mytaxi change in terms 5 Euro cancellation fee

Lord Nikon

shanec1928 wrote: »

not really sure why that’s relevant. Taxis don’t accept leap cards...

It's relevant because it was brought up before that all public transport should accept credit card payment, it was also brought up that taxis should accept Leap card.
It's also relevant because a taxi is public transport, like Dublin Bus but doesn't take credit card, but don't see too many complaining about that.

KoolKid

Unbelievable..
Do people really want a queue getting on the us with people tapping their credit cards. If you want to pay by card use leap or one of the other options.

Lord Nikon

KoolKid wrote: »

Unbelievable..
Do people really want a queue getting on the us with people tapping their credit cards. If you want to pay by card use leap or one of the other options.

Does tapping a credit card take longer than using the Leap Card?

KoolKid

Lord Nikon wrote: »

Does tapping a credit card take longer than using the Leap Card?

Yes if it is to require on the fly validation via mobile connection. Before you tap how do you enter the fare etc. It would be a disaster.

endofrainbow

Barna77 wrote: »

Maybe they should watch on drivers that charge one fee on the spot but then claim a different, lower, one on the app.

It has happened to me once or twice, always going to the airport. Lets say fare was €20, driver took the money (I pay cash) but then I got a receipt for €15. He even told me he was doing it to avoid paying whatever fee or commission the app charges them or the likes of it.

I had something similar on a recent trip to the Airport. I was paying by card and let's say the fare was E28 - driver tells me he's adding a E2 tip and asks if that's ok?

I was in a hurry and just said yeah go ahead. At least with UBER you can give a tip or not.

Bigmac1euro

KoolKid wrote: »

Yes if it is to require on the fly validation via mobile connection. Before you tap how do you enter the fare etc. It would be a disaster.

They do it in Finland. It works fine.
You’ve 4 zones to choose from.
You hold your leap card and select, zone a,b,c or d depending on the distance your travelling.

KoolKid

endofrainbow wrote: »

I had something similar on a recent trip to the Airport. I was paying by card and let's say the fare was E28 - driver tells me he's adding a E2 tip and asks if that's ok?

I was in a hurry and just said yeah go ahead. At least with UBER you can give a tip or not.

You can add a tip or not. Really what my taxi should be concerned about is the falsifying of amounts entered for journeys. This happens on more trips that not.

Seve OB

how do you expect my taxi can control that???

up to you the punter to say no to the driver.... or at the very least make a complaint to my taxi

KoolKid

Not the customers job to police the company's accounts. There is plenty of software there that could work out the fare fairly accurately based on time and GPS.
But this company has it all wrong. They want to reward their drivers and punish their customers.
Instad maybe reward the customer for reporting this type of fraud and punish the drivers for this behavior and cancelling jobs etc.

Seve OB

You see this is where the punter doesn't understand how taxis work. You want a taxi to come get you when you want it yea? Well problem 1 is there simply is not enough taxis to meet the demand. Problem here is basically a heavily related deregulated industry with ridiculous barriers to entry makes in impossible to attract new drivers to the market so when drivers leave they really are not getting replaced.
Then you need to realise that unless you have a direct relationship with a driver, well then your regular custom goes out the window. Eg. You go to power city or wherever, buy something, they have your number on file, know you are a great customer and give you loyalty discount. But if you use my taxi every single day 3 times a day for a year you might get a different driver every time. Every single taxi driver in Ireland is self employed. They do not drive for my taxi, NRC, Xpert or anyone else. They drive for themselves. If you have been a loyal customer and used my taxi 10 times in the last 3 days the drivers don't care, this is the first time you are their customer. They have to put the bread on their tables at home and they work hard to do it. They can't offer cheap fares to people because they used their colleagues regularly.
Now my taxi and other operators. How do you think they make their money? Of course the rob the drivers don't they! ..... Eh not quite. Different models are available. Traditional firms charge weekly fees. Drivers can get as much work from them as they can handle for a fixed fee. Much better for the hard working driver. But not for them all. Along comes hailo with a pay per job model. This is great. ....... For a while anyway. Now there are all sorts of hybrid models.

But still not enough drivers. Now every single taxi company including my taxi has not enough drivers on their books to meet the demands of their customers. Remember drivers are self employed. They need to earn. The my taxi driver only pays per job. The company driver has fees to pay regardless. You will find, guaranteed that drivers work ng for traditional companies are much less likely to give back jobs because there is someone sticking their hands out. It does happen, but nowhere near as with the pay per job firms. This is fact

But companies need to service you the punter. They need to keep the drivers happy. P155 the driver off and he won't bother working for you. So charging and penalising the driver doesn't work, not for the taxi company........ For you the end user.

Its a poxy catch 22 situation. Sure they can penalise the drivers but do you think that will give you are better service? I can tell you it won't. It's a guaranteed worse service.

A driver going out of his way to pick someone up who is a no contact is very frustrating for the driver. He will get sick of it and will spread the word to his colleagues. Don't go here there or wherever, I'm not doing that work again. Now he could be in that job maybe 15 minutes getting to you and may have passed other fares on the street or through dispatch that would have paid him. He has to eat. So does his family. Keep him happy. My taxi are trying to do that with this charge.

Look at it like this. If you book a hotel room for your holiday but you don't have to pay till you check in. How many of these rooms allow you to cancel right at the last minute without charge? None. They got the room ready for you and told everyone else it was taken. Give a bit of notice...... No problem. Maybe they can shift it to someone else. But if you cancel as you turn onto their street and see the hotel next door is cheaper....... Well they are not gonna have that are they?

See the big picture. Don't pay the fiver. Just don't be a dick, and cancel last minute cause you got another cab or whatever.

Polar101

Not too happy with this €5 cancellation fee. Sometimes when you book a taxi, a driver accepts the job - but he's on a break or something. The one time I've cancelled a job was when a driver nearby accepted the job, but then didn't move for the next 10 minutes. So now I'd be paying €5 because I cancelled while "the driver was on the way to you" even if he was probably asleep.

KoolKid

That's a regular occurrence. Nearly as much as the driver cancelling.

Muahahaha

Was talking to a colleague a few weeks back who was telling me about a group of four girls who normally go out for a bite to eat and beers after work on Fridays. They will typically have two if not three different restuarants booked and then on a Friday they decide which one and cancel the others. Then when it comes to getting a taxi all four of them will hail one on an app and whoever shows up first gets the job with the other three drivers left doing a fools errand. I thought to myself how inconsiderate but I think thats how some people are behaving these days, they couldnt care less about others as long as they get what they want when they want it. Its very selfish behaviour.

Anyway Ive noticed a lot of restaurants are now charging a €20 cancellation fee to stop this practice. So it should come as no surprise that a taxi app is doing the same. If anything this should stop people ordering numerous taxis and free up more of them for people who play the game fairly.

bk

KoolKid wrote: »

Yes if it is to require on the fly validation via mobile connection. Before you tap how do you enter the fare etc. It would be a disaster.

It doesn't require on the fly validation.

Contactless payments have already been implemented in London and it works using offline data authentication. Basically the ticket machine just locally records the transaction offline and uploads it to the servers at a later point, only then is the charge made. Actually the charge is only made at the end of the day once daily/weekly capping are applied. It is quiet different to how normal shop card payments are made and it is far quicker.

PDF: https://www.mastercard.ie/content/dam/mccom/en-ie/about-us/pdf/MasterCard-TfL-Case-study-2016-Final-Updated.pdf

Interestingly the company who implemented this in London, now has the contract to do the same in Ireland for the next gen leap project.

Phileas Frog

KoolKid wrote: »

The recurring theme here seems to be customers cancel for no reason and drivers always have a good one.

https://twitter.com/_carlyj/status/1127354619393396738?s=09

Genghis

What we need in Dublin is a MyTaxi competitor.

Imagine Hailo reborn with the same day 1 business model: 10% (or lower?) commission, not 12.5%, no customer booking fee, no cancellation fee, just like it was.

Pity the Lynk app is so poor. I actually downloaded it when MyTaxi cancelled a pre-booking just before my time, but in spite of myself within mins I had to go back to MyTaxi. Lynk just awful, didn't manage to book even one journey.

KoolKid

I actually find Lynk the best of the rest. A little slower but my reliable with their bookings.
What's amazing is almost every driver gives out about MyTaxi and their charges. Yet when competition comes also they won't support it.

Spook_ie

Genghis wrote: »

What we need in Dublin is a MyTaxi competitor.

Imagine Hailo reborn with the same day 1 business model: 10% (or lower?) commission, not 12.5%, no customer booking fee, no cancellation fee, just like it was.

Pity the Lynk app is so poor. I actually downloaded it when MyTaxi cancelled a pre-booking just before my time, but in spite of myself within mins I had to go back to MyTaxi. Lynk just awful, didn't manage to book even one journey.

KoolKid wrote: »

I actually find Lynk the best of the rest. A little slower but my reliable with their bookings.
What's amazing is almost every driver gives out about MyTaxi and their charges. Yet when competition comes also they won't support it.

Problem with Lynk is they charge a base fee, something you pay if you get a job or not, not 100% sure of their T&Cs but most base companies ( Lynk is a combination of the Noel Ebbs bases such as 2020 cabs, city cabs etc. ) is they expect to get paid 50 weeks of the year regardless of if you're working or not.

As to not supporting the apps, when someone designs a phone/app that will allow seamless switching between apps they might get a better following, I'm certainly not going to download and use an app with a smaller user base if I can't get calls from a different app, that's why drivers tend not to use Uber and MyTaxi and NEOther, unless of course they want to run 3 phones

KoolKid

Can't you run multiple apps. That's not fair. The end customer can and then cancel the one whose still sitting at the shops.

Muahahaha

Spook_ie wrote: »

As to not supporting the apps, when someone designs a phone/app that will allow seamless switching between apps they might get a better following, I'm certainly not going to download and use an app with a smaller user base if I can't get calls from a different app, that's why drivers tend not to use Uber and MyTaxi and NEOther, unless of course they want to run 3 phones

What stops you using the different apps at the same time, surely just a matter of toggling between them? Or does the app switch off when it is not on the screen?

Scoondal

I've been taxi driving for 10 years. I threw in the towel 4 months ago. People have got worse due to drugs, videoing me on their phone and arguing about my route. My insurance went up by 300 percent in 10 years even though I made no claims and nobody ever claimed against me. I just got fed up being treated like dirt by customers, the insurance industry and the NTA.
Now I work a 30 hour a week PAYE job with paid holidays, full PRSI benefits and no accounts or tax returns. Total bliss.
Only an idiot would drive a taxi these days.

Spook_ie

Muahahaha wrote: »

What stops you using the different apps at the same time, surely just a matter of toggling between them? Or does the app switch off when it is not on the screen?

Well all I can say is that the MyTaxi app on my phone doesn't update my position if the app isn't on top.

Muahahaha

Spook_ie wrote: »

Well all I can say is that the MyTaxi app on my phone doesn't update my position if the app isn't on top.

But if you toggle between apps and then your location is updated for both of them then I presume you can see jobs from both of them simultaneously? Or have the apps done something to prevent this? It sounds anti competitive if they have introduced some system to stop you using whatever app you want if you havent some sort of exclusivity agreement with them. Its obviously to Mytaxis advantage to do this and lock drivers down to only their app but then they are preventing competition with their own competition, i.e other apps.

KoolKid

It certainly doesn't sound right to me.
Maybe that's the deal to get those fancy car stickers 😅

magicbastarder

How Mytaxi killed Irish taxis and now owns the future
Success in Ireland and new €5 cancellation fee point to winner-takes-all capitalism
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/how-mytaxi-killed-irish-taxis-and-now-owns-the-future-1.3892979

KoolKid

All very true. Now if only the customers & the drivers would see sense instead of defending it.

bk

Spook_ie wrote: »

Well all I can say is that the MyTaxi app on my phone doesn't update my position if the app isn't on top.

Are you using an iPhone?

On iPhones, there are different location settings per app. You can set each app as one of the following:
- No Location
- Only Location when the app is open
- Location all the time, even in the background

Make sure you have the last one set.

Bigmac1euro

Everyone should just delete the mytaxi app

Spook_ie

Muahahaha wrote: »

But if you toggle between apps and then your location is updated for both of them then I presume you can see jobs from both of them simultaneously? Or have the apps done something to prevent this? It sounds anti competitive if they have introduced some system to stop you using whatever app you want if you havent some sort of exclusivity agreement with them. Its obviously to Mytaxis advantage to do this and lock drivers down to only their app but then they are preventing competition with their own competition, i.e other apps.

Toggling between apps probably not something you should be doing when driving anyway, but as I said if I'm for instance busy on the app with a non MyTaxi customer and decide to use Google maps to get a route it doesn't appear to update my location on the MyTaxi app until I switch back to it.

circular flexing

bk wrote: »

Are you using an iPhone?

On iPhones, there are different location settings per app. You can set each app as one of the following:
- No Location
- Only Location when the app is open
- Location all the time, even in the background

Make sure you have the last one set.

It's up the app developer to provide the last option.