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New Bell Car Service
Rating Details »
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
640 Myrtle Avenue
(between Franklin Ave & Kent Ave)
Brooklyn, NY 11205
(718) 230-4499
640 Myrtle Avenue
(between Franklin Ave & Kent Ave)
Brooklyn, NY 11205
(718) 230-4499
- Nearest Transit:
-
Classon Ave (G)
- Hours:
Mon-Sun. 6:00 a.m. - 5:30 a.m.
6 reviews for New Bell Car Service
New Bell is the only black car service I use in Brooklyn. Or try anyway. Sometimes I'll call them from Sheepshead Bay or something and they're like, "uh, no really, it'll be about a half an hour." I get it. You're really goddamn far away. I was drunk, I wanted my car service. Can you blame me?
Last Sunday I called them from Dumbo and told them to drop me off at my house in Crown Heights.
Me: How much?
Cabbie: You're a regular. Pay whatever you want.
So of course I gave them a million dollars. It's not the actual discount that counts.
1 Previous Review: Show all »
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1/5/2009
On occasion I leave my buddy's house/bar at 3, 4, or 5 am in the winter, my ass is not waiting for… Read more »
I use New Bell all the time when I have to travel for work or when we just need a car service cause we're lazy. I have never had a problem with these guys, which is really different from most other car services I've tried in Brooklyn. If they say they're coming at a particular time, they're there a few minutes before. If they say "five minutes", it's almost never more than 10 (which I think is pretty much ok). The cars are fine, the drivers are always professional and usually kind of friendly, and the prices are what you'd expect to pay.
Plus, last time I went to LaGuardia, they picked me up in a crazy new SUV and the driver gave me tips on where to get the best Senegalese food in NYC...
I just used this car service today. I was at Lafayette and Tompkins, after a back to school fair organized by Project Re-generation. I was tired after sitting in the sun for hours, yelling over the loud music and talking to dozens of people about the services the non-profit I work at offers. I called New Bell, gave them my spot, and they picked me up 5 minutes later.
20 minutes later I was in lower Manhattan, and the driver helped me unload all my shit (there was a lot of it) and gave me my receipt. Completely helpful, friendly, attentive and fast. Bed-Stuy to FiDi was $18.
UPDATE: If you want to be picked up in a sleek, black, late-model towncar, move the frick back to Manhattan, people. I have NEVER seen an outer borough car service that used brand new towncars. You are not getting that. If you demand that, you need to either move back to Manhattan or move up a rung to the swank limo companies that serve the whole city.
New Bell is my go-to Clinton Hill car service.
Are they 100% super-ideal, with spiffy late model Town Cars? No.
Are they the cheapest deal ever? No.
Will they get you where you need to go, on time, and with the acceptable degree of safety and comfort? Sure. Which is all I really ask for.
To the person below who says car services are supposed to be cheaper than metered taxis -- I don't know what planet you live on, but I've lived in various parts of NYC for 7 years and have never found that to be the case. All car services are, as a rule, more expensive than a metered cab you hail from the street.
Regarding the safety of the cars, maybe I'm just naive, but I've never noticed them to be particularly bad or old cars. They're about as nice and as old as anybody I know who owns a car in the city, so I'd assume taking New Bell is about as safe as catching a ride with a friend. They're just not brand newTown Cars, is all. I guess if you're absolutely obsessed with safety you should call one of the spiffier car services that covers the whole city, like Carmel.
Welcome to Brooklyn, guys. If you can't handle it, maybe you should move back to Manhattan or New Jersey or wherever you came from.
Another update, previous follows...
OK, it turns out the new fleet are repainted cabs.Cabs that were cop-cars. So in other words, they've been beat to hell twice over, and now New Bell is going to squeeze the last few miles out of them.
These are not comfortable cars. They are dirty, they need new springs, and they have cab partitions that even the cabs don't have anymore because they are DANGEROUS in an accident.
I took my last ride in New Bell. They now officially suck. It is a shame to see a good business go completely bad.
Update, original review follows...
Seems that New Bell just got in a crop of used, repainted cop cars in their fleet. Durable, perhaps, but rather uncomfortable. And with their new bargain fleet have come price hikes.
Look: if you're going to charge me $25 to midtown, it had better be in a damned Town Car. Car service is supposed to be LESS than yellow cabs, not more, but a taxi charges $18 for the same trip, and that's with the sun-down fee, too. So New Bell has gotten quite greedy.
If anyone finds a better deal in Clinton Hill, give me a shout!
**original review**
They are among the cheapest in the nabe, and sadly, among the most professional. This is only in a relative sense. Their vehicles are typically clean and reliable.
However, some of the drivers with this service are a bit greedy. ALWAYS ask for the price when you order your car - not that they'll ever give you the same price twice - otherwise, you're going to pay more than have to.
I don't even know what this was supposed to be. I'm standing there waiting for my car to show up, and some dude is just blaring his horn in front of me in a Chevy Venture van thing. Turns out that's my ride. Seems like it's just some random dude driving his family van around making some cash in his spare time. On the bright side, he did arrive very quickly after I called.
The driver was wearing a 49ers jacket and was CHEWING TOBACCO, spitting it into a plastic cup on the floor next to him, in plain view. The dispatch radio was sitting on the floor. The dude was on the phone the entire time (no handsfree here -- drove with one hand!) and kept making kissing noises. I'm pretty sure he was having phone sex.
Going from Clinton Hill to W. 30th, he seemed to take the worst possible route (Brooklyn Bridge-FDR-34th st cross town) -- it took just as long as it would've taken had I ridden the miserable B61 to the F. Why would you drive 25mph on the FDR? Why would you ever ever try to take 34th St crosstown on the weekend around the holidays?
When I got there, the door wouldn't open. I was trying to make a quick getaway due to the bad tip I had folded inside my $20 bill. The driver actually had to get out of the van to open the door from the outside.
I used to think Northside was semi-unprofessional and occasionally bad (random woman shows up in her non-T&LC explorer to take you to the airport), but this was just.. awful.
Against my better judgment, I had to use New Bell again to get to my holiday party last week, as Northside kept ringing busy. This time, although the driver drove at a normal speed and wasn't chewing tobacco, the car reeked of gasoline. I had to keep the window open the entire ride to prevent death. I complained but the driver said it was "because of all of the bumps in the road" (??) and that it would go away soon. I'm pretty sure I carried the odor with me the entire evening.
Northside will still pick you up in Clinton Hill, it just takes them 10 minutes instead of 3. And most of the time they at least use newish black towncars with leather. And they're cheap. Take them instead!
