Re:Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still opera...
by Symbiote on Monday November 25, 2019 @10:37AM
(#21628999)
I mostly lived in London just before Uber.
I don't know if they still do, but many nightclubs would have some arrangement where there was someone from a minicab company in the lobby or just outside. You'd say "W3", he'd say "That'll be £20, in 10 minutes time" and you could wait in the warm until the car arrived. (Of course, if you knew a number for a different company, you could phone them yourself.)
The drivers were pretty clueless -- even a fairly large inner-London station name like "Ealing Broadway" would frequently be misunderstood, and they'd want to slowly type a postcode into a satnav -- but otherwise they were OK.
I don't know if they still do, but many nightclubs would have some arrangement where there was someone from a minicab company in the lobby or just outside. You'd say "W3", he'd say "That'll be £20, in 10 minutes time" and you could wait in the warm until the car arrived. (Of course, if you knew a number for a different company, you could phone them yourself.)
The drivers were pretty clueless -- even a fairly large inner-London station name like "Ealing Broadway" would frequently be misunderstood, and they'd want to slowly type a postcode into a satnav -- but otherwise they were OK.