February 10, 2007
LTI TX4
The rumour mill has been going full blast regarding the TX4, from ‘the engine was rejected by the Italian army’ to ‘LTI launched it in the winter because it will boil up in summer’. I know five TX4 owners who are thrilled to bits with their cabs and long may they continue to be. As I’ve said before, the taxi trade deserves a good reliable cab and I hope this is the one. We have been critical in the past of LTI products for very good reasons that have been well documented but if the Tx4 is a good ’un we will not be slow in praising it. And this should not be taken as a signal that I have changed my mind about a choice of vehicle, I haven’t: if the TX4 is as good as the owners I know say it is, it will hold its own in a more competitive market place.
However, one or two of the TX4 owners are not so highly delighted with LTI’s Dealer network. Hardly a day goes by without a call to the LTDA from a member who has run into a brick wall or is just sick to the back teeth from being treated badly. I remember years ago when I went to M&O to take delivery of my second new cab. There was a dent in the luggage door the size of a dinner plate and the off-side headlamp was hanging out of its mounting. Upon bringing it to their attention I was told that a fitter had skidded in the workshop and hit another cab. They then offered to ‘do up’ the headlamp and knock out the dent at the first service.
I flatly refused to accept the cab and rejected it on the spot. I was told I ‘had’ to accept it, ‘or else’. I never did find out what ‘or else’ was because when they realised I was not going to budge, a senior person was called and after a bit more ‘negotiating’ he agreed to order me another cab.
I made a note of the chassis number of the damaged cab and went to Stewarts Garage to pick up a rental cab, paid for by M&O until my new cab was delivered. The point of me telling you this is that I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I was being most unfair because the owner of the other new taxi that ‘mine’ had hit, accepted the cab, damage and all, because, “after all, it’s only a cab”.
So next time you have to visit a dealership and you feel you are being fobbed off, stand your ground, kick up a fuss and they might start treating you like a customer instead of a pain in the butt. Don’t ever say “It’s only a cab” or let someone else say it to you. It’s your bread and butter, and apart from anything else, would you accept this type of treatment if something you had paid a lot of money for went sideways and you were told: “We are busy, come back tomorrow or go somewhere else”? Not much, you would.
And by the way, I’m not picking on
M&O, it’s just that in those days there
was only one place you could buy a cab. Today we are much more fortunate – now we have two!
Be Lucky.
It
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