Know your ride home rights this Christmas season and you’ll be ’appy

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Key points

• Consumer and transport advocates, are warning Victorians to be on high alert for a rise in dodgy practices, including price gouging, drivers attempting to negotiate upfront fares or refusing short trips, during the festive season.
• Taxis must put their meters for rides hailed on the street or ranks and charge the amount recorded on it at the end of the trip.
• Uber drivers are not permitted to negotiate elevated fares or use other means of payment outside the app.

Uber drivers are using PayID to bypass their own platform and charge riders hefty cash prices for fares, as Victorians are being warned to watch out for price gouging and touting this festive season.

Consumer and transport advocates are warning Victorians to be on high alert for a rise in dodgy practices, as rogue drivers attempt to negotiate fares with PayID and cash, while others refuse short trips.

Former taxi driver and Transport Matters MP Rod Barton says Uber has always been a taxi company.Credit: Jason South

Rod Barton – a taxi operator who formed the Transport Matters Party – said he had been flooded with complaints about a rise in touting in recent weeks.

The illegal practice occurs when a driver approaches an individual and offers them a ride for an inflated amount of cash.

“We have been getting a steady stream of complaints from people who are ending up in arguments with drivers at one or two o’clock in the morning when they are trying to get home,” Barton said.

The taxi driver of more than 30 years said he also received complaints about a trend in which Uber drivers had their own contactless payment machines in cars or were using PayID through banking apps to negotiate trips outside the Uber app, often for an elevated fee.

“There are all sorts of safety issues around that,” Barton said.

An Uber spokeswoman said the app was the only way to request and pay for a ride with Uber. She said fraudulent activity, such as driver-partners accepting cash in exchange for a trip, was a clear breach of Uber’s community guidelines.

“This kind of behaviour can cause driver-partners to permanently lose access to the app,” she said. “We encourage riders to report behaviour such as this through the app, so we can take action right away.”

RMIT senior marketing lecturer Dr Torgier Aleti said Australia was still in the “disruption phase” of ride-sharing services overtaking the taxi industry.

“We have ride-sharing apps, which offer consumers a level of convenience that the old taxi industry couldn’t deliver to the same extent,” he said.

“But on the other hand it’s not regulated, it’s algorithmically driven, so the higher the demand, the higher the price, and it gets particularly dangerous around Christmas.”

Aleti said when alcohol was consumed people were at risk of booking a ride home without checking the price. He said a simple hack was downloading all the ride-share apps to your phone and comparing prices before booking a trip.

“Look at all the apps, Uber, taxi, DiDi, and before you book your ride ask ‘is this the cheapest and fairest price?’” he said.

In Victoria, the industry is regulated by watchdog Safe Transport Victoria, which also handles and investigates complaints about issues such as touting, while the Essential Services Commission oversees fares.

In Victoria, pre-booked taxis can set their own fares and legally must run their meters when picking up passengers on the street, while Uber has a system, known as surge pricing, in which costs rise during periods of high demand.

Tips on using rideshare services over Christmas

• Request your ride on an app if you can and wait in a safe place and in a busy well-lit area or indoors until you receive the notification that the driver has arrived.
• Confirm you are getting in the right car by matching the number plate, car make and model, and the driver photo with what’s provided in the app before getting in the car.
• Tell a friend or family where you are going. Use the app to share your trip status and tracking.
• Share rides with friends when possible.
• Download several rideshare apps to compare prices during periods of high demand.
• If you are concerned about touting or price gouging contact the company of the rideshare service directly and then make a complaint via Safe Transport Victoria.

In September, Victorian taxi drivers were forced to turn on their meters for rides hailed on the street or at taxi ranks under regulation changes aimed at stopping fare gouging, or face fines of more than $10,000 for touting.

It came after taxi drivers were allowed to negotiate the cost of a ride if approached without a booking after the industry was deregulated in 2018 to accommodate ride-share services such as Uber.

However, Barton said despite changes to the law, some taxi drivers continued to turn off their meters and haggle for fares.

Most often drivers who were touting were from independent, unregulated taxis, and not affiliated with major taxi companies, Barton said.

Barton said he had spoken to one young woman who had wanted to get from Flinders Lane with friends to her home in Fitzroy, a few kilometres away, and she was quoted $90 for the fare after hailing a taxi.

“That trip should have cost her $20,” he said, adding the safest way to book a taxi was through an app for a reputable company such as 13cabs. “The problem is the industry now has become the wild west, and we have received many reports from women who say they feel unsafe.”

This week, The Guardian reported hundreds of taxi drivers in New South Wales had been disciplined for refusing to use their meters or overcharging.

Meanwhile, in Melbourne, there were more there were 381 incidents, between January and August this year, in which taxi drivers got assaulted by passengers.

“I suspect a lot of that’s come about because drivers are trying to negotiate fares off the meter,” Barton said.

Barton, who is calling for greater regulation and another inquiry into the commercial passenger vehicle sector, said many of the issues with the industry can be traced back to poor pay and working conditions for drivers.

“Often the drivers are doing it because they’re struggling, and it is a very, very difficult industry to be in,” he said. “It’s complex, it’s ugly, but it is all fixable if efforts are made to address the issues.”

A spokesman for Australia’s largest taxi service provider, 13cabs, urged Victorians to plan ahead and use the company’s app to book and pay for their taxi.

“If you are hailing a taxi from the street, the driver is obliged to use the taxi meter and charge the amount recorded on it at the end of the trip,” he said.

He urged anyone who required specialised transport on Christmas Day, including wheelchair accessible vehicles, to book ahead.

An Uber spokeswoman also urged Victorians to plan their transport ahead of time, particularly on New Year’s Eve, and consider scheduling a ride in advance using Uber Reserve, which allows riders to book a trip up to 30 minutes before, with a locked-in, upfront price.

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