Angry Selly residents demand Guild axe Castle Cars

A petition has been launched to remove Castle Cars as the taxi firm linked with the Guild.

Enraged students have come forward with their negative experiences of using the company, accusing them of being “rude” and “expensive”.

Now the petition, started by second year Will Robson, has nearly 200 signatures.

Will said: “The aim of the petition isn’t to just remove Castle Cars for another company but to change the review of taxi companies because it clearly isn’t working currently.

“I understand the Guild makes a large amount of money out of the affiliation but it is about time the students spoke up and said we pay £9,000 a year and we expect our union to be funded appropriately.”

Castle Cars are a well known sight around Selly Oak

He added: “While my experience of the company is dismal to say the least, that’s not the reason I started the petition.

“When I talk about Castle Cars I have never heard anyone defend the company and instead people seem to unload their encounters with the company.”

Will Robson started the petition against Castle Cars

Second year Lexi tells The Tab: “I booked a taxi with them seven hours in advance, due to pick me up over an hour before my train to London as I knew it was rush hour and wanted to be safe.

“They were an hour and a half late and refused to give me a discount despite the fact I missed my train.

“The driver was incredibly rude to me about it.”

The Guild of Students were made aware of the petition, and Jack Mably and Frankie Greenwell told The Tab on behalf of the Guild: “The petition is sure to ruffle a few feathers, but has highlighted the student population, to which the Guild of Students have a duty of care, either feel unsafe or disregarded.

“The Guild has affiliated with Castle Cars in order to provide students with a safe, licensed transport option home for our members, hopefully discouraging the use of uninsured and unlicensed taxis that put students’ safety as risk.

“The Guild is, however, aware some students have had poor experiences with Castle Cars, and we have been working with management to alleviate these concerns and address the issues raised by our members.

“Any complaint we receive from students regarding Castle Cars is immediately followed up with management and has, in a small number of cases, resulted in the removal of a driver from the firm.

“Moving forwards, we hope to meet with Castle Cars again to develop a robust feedback mechanism, so students can quickly and effectively report how good or bad their driver is.

“In the meantime, we urge students to use their current complaints procedure as the most effective method of dealing with poor service from drivers.”

In reaction to the petition against them, Castle Cars told The Tab: “We promote a safe, reliable fully licensed and CRB checked Driver fleet and on a regular basis remind students of the importance of using our fleet for safety reasons.

“Castle Cars has a very stringent complaints procedure in place and we always fully investigate any complaint that comes into our Office.

“Complaints can be made in several ways such as through our website, email, post or telephone but if a student does not want to complain direct to us then the Guild has their own complaints procedure which is then forwarded to us.

“The volume of bookings from students is far greater than the number of the complaints received on the online petition of which we were not aware of and as most of the students who book use us regularly we are very surprised that Will Robson who started the petition could only find negative comments about our Company.”