Taxi News

The ongoing saga of over-priced taxis who seduce customers by mimicking other companies’ logos has entered a new stage of arbitration.

The controversy mostly affects new arrivals at Sofia Airport unfamiliar with the feud between longstanding taxi companies and those who imitate their logos and phone numbers but charge extortionate rates. The matter has now gone to court but remains unresolved.

As The Sofia Echo has previously reported, the "victims" are ripped-off clients and - in most cases - OK Supertrans taxi, a reputable company of many years standing that is one of two firms contracted to service the airport.

Some of the companies who imitate OK Supertrans’ logo are OK Superchance and OK Superlux. In one such case, in April this year, experts from the European Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf) fell victim to unfair competition between different firms.

They took a taxi from the airport to central Sofia and were presented with a bill for 102 leva. The average bill should have been no more than 20 leva. OK Supertrans responded by alerting the Protection of Competition Committee (PCC) while clients chose to complain to the Consumer Protection Committee (CPC). As a consequence the PCC repeatedly imposed fines of hundreds of thousands of leva on the grounds of unfair competition. By contesting the fines in court, however, the "impostor" companies have managed to survive.

All taxi drivers in Bulgaria are entitled to charge any price they choose. Besides having their registration papers in order, they only have to display the tariff prominently on the vehicle. Unfortunately, by imitating other companies’ logos such drivers rely on unsuspecting passengers climbing into their taxis.

By the time the customer realises the scam, the bill is already high and the driver is fully entitled to demand payment. Protests about the logo resembling that of other firms are then a matter for the PCC and the CPC.

After extensive media coverage the issue reached boiling point in mid-October when the two organisations who claim to represent the taxi business held a meeting with the Transport Ministry. On one side was the recently-founded National Federation of Taxi Drivers in Bulgaria (NFTDB). Its chairperson is Yane Yankov, also head of OK Superlux, the firm fined 150 000 leva by the PCC for mimicking OK Supertrans’ logo. On the other side was the National Union of Private Carriers (NUPC), representing some of Sofia’s large taxi firms.

Both organisations asked the Transport Ministry to deal with the issue by changing the law. NFTDB demanded that every municipality should have the right to set one unified price for taxi companies in its region. The Transport Ministry and the NUPC, however, suggested that municipalities should be given the right to impose the maximum fare that cab companies would be allowed to charge. This, according to the ministry, would clamp down on cab drivers preying on unwitting foreigners and absent-minded customers.

Yankov responded with a news conference in which he accused the ministry of supporting the business of NUPC members. He asked for the resignation of the Ministry’s Car Administration Executive Agency head, Lyubomir Hristov and argued that rather than having maximum fares imposed on them, firms should be allowed to charge high prices as long as their cabs are painted in different colours so that clients can distinguish between rivals. The issue is yet to be resolved in Parliament.

Uncles Comment: If you go to Sofia airport, come out of the arrivals area and there is a taxi office for the proper company by the exit, they will take all your details and give you your drivers number and the taxi reg. number which will be waiting outside.
I dont understand why there is no mention of Varna airport where every taxi is a bandit, typically 160lv to Albena !.