Tips for Taxi Drivers in London
Oct 7, 2014 | 4:17 am
#31
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Intermountain West
Programs: Too many to list
Posts: 12,728
No, coming out of my pocket. I tip 10% in the US so I see no reason to change when I'm overseas. Habits are hard to break. 
Oct 7, 2014 | 5:05 am
#32
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Anwhere ex-MAN
Programs: Nil
Posts: 2,709
My taxi tip is set at 20% and 95% of my Uber travel is for business, so it's all expensed.
Oct 7, 2014 | 5:17 am
#33
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: GLA
Programs: BA Silver
Posts: 3,226
Agree with most of above for Glasgow. I find the most awkward fares are the ones less than 10, but almost at a whole pound already - e.g. 6.80. I would feel embarrassed tipping 20p, and begrudge 1.20! So I often make it 7.50.
Equally, however, if you want all your change back and don't want to tip - that's fine too; it's not yet an expectation the way it is in the US.
I don't tip my barber!
Oct 7, 2014 | 1:34 pm
#34
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: somewhere north of London, UK
Programs: HH Gold, BA Silver, Accor Silver
Posts: 15,252
I usually round up the fare when paying a London taxi - if the fare is 9.50 I'll make it 10.00 but if the fare is 19.50 I'll probably make it 20.00. But I don't have a hard-and-fast rule and tend to do what is easiest for both parties at the time. I have known a London taxi driver refuse a tip when it would have make the change more difficult, and some drivers seem mildly surprised when offered a tip.
Oct 7, 2014 | 4:15 pm
#36
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: London
Programs: Hilton, IHG - BA, GA, LH, QR, SV, TK
Posts: 18,250
Oct 11, 2014 | 10:44 am
#37
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: From ORK, live LCY
Programs: BA Gold, M&M*G, HH Gold, ABP, Seigneur des Horaires des Mucci
Posts: 14,875
Perhaps it's because of the Knowledge, or the long/unsociable training path and hours? I have no idea actually.
Oct 11, 2014 | 11:11 am
#38
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 196
Perhaps fewer women are willing to spend the 24+ months required to do the Knowledge, learning the city streets and routes of London via scooter, and then take the required tests/appearances to get their badge. As a general rule, the London "ply for hire" cab trade is unlike almost any other city - these individuals work for themselves, not a cab company/dispatch center, and they take pride in their accomplishment.
In NYC, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, SFO, Chicago, DC...name the city - reliance on sat navs and expectance of a generous tip have become common place. At DFW, it took a cab driver more than 5 minutes to try and plot the route to my company's office via sat nav, not find it, and then ask us to get in another cab. But in London where, despite whatever street or bridge de jour is closed, a black cab driver can still get you from point A to B (and then C) efficiently and as quickly as London's onerous traffic will allow - when a quid or two is appreciated, why would someone be so stingy as to not provide.
There are always exceptions, but as a rule, the London black cab experience beats any other city hands down. So why not round up a pound or two?
In NYC, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, SFO, Chicago, DC...name the city - reliance on sat navs and expectance of a generous tip have become common place. At DFW, it took a cab driver more than 5 minutes to try and plot the route to my company's office via sat nav, not find it, and then ask us to get in another cab. But in London where, despite whatever street or bridge de jour is closed, a black cab driver can still get you from point A to B (and then C) efficiently and as quickly as London's onerous traffic will allow - when a quid or two is appreciated, why would someone be so stingy as to not provide.
There are always exceptions, but as a rule, the London black cab experience beats any other city hands down. So why not round up a pound or two?
1. The Knowledge is simply a barrier to entry and gives little assurance that the driver knows or cares where he is going. On a number of occasions, I've had to ask a cabby to take a better route to a destination because (unlike me) he still gets paid for sitting in traffic doing nothing. Once or twice I have learned a new route from a black cab driver, but more usually I'm sitting there thinking "If I was in the front, we'd be going a different way to cut through this."
2. Of course there are a lot of minicab drivers (and indeed bus drivers) who are black or Asian or white, from a variety of nationalities, representing the diversity of modern London. I've had excellent knowledgeable service from a number of them. Unlike black cabbies, they don't refuse to take you directions they don't want to go (against the terms of their licence), they don't bore you with ill-informed political views somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun, and they don't refuse to give you a receipt if you don't tip (all of which have happened to me). My experience of minicabs and other forms of private hire is that all the nonsense about the Knowledge and a badge is just an excuse to keep the trade in the hands, as one contributor put it, of a group of white East End/ West Essex families who all earn a tidy living and don't want anyone else to join their club (just as Ford trucker jobs were kept in the family at Dagenham).
Uber will cause all this to pass.