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.