Dear PoP – Terrible Diamond Cab Experience

Photo by flickr user Snowesq

“Dear PoP,

I had a horrendous experience with Diamond Cab I wanted to share with your readers in hopes I can spare them from a similar experience. Also, I wanted to see if you and/or your readers had recommendations for reliable taxi cab companies and/or car services.

I called Diamond at 1:20am on 3/27 to schedule a pickup for 5:30am that same morning as I was catching the 6:15am Megabus to NYC. I called again at 5:00am to confirm the pickup for 5:30am and was told the cab would be there as scheduled and that they would call at 5:30 when the cab arrived. They did not call back so I called again at 5:35am only to be told that there was no cab scheduled for pickup and that they had no record of my earlier calls. I urged the dispatcher to find a way to get me a cab ASAP so I did not miss my bus or to tell me if they couldn’t so I didn’t waste any more time and could try to figure something else out. The dispatcher said he was able to find a cab and assured me it would be at my house within 10 minutes. I called back at 5:50am when the cab did not arrive in 10 minutes only to be told that they could not get in touch with the cabbie and did not know if he would show. I ultimately missed the bus as I was left with 15 minutes to drive from Petworth to H& 10th, find parking that was not metered & catch the bus.

As a result of their series of failures I had to take a later bus and forfeited the $23 nonrefundable ticket for 6:15am bus I missed. I subsequently called the Diamond Cab office several times to complain and ask that they reimburse me the $23, but they were consistently rude and refused to accept responsibility. I even spoke to someone in the office, not just the dispatchers who are usually rude and incompetent, but they too were unhelpful. Fortunately, I only lost $23 (in addition to 3hrs of my weekend) — it may have been worse if I had missed a flight.

I hope this helps someone.”

I’ve had some bad experiences trying to schedule taxi pickups as well. Can anyone recommend a reliable company for pickups? And since we’re on the subject I remember back in the day some folks (myself included) had trouble getting cabs to take us home from time to time. Do folks still face that problem today (personally I’ve had much better luck with drop offs the last couple of years)?