Taxi Driver Online

Does anyone own a taxi company and know what they are being charged for a ringback facility. We have just had this set up on our system and although promised by BT the cost is very low I've heard other owners are being charged very high rates.

It all depends what you want from the ring back, that thing we use just rings the phone for about 4 rings, if you want one where the customer picks the phone up and hears a message telling them their cab is outside you'll pay a small fee to BT something like 00.1p per call. One firm I know use the above ring back system where a voice tells them their cab is waiting, they've got 100+ cars, their bill for that is not very expensive at all.

The BT definition of ringback is very different than what we know in the trade and the original post doesn’t make it very clear what type of ringback we’re talking about.

BT offer a service where if someone rings you and your lines engaged then it can ringback the customer as soon as your free and that’s their definition. Normally by then the've rung another company but such a service could be usefull for smaller companies ie Wrexham taxidriver.

The ringback I mean is when a driver arrives outside his pick up location he can press a button on the data head which makes the customers phone ring twice, no message just a simple ringback

Taxi Operator

What it cost depends on several factors such as ringing back all calls or just those who request it?
Or have you got some special deal on the call charges i.e. unlimited free local calls?

Course the charge only apply if the customer answers the phone so giving a house phone one or two rings isn’t an issue because their unlikely to answer in that time. The problem comes with mobiles where the person answers immediately and you clock up a mobile charge. This can really rack up the cost bearing in mind that a good 70% of your calls will be from mobiles.

What we do is give landlines two rings and send text messages to all mobiles which is a much better option because it also gives details of the exact car to watch out for. The text unit uses an unlimited text sim card, at about £15 per month.

I’ve just spoken to two users for you to check how their costs were working out. The first, a 70 car company was clocking £400 a quarter on straight ringback. This dropped to below £90 with text.
The second a 35 car company spending just over £500 a quarter again dropping to just over £100 with text.

Hope this helps

if you use call divert to your mobile, you can set up a text message in templates saying taxi outside now, but you have to try and remember the order the calls came in and hopefully they wont have with held the number

I get 600 mins and unlimited free texts for £10 a month with vodafones sim only option

We have 70 cars using Autocab via radio, not PDA.

We have ring back for 2 rings so the customer doesn't pick the phone up. We pay a minimal line rental through a local provider and no call charges.

Cabbyman

Must be a good deal if you don’t pay any call charges at all. Do you ring back all calls (including mobiles) or just those who request it?

From what I see, companies tend fall into one of two distinct camps. Those who think it’s just too expensive and only use it if requested or those that actively promote it as part of a better service.

Speaking with that 35 car company the other day, the owner said that even when he was paying £500 a quarter, he thought the benefits to both customers and drivers was well worth the costs. He also said that the number of no-pickups is down to a minimum partly because his customers know he has their number, they’re less likely to jump another cab.

If I get time today, I’ll pull some numbers from a few companies to see the percentages of no-pickups with and without ringback. Should be quite interesting!

As I understand it, the charging of calls from landlines has never commenced until the called subscriber answers and the connection is made. As we are generating a 'silent' call from a computer (having advised the customer that the phone will ring a couple of times!), if the customer doesn't have a chance to answer the call and, therefore, complete the connection, ergo, no call charges.

We did review the whole of the charging regime a couple of months ago so it will be fresh in someone's mind. I'll double-check but, I'm fairly confident of my statement.

There is also the "moral" question of customers being charged for the text they receive, if this is the set-up.

I dont know if it is the norm for such a charge to be made with all systems but when we first started having text back many years ago some customers, quite rightly, complained about this.

Also, we found that with Text Back it could not always be guarenteed that the customer would:
1- Actually receive the text immediately

2- Be sensible enough to hold on to the mobile to await the message rather than put it back in a handbag

3- Have a loud enough Message alert

So we dropped Text-Back and only use Call-Back.

Still can’t tell if Cabbyman rings back everyone (including mobiles) or just those who request it.

As far as I know, nobody charges a customer for ring or textback unless they’re called Scrooge Cabs. And let’s face it, at about 1p a time, there’s just as much benefits for the company and drivers as for the customers.

Regarding moral issues, using a secure automated system has to be better than relaying people’s private numbers to drivers so they can ring them. As far as I know, this is common practice for Scrooge Cabs and although they’ll argue they always seek the customers consent before doing this, we all know it’s impractical and just doesn’t happen.

Not being a taxi business, I can’t say which is better, but given we provide every conceivable option, the vast majority (90%+) seem to favour text for mobiles and ringback for landlines.

Our telephone patter informs the customer that 'your phone will ring a couple of times as the car pulls up.' The system includes ringback on the job by default.

This applies to mobiles and landlines. We make no charge to the customer and, as previously argued, I'm pretty certain we receive no billing from the telecoms provider.

I hope that clarifies things but, if not, please ask.

Our taxi company handles between 7 and 8 million bookings a year (50% more than Addison Lee), almost all of which have a ringback. We do the 2 second ring then hangup. Charges apply for line rental and for the small percentage of calls where customers pick up their phone within two rings, or if they're out of signal and it goes to their voicemail, in which case you get 2 seconds of their voicemail message.

We used to use ISDN lines with BT but saved money by installing a broadband bearer and having the calls made via a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) Service provider. Ours is all handled by voip.co.uk

It might be worth you speaking to them for advice. The top guy there is called Adam Chrisp. Good luck!

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