Winter describes agency disconnect and per-minute rip-offs
Winter says each agency does its job but lacks connectivity, so enforcement is canceled out. He describes a 'gold rush' where unlicensed drivers charge per-minute, per-person rates of $9–$25 and use lights and sound to distract customers.
Every agency that has participated in trying to do enforcement has done an excellent job within their own field.
The problem is that because of that disconnect, sometimes the work of one agency is canceled out by another.
And so because there is no real...
Connectivity there.
Also, I should mention that a lot of the reason why a lot of these guys do this is because it's really the almighty dollar.
It's become like the new gold rush when it comes to the pedicab industry because they tell other people to come down to New York City and do this.
65 million visitors, 42 million to the park, plenty of people you can rip off.
Some of the people that I've encountered on the street have been bragging about how much they make.
They almost want to tell you how much they're making.
The reason why is because they can do these 15, 20-minute rides and nail the customer and disappear into the mist.
These rip-offs don't really happen much in the park, although we've discovered there's a few bad actors in the park as well.
But the reason why is because the park is structured, so it doesn't make sense for them.
us to charge on these per minute rates.
So most of us, we charge flat fees.
But the guys on the street, they're abusing the system, given that they can charge whatever they want.
It's a per minute per ride thing.
But no one's putting these signs on the sides of the bike.
And when they are, they're very tiny, black on red, black on gray, very tiny little lettering.
And they're deceptive.
Or they just simply pull out a rate card at the end of the ride.
That's also part of the reason for the lights and sound.
The lights and sound is to attract and then distract.
They get you into the bike, looks like fun.
You come to the end of the ride and all of a sudden it's per minute per person, $9 to $25 a minute per person.
And this is part of the reason why I feel that a price cap might also help with that maximum rate that will allow the customer to eventually have consumer confidence again, knowing that they're not going to be charged more than this particular rate per ride.