GUYS, PLEASE DO NOT ENGAGE LIU XIAO YI FOR HIS SERVICE! PLEASE THINK TWICE BEFORE YOU ENGAGE HIM! i'm sorry if this post is really long, but it speaks of my experience with him during my recent trip to taichung and i hope it helps the rest of you in making a more informed decision.
like many other forumers around here, my fiance and i went through all the comments posted online. there were many mixed reviews about him, both good and bad. but as all the other more popular taichung drivers were already engaged during the time we started looking for drivers, we decided to engage xiao yi since he was the next available one whom i managed to contact.
instead of replying to my email, he whatsapped me instead. i thought to myself, that should be a good start. but hell i was wrong! first of all, it was really a pain conversing in traditional chinese with him even though im pretty fluent in chinese. his replies were really fast as though he was very free. when i took a while longer to reply, he would ask if i am still around. quite irritating, but then on the positive side, i thought it would be much clearer to list out everything in black and white.
there were a few places that we wanted to go (eg carton king, xin she, mushroom farm...few more others but i cant recall now), but it seemed that most of them were scattered all over. i had actually mapped most of them on google maps and it was true that some were really far from each other. as i had only 1 day to spare in taichung, we decided to take his advice and went for the taichung-puli winery-18deg choco-carton king-cingjing farm (i particularly insisted that carton king and the cj farm were the places that i MUST GO, which was why it's in the list. xiaoyi suggested puli and 18deg choc).
for some reason, he kept insisting that we should go to sun moon lake and for upteenth number of times, we told him that we really dun fancy sightseeing as we dun really have much time to spare in taichung.
and so, the price and destinations were confirmed at least 3 weeks before my trip (it was NT3000). but 1 week before my trip, he whatsapped me again to ask me for my itinerary and the price he quoted cos he "reinstalled whatsapp". and i had to go through all the hassle typing in chinese and going through the itinerary again. i thought as a driver, it should have been his responsibility to note down his customers' itineraries for his own planning instead of troubling us to remind him again.
during the journey, as what other forumers have experienced, he kept boasting about his services and how BUSY HE IS. seriously, if he is so busy, he wouldnt have much time to keep whatsapping me right? and for some reason, he kept insisting that he doesnt manage any websites online, which most of you know by now, he has a website. he kept asking where i got his contact from and i just told him i read some positive reviews about him. then after that, he continued to boast about how happy his customers were, which in fact by now, as i continue to read more, i feel there are more negative than positive reviews.
i didnt want to spoil the trip so i just continued to act blur and didnt expose him. then he went on to say that he prefers japanese tourists cos they seem to be more open to paying higher prices for the taxi services. WHAT THE HELL? even if he truly believes so, and even if it is the truth, he shouldnt be sharing such stuff with his customers right? he kept critisising why we had to choose starry minsu as it was out of the way and "expensive". he claimed that he could recommend some cheaper and better alternatives.
along the way to puli, he dropped us at a pastry warehouse for us to try the most popular pastries in taichung. it was apparent to us that the place was a "carrot head" place as there were only tour buses and tourists there. when we stepped into the warehouse, he immediately went to tell the staff there that we were his passengers. perhaps he would have gotten commission if we bought anything from the place, but i guess to his disappointment, we did not buy anything.
so we moved on to his recommended places - puli winery and 18 deg choc. puli winery bored us to death as it was clearly another touristy and "carrot place" unless u r truly a chinese wine fan. 18 deg choc was just a chocolate and ice cream shop, but not much complaints about that as i really found the ice cream to be nice (didnt try the choc though).
and moving on to the last part of my trip. the epic moment of all.
he drove us to carton king and small swiss garden (both were next to each other) and told us he would wait for us outside. but within abt 30mins time, he called to ask if we were planning to eat lunch at carton king or this other place at cingjing which he recommended earlier. so we told him we preferred to try some local food at cingjing and would not be eating at carton king restaurant. but within another 30mins later, he called again and requested for us to meet him outside. as my fiance needed to visit the toilet, we took abt another 15mins to walk out to the entrance. just before we reached the entrance, he called YET AGAIN to rush us and asked if "we had lost our way". that comment sounded really sacarstic. i asked him what the hurry was for and told him to tell me on the phone as i walked out. but he insisted to tell us "face to face".
guess what? when we met him, he told us that he could not wait for us anymore as there were two more tourists who were in an "urgent situation" and he had to attend to them. he referred us to another driver and said he would transfer our backpacks to him on his way down. seriously WTF. we had already engaged his services weeks before our trip and he dumped us like that. we were quite hesitant but then again, xiao yi's services really sucked and it would be good to get rid of him too.
thankfully, this other driver that we were referred to made our day. i do not have his namecard with me now so i do not have his details. initially, we were skeptical about his sincerity towards us after the horrible experience with xiaoyi. but he proved us wrong and he really went out of the way to please us when he learnt that we booked xiaoyi weeks in advance and was dumped by him.
throughout the transition from cartonking/swiss garden to cj farm, he did not mention anything about the journey's fees at all. only until my fiance asked him, he told us that xiaoyi had already collected NT3000 from him and he was sending us free of charge. he waited for us outside cingjing farm and suggested the things we shd look out for when we are inside.
when we came out of the farm, he gave us some cut fruits to eat and asked if we wanted to check out some fire dancing celebration (which happens only once a year) that would happen on that evening. we were quite tired and so we opted out. i was still doubtful about this fire dancing thing but i realised that he was telling the truth when i came across a brochure that listed all the activities that would be held to celebrate some event.
at the end of the day, he sent us to starry minsu without any grumbles. the starry minsu was quite inaccessible as there was a short but very steep slope to the minsu. he was very caring as he kept asking if im afraid of the height, he would drive slower. when we reached, he presented us with 4 big persimmon fruits and kept apologising for our bad experience. my fiance paid him NT100 more as a small tip but he kept forcefully rejecting it. come to think of it, the 4 big fruits he gave us already easily cost more than NT100.
this is a really long post but i hope it has shed some light on xiaoyi's terrible services. you can pm me if you want to get the contact of the other nice driver we got... but i will have to unpack my luggage and find the namecard first
