Providence Car Service Recommendations?

September 14, 2024 1:57 PM

My 82 year old mother has fled her wretched husband and moved into assisted living in Providence. She has announced she needs a car service.

When she lived in NJ, she had a lovely man named Gigi who drove her places -- to the airport, to the city, mostly -- as often as once a week and sometimes as rarely as once a month. He drove her, for extortionate amounts of money, for probably 15 years.

She is probably looking to approximate this relationship and that is why she is asking for a car service. She is absolutely not going to use Uber or any app-based service. She is specifically asking for a car service and not a taxi service but I can probably convince her to use a taxi service if she can call them and they are reliable and nice. She's old, she needs the world to be kind to her.

I can use Google but I am really looking for personal recommendations. She's on the East Side and mostly needs to go to the bank and sometimes the bookstore.

Thank you!

PS: Go Pawsox

posted by DarlingBri to Travel & Transportation (8 answers total)

The Pawsox moved to Worcester! :(
posted by Melismata at 3:55 PM on September 14, 2024 [3 favorites]

PMing you.
posted by ReluctantViking at 4:09 PM on September 14, 2024

This is the guy you are looking for. He is great.

PHD Coachman
Paul Donnelly
508-964-3530
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100067730840701
posted by yet.another.boston.question at 5:37 PM on September 14, 2024 [1 favorite]

Sign up for Next Door Providence to ask your question. Quite a few non-Uber retirees in my much smaller location do airport, medical appointment, and personal errand runs. I've found out about them through Next Door.
posted by Elsie at 5:48 PM on September 14, 2024 [1 favorite]

In my are (Ann Arbor) there is a service called GoGoGrandpa that acts as an intermediary with uber and lyft - my father used it since he could not manage an app. Might be something similar where she is? Next Door is probably a good way to find that as well if she'd consider using.
posted by leslies at 1:53 AM on September 15, 2024

There are a lot of people providing independent car service or livery service. A former colleague had developed relationships with “a guy” in most of the cities we visited for work. Whenever we needed to get from point a to point b, Tom would call his guy and a well appointed large SUV would show up.

The benefit over Uber is that they typically respond to text or email, will happily drive you to Starbucks and three hotels to pick people up, and tend to be more professional.

I first found out about the individual livery service provider (ie not a taxi, not an Uber, not an employee of a limo or town car service) when I, exhausted after a flight, got into one at the Orlando airport without really thinking about what I was doing. I had an oh shit moment once my head cleared a little in the car and I had to ask if I was in an unlicensed cab or what (this was admittedly very dumb on my part, but the guy was great).

I don’t know about yet.another.boston.question’s recommendation in particular, but want to validate that people doing this is A Thing and my experience across many cities has been uniformly positive.
posted by jeoc at 3:50 AM on September 15, 2024

She might look into paratransit. My mother didn't think she had a disability that would qualify her, she was just old. There was an office that would evaluate people's disability and they took one look at her and said she was qualified.
posted by SandiBeech at 6:05 PM on September 15, 2024

Response by poster: First of all, I am devastated about the Pawsox. I went to URI and I have many happy memories involving corndogs and the Pawsox. That sucks.

Secondly, I am very sorry for the late update but of course there has been a lot of family drama lately because why would we want less when we could have more!?

I am very appreciative of all of the suggestions in this thread and also all of the PMs, which I feel really guilty about not answering but will get to ASAP.

PHD Coachman was really, really nice and also really, really booked.

Next Door resulted in one guy saying he was looking for extra work but then he bailed.

We ended up getting her set up with Rachel's Car Service and my mom is happy to be independently mobile again.

Thank you all so much!
posted by DarlingBri at 11:56 AM on October 8, 2024