This morning, I took a taxi to a meeting on the outskirts of Prague. Needless to say, I booked an Uber, and soon after pressing the button to select it a very smart white Octavia turned up outside our building. On opening the door and seeing the driver, however, I had slight misgivings; arms covered in tattoos, one missing front tooth and one gold one, a slightly mad look in his eye and a shaved head did not exactly invoke trust… OK, once upon a time I might have found this kind of look vaguely endearing, but not anymore. Added to that, he didn’t seem to speak any language that I could understand, or anything at all really, other than asking me if I was ‘Yo’, to which I responded ‘Yo’. I supposed that at 09.00 am in the morning it was relatively safe, although I am not really sure why the time of day would make any real difference if he really was a killer, but actually I ended up giving him five stars and a big tip – he got me to the meeting very quickly and drove very carefully.
It made me ponder, as one does, the evolution of the taxi world in Prague generally. My first experience of Prague taxis was when I landed on my initial trip out to Prague in December 1990. My flight had been delayed for hours and was the last to arrive that night, plus the airline had lost my luggage, so by the time I got out of the airport there were no taxis or anything else in sight… luckily a loan old Skoda pitched up just as I was wondering exactly what I was going to do since it was about minus 20 degrees and everywhere was covered in snow and ice. But we made our way into town, where he deposited me safely (albeit very slowly) outside my hotel, and I was eternally grateful.
Had I known the reputation of Prague taxis at that time, I would probably never have opened the door (although, on second thoughts, I guess I would, since there weren’t any other options!). They were notorious for a number of things, from rigging their metres in order to fleece the soon-to-be millions of tourists arriving into the city – the law required that all taxis had a meter, but the drivers would fix them so that they ran twice or more times faster than they should – to refusing to let passengers out without a huge tip, or even, in some cases, threatening them with a gun at the first sign of trouble.
My then boss took it on himself to single-handedly try to get the taxi drivers to behave. He would always sit in the front if we took a taxi anywhere, and then he would point at the meter and insist that it was running too fast, growling at the driver in a mixture of English, German and something vaguely Czech to turn it off. If the driver ignored him, he would instruct whoever was travelling with him to jump out at the next traffic light, and then we would all run away as fast as possible in case we got shot at.
He also liked to report taxis that had overcharged any of us to the relevant office in the Ministry, since we had all the necessary connections. Once an elderly driver turned up at our offices and pleaded with me to call the Ministry and tell them that we had forgiven him, since he would lose his job if we didn’t. He proffered various gifts and flowers and even tried bursting into tears. And, of course, I did as he asked; I’m always a sucker for a box of chocolates. I remember another occasion, though, when we called the Ministry to report a specific driver (they all had a taxi licence number on the back of the car so they were easy to track down), and the women who answered, who was used to us, said ‘oh no, don’t report this one. It’s just not worth it.’. Clearly he was one of the more dangerous ones….
Eventually, though, the city started to try and clean up the taxi business as its reputation was being severely damaged by endless stories in the international media about the Prague taxis; of tourists being enormously ripped off on the way in from the airport or train station, of them being beaten up and dumped unceremoniously somewhere other than their planned destination, and all sorts of other horror stories; there was even a murder, but that was of the taxi driver himself who was found in an abandoned car not far from where I lived (but it wasn't me). Posters and adverts went out advising people only to take official airport taxis (who still ripped people off if they thought they were foreigners, and with Czech being such a difficult language it wasn’t difficult to tell!), not to take any taxis at all from the train station, never to flag one down in the street and never to argue if they looked like they could be a bad one. And then, one day, along came a company called AAA taxis and they changed everything.
Started, I believe, by two Czech guys, various of us early-days expats (i.e. those that had any money, not me unfortunately) tried to or did invest into AAA as it was clear that they were going to change our lives and become enormously successful. Bright yellow taxis with a black AAA logo blazoned across them, they were only available if we called them on the telephone – which, in itself, had its challenges at that time, partly due to the shortage of telephones, and partly, at least at the beginning, the need to speak Czech (English speaking receptionists following quickly after), but these were challenges worth having. Bang on time, a polite, smart driver would turn up to pick us up from wherever we were and deposit us safely and relatively cheaply at our destination, and bit by bit the bad guys were run out of town, or they transformed themselves into good guys, and AAA became one of the most successful ‘start-ups of its time. With a few other similar companies soon following suit.
But then, with the onset of the internet and then online apps, along came Uber and Bolt, and one or two others. And pretty much overnight, poor old AAA was mostly forgotten, and Uber and Bolt took over the taxi world, as well as various other things, by offering a way to order and travel in a taxi without even speaking, at the same time charging much less than AAA, who, with all of its overheads, couldn’t really match them.
But this morning, as I said, I did wonder just how safe and reliable these Uber and other drivers are; one Czech Uber driver told me recently that he believes that all of the Ukrainian and some of the other Uber drivers are drunk in charge of their vehicles (racist? Probably. True, who knows?). And I have to say that in Marbella, where Uber and Bolt have been established for a lot longer than in Prague, they are gradually losing their popularity, mainly due to too many drivers cancelling trips when something better is offered to them, leaving their potential passenger in the lurch. That has happened to us on so many occasions (once causing us to nearly miss a flight) that we have gone back to using the reliable hotel taxis down the road. Sometimes you can’t help feeling that all of this new technology and the service it brings, is not always for the best….
You can read more of my Prague anecdotes in my book – Charge of the Brit Brigade (go to www.jwapress.com to find out more).
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