Ever called a Yellow Cab?  Can you name another cab brand?  Yellow Cab seems to have everything absolutely right and brilliant except the product and service itself.

Yesterday on three different calls, Yellow Cabs in San Francisco failed to show up for yours truly.  I was located in a part of town where cabs do not cruise so I was relegated to calling.  And the phone number, 333-3333 was pretty damn easy to remember, as are the name, the color and the cabs when they cruise by.  But it is not enough if they don’t show up.

First it was impossible to understand the dispatcher on the phone.  On the third call, after the first two had resulted in no cab, the dispatcher explained that she did not actually send a cab after the first two calls, because I gave her the cross streets where I was standing rather than the specific street address, a fact she did not share on the first two calls.

When the third cab also failed to show, I finally saw and hailed a cab from a different company on the street.  When I mentioned Yellow Cab, the driver said matter of factly, “Worse kind of cab to call in the city.  They are fundamentally awful.”  I sure agree.

Sounds like a wonderful opportunity for someone else to take today’s technology and introduce a fail-safe cab brand that you can always count on.