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When I became disabled and in a wheelchair, I had no idea it would be so difficult to travel by taxi. I consulted a leaflet written by the [Oxford City] council which had a list of 4 taxi firms that proclaimed to take wheelchairs. Wrong - none of them did. So I phoned Dialability and they put me on to taxi firm M.
M have black cabs and a small steep ramp for my powerchair to go up, which always needs the taxi driver to steady the chair at the back. They were reasonably reliable, but EXPENSIVE for wheelchair users. The normal price to town centre is £7 to £8, taxi firm M charge me DOUBLE at £15.
I became a regular customer so I asked for an account to be opened, but they always said ‘no’ even though they offered accounts to others. Then after some sessions of fingers that didnt work trying to get my purse out; I wrote the firm a letter again asking for an account but got no reply.
Then when the University organised for me to go to a nearby gym for a gym trial, I recommended taxi firm M to the organiser. She was allowed an account immediately and when I ordered the taxi, I simply quoted a number.
Oh, but how tiresome the taxi firm became when I ordered a taxi for myself during the gym trial weeks! They repeatedly said ‘but this one is not on account, only the gym one’. We did not want to hear this every time we ordered a taxi.
So, I’d been with taxi firm M for about a year, when one evening I was getting in a taxi in town and I turned to my friend, Jane, and said ‘Can you get an account for me?’. She spoke sweetly to the driver who said ‘Has SHE (meaning me) got someone at home?’. So he drove me home, came in my home and asked for a £100 cheque to set up the account and as an advance payment, dealing with my teenage son and not me. I paid the money as I was desperate to get an account. He certainly gave me the impression that he was not dealing with me because he had concluded that I couldn’t understand him.
Recently, I was in the taxi with a new carer and he said to her (not me) ‘Is HER (meaning me) son at home?’. He wasn’t but I told the carer to say he was. So he followed us inside and sat with his back to me and asked the carer for another pound;100 as the first one had been spent. He relayed a list of trips I’d made BUT FAILED TO PRESENT AN INVOICE and the carer had no idea of the trips. As for me? He had his back to me and I was referred to as ‘SHE’ at all times. So ‘SHE’ wrote another cheque.
In the snow I was due up at the hospital; so my son booked the taxi the evening before. My carer shovelled snow to make a path for the wheelchair. The taxi didn’t arrive so carer phoned and eventually it came. The driver said they had no record of the booking. The chair was slipping in the ice so he got behind it muttering ‘I shouldn’t be doing this’. No apology for the no-show and we were freezing but had to ask for the heating to go on.
Let’s hope something can be done for disabled persons trying to travel by taxi.