Limo Taxi's blog

The Human Flower Paradox

limotaxis — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:43:12 UT

I guess from your accent that you are an American
I live in the states but I am not an American.
Where are you from if I may ask?
I am from Fleta.
Never heard of this place, which country?
It is a planet, about 3 light years from Earth.
You mean you are an Alien?
Yes, I am.
You look very human to me.
As you understand “human”, I am. I have the same genetic code humans have.
I see. So… what brings you here?
I am studying the human race on Earth.
Ok… Is this your first time on Earth?
For me it is the first time, yes.
How do you like it here, then?
This time, it is better not so bad, interesting and boring.
What you mean this time? Have you been here before?
Fletans have been here before. It was horrible.
What was horrible?
The humans cut them from their roots,
put them in a vase with water and praised them,
worshipped their beauty while dying and gave them food, so they died slower.
Now I understand why my mother puts every day an aspirin into the water of the flowers.

Danny

Copyright http://www.limotaxi.net/ 2008

The Dream Client

limotaxis — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:00:45 UT

Let me tell you about our Dream Client, lets call him Danny, since I shall not reveal his true name.

I met Danny just like any taxi company.
“Hallo, is this Limo Taxi?”
Yes Sir. How can I help you?
I need to go from Brussels to Dinant tomorrow, can you pick me up at 11:00 AM.

Well this guy shows up dressed like any other, with jeans, a classic jean jacket, long hair with a tennis pet on his head and Spanish Sanchos boots. Not shaved for few days but well cared. One could not tell that he was rich. So returning from Dinant he asked how much the fair was. I told him 160EUR + 20EUR waiting time.
Then he started looking in his pockets for money. To be honest after a while I started thinking that he had no money to pay. Finally after going through almost every single pocket he had, he found his money. A note of 500EUR!

I went a bit bizarre. Was it real money? How on earth am I going to change this? No shop will change a 500EUR bank note! Thanks to my ING bank I thought of the perfect solution. I went to the cash deposit facility of my bank. If the note was counterfeit I would have known straight away. As you probably thought, it was real money.
I changed the money got a nice tip of 20EUR and Thank you Sir, Goodbye.
That was my first encounter with Danny. I was not sure if I was going to hear from him again. I should confess my sin here. I was almost sure that Danny found the money somewhere. I could not imagine that this simple guy was who he is.

Well ok but all of this does not define him as the Dream Client. Correct?
I am not finished yet, that was just the first time with Danny. The second time was as educative, perhaps more than the first.

Danny is rich, very rich. He is not working. He is just spending money. I dare to classify him as idiomorphic and eccentric. The reason for this is his attitude towards paper work including bank notes and his magnetic field to yield troubles.

About a week later, around 18:00hrs I received the following call.
“Hallo, is this Limo Taxi?”
Yes Sir. How can I help you?
I am the lawyer of Danny, one of your clients that you brought a week ago in Dinant, do you remember him?
Yes Sir, I do remember him.
Could you please pick him up from Schiphol?
When that will be?
Now. He is waiting for 2 hours in Schiphol Airport.

I did not know what to say! My brains went spinning at 12.000 rpm. The telephone number was at private settings, I could not verify at any way who was calling. He did not say his name. That was strange. I replied:

With whom am I speaking sir?

Then he properly addressed himself, acknowledged that I could not see his telephone number. He called me immediately back from his office tell that I could verify if necessary. It was a Belgium landline number. He explained me that he would take care of all the costs, asking me how fast I could get to Schiphol airport. I needed 80-100 min depending on the traffic. There was however a problem. Schiphol airport is huge! It has four very busy terminals. Not to mention the Schiphol airport parking police. Where exactly was Danny, the lawyer did not know! Danny did not tell him. I was going to get paid even if I drove there and returned empty, if I could not find him, he reassured me. Could I do it? Yes or no?

I was driving back from Brussels direction Antwerpen, Breda on my way home. During the conversation I had passed my home exit and I was already driving direction Breda Utrecht Amsterdam. I thought of myself, why not? I had no reservation at that moment small redirection, the person on the telephone sounded very intelligent, short and to the point understanding his mistake to call from a private nr. Professional.

Recalling my memory I shall change on present tense.

Yes Sir. I replied. I am on my way already. Sent me an SMS with his location or agree with Danny on Schiphol terminal 3 arrivals.

About 20 min later just passed Breda ring direction Utrecht I receive a SMS on the BMW screen. I have to pick him up from Rotterdam Central Station and bring him to Antwerp. He will be waiting outside the back side on the Taxis spot. Grate I though, he picked up the best spot in the city of Rotterdam. But wait a minute. If he can take the train to Rotterdam, why is he there waiting for me? He can just go on to Antwerp with the train. He is not doing this to make me happy!
Something here does not fit the puzzle I thought. Never the less I make a small deviation before Utrecht heading Rotterdam. I am not going to drive 100 km back home while 40 km from destination anyway. Soon the puzzles will some how fit.

Going through the labyrinth of Rotterdam Central train station, I noticed all the taxi drivers that are looking at this Belgium BMW 7 series, Taxi, stopping just on the taxi spot in front of their noise and a client running in. The door goes open next to the driver seat and Danny sits inside the car telling me to drive fast out of there.
I should fill the paperwork immediately as soon the client steps in. It is the law. So this is what I do, However Danny keeps insisting to drive fast and I notice the taxi drivers are moving towards my direction, I think that Danny has a point here and I step on it. Danny’s short leather jacket glues to the black leather of the front seat. They can write down my state plate if they wish.
The traction control makes sure that there is no other sound than of the BMW engine roaring, A feeling that is short lasting, eventually soon I have to hit the brakes.

At this moment I notice a painful expression on his face.
Could you please put the heating on? Danny asks.
He is shivering and I just see that he is not wearing any jacket, a short leather gillet with a shirt under, that’s all. It is 9 degrees Celsius outside.
So I turn on the chair heating. Minutes later his face is full of joy.
“I shall take a nap, wake me up in Antwerp please” Danny says and he is closing his eyes enjoying the first warmth for some time I guess.

Let us try putting the puzzles together now.
Danny is not looking very well. He looks in some kind of trouble and has lot of pain. The driving directions are Lawyer, Doctor and his place.
Shortly the puzzles are like this. Danny got robed, beaten and dumped in the airport. He had no papers, no money. The Schiphol airport police identified him through telephone with his lawyer. He refused to go to the hospital and they did not keep him under custody since he had done nothing illegal. He refused to make a statement to the police or accept any help.
Danny, why? I ask
Paper work. I don’t like it. He replies.

We normal people have a bank card and we get our money from the “wall” or we go to the bank right? Danny not! He gets his money from his lawyer and recently from Limo Taxi as well.

He told me that he has not been in a bank for about five years and he does NOT have any bank cards. I think I do believe him. For him the difference between a bank note of 50EUR and 500EUR is the number and color, they are both papers he claims! He doesn’t have a mobile telephone, not only because he is loosing them all the time. If he needs to call he asks someone who has one! It is more convenient and it has the advantage of him having his privacy and ho telephone day -nightmare. My argument, urgent situation, was quickly dismissed. A minor disadvantage he said and reminded me that we live in Europe and not in Africa. I got his point. However, the bank note point was hard to get.

Epilog
That day Danny’s lawyer offered me a bank note of 500 EUR while I told him that Amsterdam Schiphol Antwerp was much less. And Rotterdam was even shorter. I argued this as correct amount for the fair. It was almost double. I felt sympathy for Danny and I was not going to charge someone double price after all.
Danny smiled, and said. You know what? Can I open an account with your company? I replied of course. We offer cash withdraw service as well.
Ok then keep 400EUR for all the troubles and the traffic and driving around and put 600EUR in my account. If I need some small cash or transport I can always call you when I have no “papers” with me. If you are not available for some reason, just arrange it then. I could do this of course; fair enough. I was about 4 hours busy and drove few hundredths km. I walked out his office with two bank notes of 500EUR. I was feeling more familiar with them this time. I kept in mind though that only 400EUR was mine.

Is this after all the definition of the Dream Client?
What you think? Perhaps no.
There are some more educative points in later encounters with Danny that I did not mention. I believe I can prove to you beyond doubt that he is the Dream Client.

To be continued… some day soon.

© http://www.limotaxi.net/ 2oo8

What you need to know about Taxis

limotaxis — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:33:13 UT

Well, there are many posts warning about Taxi rip-offs in Belgium. I shall not doubt the posts since they are probably true. Here is another one from my client from London.

She came by train from London to the Eurostar Train Terminal in Brussels because she does not like flying (Don’t forget that flying is for the birds. Limo Taxi is the way) to attend a business meeting in Utrecht Netherland. At that time she was not my client yet of course, so she got in a taxi outside of the Eurostar Train Terminal station in Brussels to Utrecht (Holland). Normal price more or less 140km x 1,7€ per km around 250 – 270 € including step in charge and about 90 min drive max with some traffic jam.

Well… 5 hours later the Taxi meter had recorded about 1000€ while she had a sightseeing of the major cities around in Holland, but from the highway. This is not a joke, it is 100% true story and as you can understand I cannot reveal the identity of my client. The taxi driver start crying that it was not his taxi and that he was working for a boss, he had to pay the amount on the meter to the company and so on. She fell for it and settled down for 600€ if I remember correct and of course never made her appointment in the AMRO bank.

The thing that she does not know is that if the driver had called the police she had to pay the full amount that was registered on the taxi meter. That is the law and you can not do much about it than to make an official complaint and live long after.. The chance to get your ripped-off money back? I shall leave this to the maths and probability laws.

Lesson NR 1:
Always ask how far your destination is and how much your fair will cost.

Lesson NR 2:
For long distance taxi transport make a fixed amount deal with the driver, if he / she refuses and says “on the meter” … Hasta la vista baby.
Take the one that will give you a fixed price.

Legal stuff
It is on the discretion of the client to choose the vehicle and / or the driver from the taxi spots and not take the first on the cue line.
A taxi driver may not refuse a fair from a taxi spot unless he can prove that you are in an unstable mental state (drunk for example, or behaving aggressively etc.)

You are not obliged to take the first taxi waiting.
The moral code of the drivers is that the first one gets the client so probably they will tell you that. You can reply to them that the law states that you have the right to take any driver YOU like
Now, since the taxi is waitting on the taxi spot it is obliged by law to to accept the fair.
The catch here is that the driver has the right to use the taxi meter and not agree on a fixed price.

To be continued….

What you need to know about Taxis
© http://www.limotaxi.net/ 2oo8

Kitties Taxi Tales of ordinary madness.

limotaxis — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:25:54 UT

Some years back when I worked shortly for a taxi company, I received a fair that it is fun to read about.

This elder lady, on her late sixties I believe, showed up at the door, with a teen girl and a cartoon box that was “miaou-ing”. The remarkable was that at 6 o’clock in the evening the lady was quite drunk and had an attitude, manners and way of talking that gives the definition of a bitch. I told her that if she is not going to keep quite and talk normal towards me, she would have to get out and get another taxi. Well it helped, she stopped talking. It was a small fair about 15 minutes. I gave her the box with the kitties, helped her until the main entrance and drove away.

Few minutes later, while standing still on the red light I heard “miaou”. I stopped a bit further and checked the trunk of the Mercedes (E270 has a good compact booth) but there was no kitty. I made sure though that there wasn’t any hidding in there. My idea I thought, it was still in my mind from the fair.

Some time later… while the car stood still “miaou” again.

Back to the trunk as you guessed, being sure now that there was a kitty there. I have an advantage this time. I can also “miaou” like a kitty, hehe I‘ll find you now. I start “miaou-ing” and the kitty replied. But it was hidden somewhere between the trunk and the back seats. I drove back to the dispatching to get the kitty out of the car.

To my greatest luck the departure address of the kitties was just around the office. So I went to inform the young girl that came with her elder brother to the office to find the kitty. The dispatcher, me, lieve Peter, the small girl and her brother are all trying to figure out where it was.
Me and the kitty had an extensive exchange of sharp and crying “miaou-ing” but refused to tell me where it was hiding…

About one hour long five persons were searching and stripping the car and still we had no idea where it was hiding. So the entire back seat construction and booth clothing are lying around the floor.

Finally we found where it was. Under the speakers, in a kind of metal construction almost closed from all sides, frond and back. You can pull some cables in there but your hand cannot go through. It was looking impossible to get it, plus it was “them”, two kitties one under each speaker.

To my luck again and probably thanks to the Mercedes guys, somehow the wooden cover between the back seats and the booth clicked open. There we go. They were starring complaining to me. I start “miaou-ing” back telling them that it I got nothing to do with this. I was just the driver... and got them out of there.

The girl took them and I was sitting there with the car stripped on the floor, thinking… Actually I just had to click the back wood cover open and not strip the bloody car. I finally manage to persuade myself that I was not very stupid but it was that I couldn’t have known where they were hiding.
Stop crying out loud over spoiled milk you stupid, get the car back in one piece and go to work, I said to myself.

Lesson Nr 1
Even if you drive a BMW 7 series, don’t think that a small kitty cannot escape from the trunk and hide somewhere in your car.

Lesson Nr 2
Make sure that any box that is “miaou-ing” is very good closed. Tape it if you have to.

Legal stuff
Taxis in Belgium have the right to refuse the transport of animals. They are though obliged by law to transport dogs which accompany blind people.

Kitties Taxi Tales of ordinary madness.
© http://www.limotaxi.net/ 2oo8