Secrets of the Black Car Industry
Secrets Limo Companies Don't Want You to Know!
We can guess your experiences with black car services. You've been using black car services but the quality has been inconsistent. You may have tried to use several car services but they all seem the same. You're frustrated. We get it. Following are some little (and big!) secrets the limo industry doesn't want you to know. Educate yourself and use them to your advantage:
Why your Experience is Inconsistent with Most Black Car Services:
Most black car services share cars and drivers. In the industry, it's called "farm-outs". The practice of most services is to take in as much business as absolutely possible on a daily basis whether or not they have capacity to handle it. If they don't have the capacity to handle their local business, they "farm-out" some business to another car service ... generally, to a car service that is struggling and looking for work. It's the standard practice of most black car services and they have been doing business this way for decades. We receive industry magazines that are littered with ads from car services advertising for farm-out partners. We've attended industry conferences where the major focus is cocktail parties where "owners can mingle and network for farm-out partners". The practice is endemic in the industry.
So what does this mean for you? Here is what happens in practice: Sometimes you place an order with limo company "A" but limo company "B" shows up to handle your transportation representing themselves as limo company "A". What's more, sometimes company "B" turns around and farms-out the business to yet another car service. So now you have company "C" showing up to provide your transportation ... of course, still representing themselves as Company "A". By the time your reservation is finally serviced, it could be twice removed from the original company. Sounds convoluted, doesn't it! Anyway, when this happens, the company that booked your original reservation has lost significant control over the quality of service that you experience. That's why you may have a rattle-box of a vehicle showing up with a driver that looks and smells like Sasquatch!
Financially, companies with these practices have very low margins. A good portion of their business is simply being a "middle-man" for other services. They are taking business at a reduced rate, but yet they still have all the costs of providing the service. Therefore, their margins suffer and they don't have the funds available to properly maintain or replace their fleet. They also cannot afford to pay their drivers a decent living-wage, therefore turnover is often high and drivers often are less qualified and look less presentable.
It is exceedingly difficult for a black car service to balance the supply of resources with demand and most services farm-out some business to other car services. Yet, some car services do not employ any drivers at all. Instead, they farm-out all their business to various companies and/or contractors, each of which has various policies and procedures. The end result is that quality suffers and clients are treated like a commodity to be sold to the lowest bidder.
At Austin Private Car Service, we are a locally owned, owner-operated company and we take pride in the level of service that we provide our clients. Speaking of clients, we do not seek farm-outs from other services or use third-party networks to obtain clients. 99.9% of our business is organically generated by repeat clients, word-of-mouth referrals, and internet searches. In turn, we handle 99.9% of the business that we accept in-house. When we absolutely need to farm-out business (usually because of flight delays that impact our schedule), we select contract drivers who we trust and who know our policies and procedures. With us, reliability and quality is consistent.
Cheap Quoted Rates That Substantially Grew on Your Receipt:
Rates seem to be a game in the black car industry. The games are many ... but it most often entails quoting a cheap base rate and then adding a bunch of nonsense fees once the service is complete. That 'fine-print' can be expensive! Once you get your receipt, you find all sorts of other fees such as "fuel surcharges", "tolls", "taxes", "booking fees", "service fees" and on and on. All of a sudden, that cheap rate you were originally quoted doesn't look so cheap! In the industry, it's called 'drip pricing'.
At Austin Private Car Service, we don't play those games. Our booking confirmations include all the fees for our standard service. Our standard rates are comprised of a base rate and driver gratuity. That's it.
You will never be charged those other nonsense fees by us. By the way, the State of Texas does not charge taxes on livery service so if you are being charged "taxes" by other services in the State of Texas, the service is just ripping you off.
When searching for rates, make sure you know what is included in the quoted rate. Is the driver gratuity included? Are there any other fees? If so, what are they?
We are not the least nor most expensive service in Austin. If you are simply looking for the best rate, we are confident that you can find lower rates at some other car services ... well, base rates anyway. There are struggling car services in Austin that will dispatch a rattle-box of a vehicle with a driver that has been doing split-shifts with little sleep in between. That is simply not how we do business. We provide professional, safe and reliable service in late-model, well maintained vehicles driven by well dressed, well groomed professional chauffeur drivers. We think that is worth a few extra dollars. Our schedule is usually quite full. As such, we do not make a practice of discounting or negotiate rates.
Here's why to Avoid Stretch Limousines like the Plague:
All re-manufactured stretch limousines are made by 3rd party companies that literally cut an existing vehicle in half and weld several feet of additional metal to the vehicle which significantly increases the vehicle's weight.
Before modification, vehicles are required to meet rigorous safety regulations. However after modification, vehicles do not need to prove that they still meet safety criteria standards. The original brake system may still be expected to stop the modified vehicle, despite the substantial additional weight of the modification and the increased number of passengers. There have been numerous fatal accidents with stretch limousines, including the horrific accident that killed 20 people in New York in October of 2018.
What's more, the City of Austin requires small limousine services to have a re-manufactured stretch limousine in their fleet in order to obtain a license to operate. The vast majority of limousine services in Austin are not large enough to satisfy the exemption for that requirement so they are forced to buy a stretch limousine. Adding to the issue is that demand for stretch limousines has been waning because most of the general public now view stretch limousines as gaudy. Instead, clients are now renting Sprinter Vans.
Because there is little demand for stretch limousines, services that are required to buy stretch limousines usually do not invest much money in them and purchase an old, used rattlebox of a limo just to satisfy the City of Austin's requirement. There isn't much of a market for used limousines and they can be easily purchased on the open market for less than $20k. Overall, these dynamics have created a very dangerous environment for stretch limousine service ... especially in Austin. Lots of Available Old Limos + Questionable Safety + Little Demand = A Very Bad Combination!
If you choose to rent a stretch limousine in Austin, we invite you to be very careful and make sure you know exactly what vehicle the service will be sending you. Ask questions about the model year and number of miles on the vehicle, whether the vehicle's safety features were upgraded at the time of modification, and whether the vehicle's safety features were re-certified. 99.9% of the time, the answer to those questions will be, "No" ... if they are being honest, that is! If you are booking an outing for family or friends, safety should be an important consideration.
Overall, Austin Private Car Service considers modified stretch vehicles to be highly unsafe. Even when we were small and we were required to have one in our fleet, we parked it in storage and it was never used in service ... not even once! Now, our service is large enough that we meet the exemption and we are not required by the City of Austin to have a stretch limousine in our fleet. Therefore, we do not offer stretch limousines and we do not recommend those vehicles to our clients. Instead, we offer a Mercedes Sprinter Van for larger groups. Our Sprinter Van has leather CEO captain's chairs, LED lighting, and a stereo system by Custom Sounds. It's comfy. Give it a try!
How to Find a Good Black Car Service:
Lincoln Town Cars used to be the standard vehicle of choice for black car services. It was such a standard that clients began using the term when booking service, i.e. "I need a Town Car". Some people still use that term today when looking for a black car service even though Lincoln Town Cars have not been in production since 2011.
The issue with that is that the quality of vehicles also most often paints a picture of the quality of service that you will receive. So, when you search for car services, make sure that you never use the term "Town Car". If you are searching online for that term, you're most likely going to find a service that still operates with those old well-worn rattle-boxes. Those services may be struggling to afford replacements and probably are not the services that will match your expectations. Instead, look for a car service that exclusively offers late model executive-level vehicles.
Be careful with national service providers and booking agents. Many national providers are simply a collection of independently operated franchises. Some do not have any of their own drivers but are just a clearing house that farms-out business to contractors and/or other services. Therefore, the quality of service can vary dramatically between various cities. ExecuCar was an example of this model before going belly-up in December of 2019. Often, these franchises will become dependent on their national name for business and may become lackadaisical in their approach to business operations. Some national providers and booking agents can be quite expensive since you're paying not only for the service, but also for middlemen.
Look for independently owned, owner-operated businesses that have 5-star ratings on Yelp and Google. Spend a bit of time on their website and see if they are paying attention to details. Are their mispeld werds and gramatikal mistaks? Yeah, forget those! Does their website look like it was just slapped together? Yeah, forget those too! Has the company recently changed names? If so, be careful, maybe they were bought by another service ... or maybe their online ratings were so bad that it was time for a wash, rinse and repeat under a new name!
When you place your order, tell the service that you do not authorize farming-out your business to their business partners no matter how good of a relationship they have with brand X!
The Bottom Line:
It's easy to imagine a long-time owner of a limo company sitting behind a big old steel desk made in the 1960s, smoking a cigar and exclaiming in a raspy voice, "Dang it, we've been doing business this way for 40 years and we're not going to change now!"
But things do change.
The gig economy has decimated taxi and limousine/black car companies that have resisted change. Owners of those companies seem to spend an inordinate amount of time jumping up and down and getting red in the face complaining about Uber instead of making the necessary changes to streamline and improve their own operations. Yes, some of them have adopted new technology ... but yet still resist changing their old dried-up business practices.
The bottom line is that clients are not just a commodity to be sloughed-off to another service.
Our service avoids many of the old business practices that have become pitfalls of other car services. The result is a black car service experience that is reliable, efficient, and easy to use. We are an locally-owned, owner-operated company. We pride ourselves on providing a high-level of service ... and service is not just getting you from point A to point B. Rather, it's the experience ... from the time you book your transportation to the time our driver expresses gratitude for your business at the conclusion of the service.
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