Sat, May 26 2012

Taxi tales

Thu, May 06 2010 09:59 CET byThe Sofia Echo forum 1838 Views 1 Comment
The Sofia Echo story on April 30 about penalties for taxi companies that deceive people by mimicking other firms sparked several reactions among our readers.

Your article made me very happy! Finally something is being done to try to stop those dishonest taxi companies in Sofia. On April 16, I came by bus from Kyustendil to Ovcha Kupel bus station. I had planned to take tram number 5 to the centre of the city but because it was raining, I decided to take a taxi. I was aware of these "high fare" taxis as on one of my previous visits to Sofia I had to pay an exorbitant fare on my way to the airport. However, this time I was not careful enough to look at the price list on the window. It showed 4.90 leva and I thought it was the starting fee. During the trip along Tsar Boris Boulevard the driver deliberately kept his hand in front of the meter so that I could not see the fare. At one point I noticed that the fare was already almost 30 leva. As I saw Hotel Rodina I asked the driver to stop there as I did not want to continue any more with him. For this short trip I had to pay 31.79 leva. This was about EIGHT TIMES more than the fare of the real OK company. I continued my trip with the friendly and honest OK taxi company.

Pentti, Finland


These cabs are not fake or illegal, they state their prices, and hope the customer is not going to check them. And that’s the problem - if they are illegal the customer could call the police, but till now the police will have the customer pay for the ride. I can’t understand why is it taking so long to fix that and just set a maximum price a km!

Vesselina Deneva


It was about time to take some measure against the proliferation of fake OK taxis! As I see it, however, a fine of 50 000 leva is too mild and 150 000 leva was a more appropriate amount. Anyhow, regardless of the size of the fine, this is not a solution to the problem as these crooks make enough money with their unfair charges so that they will pay and continue to cheat customers. The right action to take would be not to allow them to continue using a cloned logo and to order them to change their logo and trading style because they are just clones of OK Supertrans

Cat Ballou

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Comments

Anonymous ivaylo chatov Mon, May 10 2010 09:53 CET
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one can only be pleased that the state is taking some measures to combat this form of piracy.


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