Taxi - No Service For You!

- jim Young

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” - Joni Mitchell

I don’t have much use for Uber Drivers. While that may sound like a derogatory statement, the truth is I really just don’t have much use for them in the literal sense. I live in a remote area in Northern Ontario and I doubt there are very many, if any Uber Drivers around.

Of course I’d have to download the app to be certain, but I’m not anxious to clutter my cell phone with apps that I won’t likely use anyway. Why buy a colour TV when television stations only broadcast in black and white?

Oh! And there’s one other small critical detail I forgot to mention. Where I live, my cell phone service is sketchy and unreliable at best. I still rely heavily on our landline.

But I will soon be attending an event that will require me to stay in Barrie and travel 16 km out of the city. There will be drinking involved so I will need to find alternate transportation.

Now, I would think that any Taxi Service would jump at the chance for an opportunity to scoop their competitors for any opportunity whether it’s Uber or even another Taxi Service.

So I decided to contact several well known established Taxi companies in Barrie to get a price quote for my return trip.

I don’t hear well, so I choose to communicate when I can by email.

Specifically, the taxi companies I contacted were Barrie Taxi, Barrie Yellow Taxi, Barrie City Taxi and Deluxe Taxi. They have all been in business in Barrie for many, many years.

All but Barrie City Taxi had a contact page on their website, which included a “contact form” for me to fill out. Barrie City Taxi, had a link to click on their email address which opened my email client and auto-fill their email address.

Both of those options would eliminate any chance of a typo misdirecting my inquiry.

Likewise, my computer will autofill my email address into a form so there was also no opportunity on my part for a typo to provide an incorrect email address for the Taxi companies to respond to.

Care to guess how many responses I got to my email inquiry? 

0 out of 4, None, Nada, Zip.

FYI: When looking for a reply to my email, I know enough to also check my Spam, but there have been no emails from any of these companies sent there.

So, how will I be getting to and from my upcoming event? Well, I’m not certain at the moment but it won’t be any of these Barrie Taxi Services and it still won’t be Uber.

Perhaps it will be an alcohol free night for me.

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