It ain’t easy being Green (Cabs)

78 Responses

1. You seem to have a big prob­lem with anonym­ous com­ments and I won­der why you are in the blog busi­ness if you cant handle it.

   Whenev­er I see someone com­ment­ing anonym­ously on a blog, it makes me won­der what it is they’re afraid of. In this situ­ation, it seems you’re spread­ing mali­cious gos­sip that you would­n’t have the guts to men­tion under your own name.

   What makes it even more bizarre is that you claim you don’t even believe this gos­sip, yet you’re quite happy for it to be per­petu­ated and demand that it’s up to oth­er people to find out if it’s true or not.

   Anonym­ous indeed. You’ve revealed far more than per­haps you inten­ded.

2. I haven’t made any­thing up. Its a story thats going round. I dont believe just any­thing I hear so dont try to pat­ron­ise me. Flash in a Dash is say­ing its true. Maybe someone can con­firm or deny it. You obvi­ously cant.

3. I heard that too. Could it really be so???? Maybe its time for someone to check it out – per­haps a real journ­al­ist and not some wan­nabe who writes a blog. If it is true are they off­set­ting the CO2 of the big cars? How many more cents of cheap third world labour will it cost them to plant the extra trees?

4. I see we are talk­ing about the big old mean­ies again. I pre­sume you are refer­ring to WCT (wgtn com­bined tax­is ltd)
   As from 01 June nobody is allowed to intro­duce a pet­rol powered car, they must be on hybib/lpg/diesel.
   The co is tak­ing a bold move, because if it was­nt for greens pres­ence this new police would of nev­er came around. a lot of pet­rol share­hold­ers are unhappy with the new policy and as a small share­hold­er at WCT I own and oper­ate a pet­rol car.
   But the green pub­lic have to real­ise it will take time to imple­ment as the new­est pet­rol cars will take time to leave the fleet and you cant just change because $35000 invest­ment with a 2 year old car will prob only return you $15000.
   But every week I see more Prios in the WCT fleet than the pre­vi­ous week. And good news is that Toyota Aus­tralia will be pro­du­cing hybrid Camrys by year 2010.

5. I hon­estly don’t know if it is true or not. If you look a few posts up you will see someone else star­ted it not me. I’m not spread­ing any­thing – it’s already been spread. I’m just com­ment­ing on it. Why don’t you get Mr GC to com­ment and if the rumour is bull­shit he gets anoth­er plug on your site so every­one’s a win­ner.

6. I take tax­is late at night when there are no buses. Oth­er than that, I do bus. Every­one should be just like me!

7. I remem­ber you from pre­vi­ous vista blogs – you are so per­fect, aren’t you

8. talk about para­noid.…

9. Hi it’s Mr Anonym­ous here again. I was­n’t try­ing to bag Green Cabs because I think hybrids are cool. I was hav­ing a go at some of the con­trib­ut­ors to this blog for some rather simplist­ic atti­tudes to some­thing that isn’t so simple.

   Hadyn – have you done any meas­ure­ments to gauge the per­form­ance of Pri­us on hills? I sug­gest you do. While you are at it meas­ure fuel con­sump­tion when they carry a lot of weight up hills.

   Bobby – your com­ment about shuttles is just silly. They have a simil­i­ar role to buses and most reas­on­able people would real­ise they can be used to reduce trips in private cars.

   I agree with Sue and Joanna. Catch the bus whenev­er you can. I don’t think it’s easy for a lot of people most of the time but you can try.

   Why would any­body in busi­ness give their name on this blog and risk their busi­ness being dam­aged by com­ments from some of the con­trib­ut­ors? It’s not worth it. Love and kisses, Mr Anonym­ous xxxxx

10. All this green hype is BS. Go gre­en­wash! let this bunch sit around wait­ing for a cab in a cold south­er­ley, and yep who they going to call when the greens dont arrive…yep …Green-busters!
    who ya going call …greenbusters…when you all alone ..pick up the phone…and call …green­busters!! …thats not bad..just made that up…

    green­busters inc…great name for a cab com­pany.

11. How green really is green??????
    I ask that because they have bought regency cabs which of course use huge pet­rol guzz­ling fair­lanes, to wait for it.….drumroll.…..to trans­port their cus­tom­ers in big cars who dont want to be squeezed into their dinky toys„„ opps sorry prios.…. but they would­nt admit that fact on this for­um and probu­ally havent announced it on their web­site either(but i havent checked_)

12. Nice one Wel­ling­tonista for bring­ing this to the blog­sphere. I note with some amuse­ment that Com­bined are now ‘tri­al­ling’ the Pri­us! Amid all their Gre­en­wash on the web­site (such as ‘work­ing towards’ car­bon neut­ral­ity) I won­der if they’ll have the guts to admit that sav­ing on pet­rol costs is a driver for change. Envir­on­ment­al effi­ciency is good for the bal­ance sheet, there’s no need to shy away from admit­ting that.

13. Nobody in busi­ness will leave their name here and risk their busi­ness and their employ­ees’ liv­li­hoods being dam­aged by someone who does­n’t like what they are say­ing.

    I’d like to relay some­thing inter­est­ing that a couple of people expressed to me when we were talk­ing about this earli­er today.

    Their take: every time someone drops by and leaves a vir­tu­ally-illit­er­ate, almost-unread­able anonym­ous com­ment, full of barely-coher­ent libelous rub­bish about Green Cabs, a num­ber of things will hap­pen –
    1. most people read­ing it will think that it’s someone asso­ci­ated with a com­pet­it­or of Green Cabs (most likely Com­bined) spread­ing lies about them,
    2. they’ll be much more likely to choose Green Cabs next time they take a taxi, and
    3. they’ll encour­age their friends and col­leagues to boy­cott the com­pet­it­ors (most likely Com­bined).

    The upshot is that your silly com­ments are hav­ing the effect of harm­ing every­one EXCEPT Green Cabs. Which is pretty funny.

14. ARE YOU THE EX MANAGER WHO GOT OVER THROWN??
    QUITE A LONG TIME AGO???

15. Dear Ista,

    Well, well well, all the dark stuff is being dis­cussed in a pub­lic for­um, and its about time too. Where does one buy this “alleged book”. I was­nt inter­viewed & I got a story to tell,a sad story, just about broke me.

    Wait­ing in anti­cip­a­tion for the book signing.Hope the BH gnome will be at the func­tion.

    Sin­cerely,
    Casper. No longer your friendly ghost.

    PS – if the poets read­ing this – I always looked for­ward to my copy.

16. hey if u want to abbre­vi­ate wgton com­bined its not CT, its WCT.

17. And with that I think we’ll end com­ments on this thread.

    It’s been fun though has­n’t it?

    The Wel­ling­tonista will check with Green Cabs about wheth­er or not they are pur­chas­ing any oth­er cab com­pany and report back.

    Thanks for the laughs

18. Well spot­ted. 😉 I should try for a job at ‘The sun’ . .

19. when will (CT) be tri­al­ling Afric­an drivers? Theres a lot more to (CT) than meets the eye!

20. Com­bined Cabs are con­sist­ently neg­at­ive in their approach.

    First they grizzled about oth­er cab com­pan­ies using the col­ours gold and black same day were copy­ing when those are merely the tra­di­tion­al Wel­ling­ton col­ours.

    Secondly they tried to stop Cap­it­al Cabs from using a blue sign. They attemp­ted to influ­ence the Land Trans­port Safety Author­ity which must approve taxi signs which caused the ques­tion of con­fu­sion (nor­mally for a Court) to be con­sidered by the Crown Law Office who decided there was no sub­stance to the com­plaint.

    Then they opposed an applic­a­tion by Dial-A-Cab to register their trade­mark but, when Dial-a-Cab refused to give in, Com­bined with­drew their com­plaint, simply caus­ing unne­ces­sary expense.

    Sub­sequently they sued Dial-A-Cab for chan­ging their dis­tinct­ively shaped sign by intro­du­cing a light blue in place of the pre­vi­ous yel­low. The alleg­a­tions were com­pletely without found­a­tion and bor­der­ing on the non­sensic­al but again they simply involved Dial-A-Cab in sig­ni­fic­ant unne­ces­sary expense before once again with­draw­ing the law­suit.

    Their con­tinu­ing com­plaint that oth­er cab com­pan­ies are copy­ing them has gained some pub­li­city through print, radio and tele­vi­sion not­with­stand­ing their com­plaints have no reas­on­able found­a­tion and simply irrit­ate a num­ber of people for no pur­pose. They appear to be unable to do any­thing pos­it­ive and have yet to under­stand the notion of com­pet­i­tion.

    Before East­er a year or two ago they com­plained that the organ­isers of the Com­bined Cour­tenay Place DJs dance party had copied their logo. Their com­plaint was unsuc­cess­ful but they failed to recog­nize and missed an oppor­tun­ity of becom­ing the offi­cial cab com­pany for the event and gar­ner­ing not only some busi­ness but some favour­able pub­li­city as well.

    They are Wel­ling­ton’s largest cab com­pany, their fares are com­pet­it­ive and the cabs are gen­er­ally well presen­ted. There is no need for and no sense in their per­sist­ently neg­at­ive approach to com­pet­it­ors and the pub­lic. The phrase “get a life” comes to mind.

21. Oh my good­ness! An anonym­ous com­ment that’s bag­ging Green Cabs! What a rare event.

    How’s this for fridge mag­net size: “Pet­rol up-hill and bat­tery down”.

    We’ve dis­cussed this a lot before, in fact I think you’ll even see some­thing sim­il­ar in the com­ments above.

    So while those Pri­us and vans burn extra fuel on the way the hills, on the way back down the vans will still burn fuel while the Pri­us will store energy in it’s bat­tery to use in nor­mal driv­ing.

    And as for Green Cabs tak­ing the job in the first place, maybe they did­n’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth? Maybe when the per­son rang they said “ok” rather than “we’d prefer you spend that large amount of money with our com­pet­it­ors”

22. and guess what? who owns a van/shuttle com­pany? com­bined own co-op shuttles.Havnt you heard the ad on the radio???? thats when they get real eco- they roll out there shuttle fleet! rolling out shuttles makes you green??? green with envy!!!!!!!!!!! green­speak at its best.
    Fridge mag­nets indeed!

23. Hadyn – have you done any meas­ure­ments to gauge the per­form­ance of Pri­us on hills? I sug­gest you do. While you are at it meas­ure fuel con­sump­tion when they carry a lot of weight up hills.

    Nope, have you done any? Tell you what we’ll split it. You look at uphill, I’ll look at down­hill and then we can also look at fuel con­sump­tion while stopped in traffic.

24. I ori­gin­ally wrote “oh get fucked” after read­ing this, but i changed my mind. Instead…

    Green Cabs waited 15 mins and re-called the con­tact num­ber giv­en them.

25. You know what I heard? I heard they eat babies in Satan­ic rituals in the dead of night around a bub­bling cauldron, all the while laugh­ing mani­ac­ally laugh­ing at the fools who believe their claims.

    Or maybe Anonym­ous com­menters can make up whatever they want?

26. I was just try­ing to let people know that I am a dif­fer­ent Anonym­ous (it’s not easy hav­ing the same name as all these oth­er people). I am will­ing to accept that you are per­fect. Don’t worry about the breast thing.

27. Well, one of my breasts is about a half a cup big­ger than the oth­er, but apart from that, yes, I am actu­ally per­fect, thanks for noti­cing!

    But what’s this about a vista blog? I’m run­ning Linux, why would I blog about vista?

28. So you don’t think I’m per­fect then? *sob*

29. If “green hype” (woteva that is) means nice, quiet com­fort­able cabs with cheap­er than aver­age prices, then I’ll have more of it, thanks.

    But you can keep the theme tune, buster.

30. I would just like every­one to know that I have no con­nec­tion what­so­ever with the Anonym­ous con­trib­ut­or who is hav­ing a go at Joanna for being so per­fect. His/her com­ments in no way reflect my own. Mr Anonym­ous.

31. I dont believe just any­thing I hear so dont try to pat­ron­ise me.

    Awww poor did­dums! Were the big old mean­ies on the Wel­ling­tonista pat­ron­ising you? How pre­ten­tious of them, how you must suf­fer to come here and push your anti-hybrid bar­row.

32. Sorry Bevan, but which “boy­cott cam­paign”? There’ll be no such thing com­ing out of the Wel­ling­tonista in any kind of offi­cial fash­ion.

    And who exactly are the hypo­crites? I find no evid­ence of any implic­a­tion – and cer­tainly noth­ing stated – that Com­bined was behind it. In fact, without know­ing any facts, it would be stu­pid of us to write such a thing.. not to men­tion libel­lous.

    So.. once again.. your words, not ours. If you inferred some­thing about Com­bined from some­thing you read here, good on ya. Please stop throw­ing silly words like “hypo­crite” around, though.

33. Te Roia wrote: “neg­at­ive approach to com­pet­it­ors and the pub­lic. The phrase “get a life” comes to mind.”

    Theres a book about to be pub­lished on what they do to their share­hold­ers, on read­ing it you may be able to ammend the above to “com­pet­it­ors, pub­lic and share­hold­ers.”

    The book (I am told) will astound readers.It is alleged they employed a private inves­t­i­ag­t­or in the hunt for a “poet”. Red­dish com­mis­sioned the invest­ig­a­tion late last cen­tury.

    Cant wait to read it. Sounds very very busy dosent it!

    Richard

34. OK, I have totally no idea what is going on in this com­ment.

35. This is the best pro-WCT com­ment I have seen in all 50+ com­ments so far. Well done. And thank you for telling us what your bias is clearly.

36. Before you start your boy­cott cam­paign con­sider this: Did any­body ever both­er check­ing the facts at the begin­ning of this blog, ie the alleged 10 car job that Green Cabs turned up to? When every­body either implied or stated it was Wel­ling­ton Com­bined behind it did any­body say “Hang on a minute, it might not be them, it might be bored kids, it may nev­er have happened, it may even have been a rumour anoth­er taxi com­pany with some­thing to gain star­ted.” No, you did­n’t. So don’t act all right­eous about this. You are hypo­crits.

37. I have no prob­lem with hybrids. Like the slo­gan says they are safer for the envir­on­ment. I have been in one and it was a nice ride (and I am quite a large per­son). There’s no anti hybrid bar­row and des­pite the odds I hope there is no anti hubris bar­row. If you bothered to research the news you com­ment on you might know the state­ment made by Flash in a Dash yes­ter­day about Green Cabs tak­ing over Regency Cabs Wel­ling­ton is all around the taxi industry. Im not say­ing its true. Im only say­ing its there. If Green Cabs was my busi­ness I would have been fol­low­ing this blog very closely and by now I would have pos­ted a com­ment deny­ing Flash in a Dash’s state­ment if it was not true. Per­haps you bet­ter call Mr GC asap and get him to com­ment. You seem to have a big prob­lem with anonym­ous com­ments and I won­der why you are in the blog busi­ness if you cant handle it. The ‘prob­ably a spine­less cow­ard’ thing is pathet­ic and child­ish. Chill out…people read­ing this are smart enough to form their own opin­ions. If they think some­thing stinks noth­ing will change their mind and they have the for­um to chal­lenge it. Nobody in busi­ness will leave their name here and risk their busi­ness and their employ­ees’ liv­li­hoods being dam­aged by someone who does­n’t like what they are say­ing. I will remain anonym­ous so get over it and get on the phone to Mr GC right away. I for one would like to know the truth.

38. Robyn wrote: “Whenev­er I see someone com­ment­ing anonym­ously on a blog, it makes me won­der what it is they’re afraid of.”

    it would be very rare for any­one from some lar­ger and not so lar­ger firms to put their names to any­t­ing for worry of being fined bullied,and gen­er­ally treated like shit.its noth­int to do with being a spine­less cow­ard, but hav­ing work so the kids can be feed mortagage paid etc.you at wel­ling­tonista should read the rule bbooks of taxi com­panys.

    enjoy­ing debate all the same.

    anoth­er annoym­ous, but not the same one as before.

39. Accord­ing to the Amer­ic­an Envir­on­ment­al Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) 2008 EPA-estim­ated mileage, the Pri­us gets 48/45/46 miles per gal­lon for city/highway/combined.

    This is com­pared to the best minivan, the Dodge Cara­van 2WD, at 17/24/20.

    Even the Honda Civic Hybrid isn’t as good (40/45/42).

    These are the 2008 tests and are now con­sidered “more real­ist­ic” than pre­vi­ous tests, and hence gen­er­ally harsh­er.

    Here’s a little spur though: Driv­ing on hilly or moun­tain­ous ter­rain or on unpaved roads can reduce fuel eco­nomy. The EPA test assumes vehicles oper­ate on flat ground.

    But then again: Excess­ive idling decreases MPG. The EPA city test includes idling, but more idling will lower MPG.

40. sav­ing on pet­rol costs is a driver for change

    Heh, I see what you did there…

41. any­way i think every­one should just take the bus

42. this ten car order could of been real. i sup­pose if they did­nt wait the man­at­ory 5 mins who did they call – good old reli­able com­bined
    remem­ber most of these green cab­bies are ex dodgies are not use to wait­ing for pre booked jobs. its a new concept for most of their fleet

43. Back to the Green Cab story – they should have known the 10 car order was a hoax because what sort of idi­ot would order 10 cars when 4 vans are much cheap­er? And the CO2 emis­sions from 4 vans are about the same as 10 Pri­us, or maybe slightly less depend­ing on what kind of vans you use. If the tax­is had to travel on the hills then 4 vans would def­in­itely emit a lot less CO2 because Pri­us have to burn much more pet­rol on hills and there is little bene­fit from the bat­tery (espe­cially if they are loaded up with people). Wel­ling­ton, with all its hills, is actu­ally not the greatest city for driv­ing hybrids. I’m sorry this all can­’t eas­ily be writ­ten on a fridge mag­net (unlike “Green Cabs: bet­ter for you, bet­ter for the envir­on­ment”), so just for­get I men­tioned it.

44. And some more data: Rethink­ing the cost of Hybrid cars

    via Life­hack­er.

45. i’ve always liked a woman with one breast big­ger than the oth­er.

Comments are closed.