CABBIES who went on strike over a faulty app that overcharged customers have been sacked.

The 25 drivers working for V Cars were told the action was in response to a noisy protest outside the firm’s Groundwell headquarters on Monday that involved around 60 people.

In a letter to its drivers, Veezu, which owns the company said: “Unfortunately, a small minority of drivers have become disruptive. These actions are detrimental to the vast majority of drivers and affect not just the company’s reputation, but also all drivers’ work levels.”

Managing director for the south west and Wales, Ryan Owen, wrote: “These actions are not reasonable and as such we cannot condone or allow them to continue. 

“We have a duty of care to our staff for their safety and wellbeing and to the majority of drivers to safeguard work levels.

 “The drivers identified carrying out these actions are no longer associated with V Cars. 

“Their accounts have been finalised and their private hire licences returned to the council offices for collection.”

He added: “V Cars now looks forward to finalising our driver feedback panel to engage with drivers constructively. 

“We will continue to investigate concerns raised regarding the speed and signal strength of the equipment and look to decide on long term solutions shortly.”

The drivers refused to work on Monday claiming a new app that people could use to book taxis, was grossly overcharging customers and had not been fixed.

One case saw a passenger charged £120 for travelling from Wroughton to Old Town. 

In a statement issued today V Cars Drivers’ Association said members were outraged with the way the firm had handled the issue.

 “We have the right to protest and the management should respect our decision to do so," they said. "We are also a customer of the company as we pay for a service every week. We will be contacting the Citizen’s Advice Bureau because the way we have been treated is disgraceful.”

In the statement, they added: “Veezu has no proof to back up what they have said, if we were behaving in such a manner the police would have made arrests or dispersed us from the scene.”

Last week the drivers met the company in an attempt to resolve the issues, which included complaints that valuable jobs were only being given to favoured drivers. But it was without success.

At the time V Cars said it had received feedback from some drivers that they were experiencing signal and speed issues with the iCabbi app and that it had sent a team to Swindon to carry out testing. 

The firm said: “Once we’ve established the extent of the issues, we will make a decision on a course of action. We will need some time while we conduct our investigation.”