I felt like all if not most, cab drivers, he knew the whole route.

Upon passing out of the MCE tunnel, and proceeding to the Marina Bay Fire Station he asked me all sorts of questions like – “turn to cecil st? then telok ayer? I mean how would I know all these nitty gritty details? All I know is what I told him earlier – the standard that I tell all drivers (cos I learned from one) “– Take PIE then to MCE and use Maxwell (to reach my destination)”

So I signal him its towards the right direction and told him he had to pass by the Amoy Hawker Centre and then to the Temple corner. Common knowledge, right? And this was also AFTER he wanted to turn left somewhere at the junction after or before the Marina Bay Fire station – even after I told him the way forward is towards the right, to Amoy hawker and temple at corner. Lucky he managed in time not to turn left and proceeded straight on which was too late for him to filter to the most right lane and was at the middle lane. And he said why didn’t I tell him go most right lane. I already said Amoy Hawker and the temple direction. – isn’t that common sense and that he had to turn right and some more I did tell him it was right earlier – why did he have to want to turn left at the MB fire station and lost all momentum. And I am no driver myself, him going to the most right lane is not even my responsibility. He had been given enough direction from the start and during the journey.

It was already too late for him to use to make the right turning to Amoy hawker centre, so we had to go all the way to a building with a carpark – I believe it could be the MND building, make a U turn at the carpark and went back to the corner where he then could turn left to amoy hawker and pass the Tua Pay Kong Temple. I told him then he had to trim the fare as my fare is always like around $24.50. Once we finally reach my office, the fare was $28 and he refused to trim the fare to around what I always paid.

For verification you can also check the fare from what system you have or check with any driver and they can tell you its about that price unless of course extreme heavy jam which did not happen on that day.

This sort of driver should not be allowed on our roads as he is not trained and if he doesn’t know the route he should tell me from beginning he is not sure. I would have taken another cab. I have given him more than enough info and he must know that most commuters like myslf are not drivers and would not know driving protocols.

I want to know what Comfort is going to do about the situation. He has to return me $3.50. Not being calculative or anything but he was rude and adamant that it was my fault. I have never encountered any problem with other drivers except him.

Thank you for your time.
Dilani