> Except for all of the disabled ones, the wheelchair users, the ones who only wish to travel a very short distance and are unable to do so alone (the pregnant, mothers with pushchairs, the extremely inebriated, elderly, injured, etc).
I live in an Eastern-European capital city where cab-fares are more or less completely deregulated. If what you describe were to happen after you'd just ordered a taxi (either from the street, through a phone-call or through a smart-phone app), then all you have to do is for you to call back the taxi-driver's parent company and he will get at least a 2-hour suspension, meaning that he won't be able to pick any phone or tablet orders. If a second, similar complaint arrives about the same driver in a short period of time then his contract is terminated and he's free to go and work for another company.
And yes, it does happen from time to time for me to try a pick a taxi on the street corner and receive an evasive answer, and I'm usually too lazy to call and complain, but the beauty of a free-market is that in all such cases I was able to find a taxi-driver willing to take my money from the same street corner.
I live in an Eastern-European capital city where cab-fares are more or less completely deregulated. If what you describe were to happen after you'd just ordered a taxi (either from the street, through a phone-call or through a smart-phone app), then all you have to do is for you to call back the taxi-driver's parent company and he will get at least a 2-hour suspension, meaning that he won't be able to pick any phone or tablet orders. If a second, similar complaint arrives about the same driver in a short period of time then his contract is terminated and he's free to go and work for another company.
And yes, it does happen from time to time for me to try a pick a taxi on the street corner and receive an evasive answer, and I'm usually too lazy to call and complain, but the beauty of a free-market is that in all such cases I was able to find a taxi-driver willing to take my money from the same street corner.