Taxi Driver Online

Does anyone have any experience or heard anything about the time2taxi phone app.
Was approached at rank and offered this, its basically a phone app, which when logged on pinpoints your position and if your nearest the job you click accept or decline,for each job you take a £1 is billed to your phone account whether the fares a fiver or fifty quid.
The billing through your phone is a bit offputting imo,apparently contract jobs are credited to your phone.
Im just wondering if there would be much business from it.
If like me you hadnt heard of it then do the potential customers know of it?
Its a nationwide app.
Id be interested to hear others views, experiences. Chris.

i had a look at the bumph they gave me but cant really see why anyone in a radio company would want to sign up to it. if you're a streetcab it may be worth a look. if your cab is fairly fully shifted then you should definitely be paying less than £1 a job in radio fees so cant really see the point of paying extra for a newcomer when your currently paying less for a company with long established contracts and customers. if they reduced the fee to somewhere in the 20-25p region i may be interested but £1 is too much.

A few pointers, firstly this App is for Hackney cabs only

Billing is not not done through your phone at all, it is done via a CC or debit card

Contract jobs aren't credited to your phone either, you will be paid every 7 days

Customers will know about the Time2Taxi App because of the launch campaign that will be organised around Edingburgh (in this case)

For those not in the know, there is a similar App in London that has 6000 Hackney drivers using it and on average a trip is booked every minute by passengers that have downloaded this app and extra jobs from these apps, by the way, they also have radios, are between 3 and 10 jobs a day on average.

The radio companies also have nothing to fear as many passengers without a smart phone will continue to book via the companies as they do now.

As an example, the other day I watched 47 Hackney cabs drive back to the rank EMPTY, they then waited in line at the train station and most had to wait at least an hour before they reached the front of the cue. I have also known at one particular airport cabbies having to wait 4 hours for a fare.

This App will produce extra work for hackney drivers, over and above what is the norm, in today's economy I see nothing wrong in trying to increase a drivers earnings.

Should the cabbie get say 5 extra jobs from the app at £10 each job that is £45 extra in their pockets and if that turns out to be 5 extra jobs a day that will seriously increase their earnings, all they have to do is to quite simply leave the app running or even reject the job if it isnt right for them at the time

Thanks for the input guys, and thanks for the clarification John, that certainly appeals more that its done through your bank acc.
Im with you on what your saying, eg if im driving past cargo and get a£5er fare to scottish parliament im still £4 up.
Cant see what there is to loose.

Exactly my point,

As you say, if you are travelling from a-b without a fare, surely if the App goes off and you are nearby, it's quite simply extra money in your pocket from a fare that a Hackney wouldnt have normally got

I guess the acid test is whether the increase in business is enough to offset the cost. For radio taxis they will be potentially costing themselves jobs through their radio company by taking jobs through the app. The radio dues remain the same which has the net effect of averaging up their cost per job. Combine this with the higher cost per job of the app and we have the age old problem of continually discounting work.

One question I have for you John is what happens when you get a bogey(no show from customer)? I'm assuming the app has something built in to make sure you don't get charged for this?

Also, can you give us some idea of your general marketing strategy for the Edinburgh area? As a start up company without any actual business generated(i'm assuming) it may be a good idea to give all your potential drivers an idea of how you're going about creating business for them. What would attract customers more to your app than the current radio companies apps?

Hi Durr, I shall assume you aren't the poker player by that name

Firstly, offsetting costs? There are NO costs to offset

I shall assume you are a Hackney Driver/Owner who also uses the ranks and has a Radio and a Link with a taxi operator

Should the App "go off" then you have a fare in the same way as if you pick one up from a hail or the ranks, I don't know what radio system you use or if when you pick up a fare that the radio Company knows that you aren't free. I would guess the odds of the App going off and the radio calling at exactly the same time are very minimal. Even if it did that is no different from you picking up a hail.

In my opinion I think for any companies that welcome and take this App on board they will see an increase in drivers and of course more radio fees as the driver begin to earn more money along side their current work, as can be seen in London with a similar App

For no shows the system does indeed have a built in system and detail can be found in the T&C's at www.time2taxi.com

Regarding your comment about the radio companies, Keep the radio, keep doing exactly what you are doing now, how often have you driven back to the rank empty? Or waited an hour at the rank for a fare? So this costs you time and money, but what about if you are driving back to a,b or C and the App goes off giving you a fare along with extra income and also saving you fuel by not being empty

We do NOT want you to stop using the Radio, we aren't a Taxi Operartor we are simply providing the driver with a smarter way of working and increasing their earnings potential by simply downloading an App and having it on whilst driving around.

If you would like to PM me I will give you the contact details for the T2T area manager, where you can discuss this more should you wish

There will be a long trial period for the drivers were you will see the potential of the product and it will be FREE, so what has any Hackney cabbie got to lose?

Nothing from my point of view

As for marketing strategy there are to many things to list on here at the moment but rest assured that WE ARE ALREADY OPERATING IN OTHER MAJOR CITIES, the first City to launch was Bristol, visit their Facebook page to see the pictures of the launch

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Time2Tax ... ts&fref=ts

Finally attracting customers to use the App

Never go outside in the rain again, no need to ever ask a receptionists a barman for a number, for women and vulnerably people who would never walk to the ranks alone they now have no need, They just click a button. If they leave something in the cab, they now know where it is and can contact the driver. Simply they never have to search for a number or person to find them a number ever again

Driver safety, never worry about the driver not paying again, causing a fight, throwing up etc etc, we know who they are as we have their phone number etc etc

Sorry about the delay in the reply i just assumed a would receive a notification about this link

John

Will this be extended to Glasgow?

Indeed it will, as stated earlier I am one of the area managers but not for Scotland, they are away at the moment so I took it upon myself to reply on their behalf

From my own point of view I would just say, what have the drivers got to lose, unless of course you know any different and I will take those views on board and of course reply to them

The launch in Manchester and Liverpool will happen this month

I'm not a member of a radio circuit and just work the streets. This would seem ideal for me as I also don't have a driver on the cab. I gave up my radio as it wasn't cost effective. But this seems ideal as I would only pay for it when/if I got a fare from it.
Keep us posted.

I have sent you a PM with the area managers phone and email details

Hi. i downloaded the app a good few days ago but am still waithing on someone calling back to complete sign up process.
I think the £1 per job charge to be a little high and have since signed up and joined a similar App that is 50p per job.
Good luck with the app though.

If me you pm me your mobile, I will find out why you havent been called

Yes there is an App that charges 50p, all I ask is have you read there T&C's ?

When a passenger click this App, they are firstly offered a fixed fare, it is my guess that 99% of the punters will agree

Read the T&C and you will see this costs you 2 credits, £1, assuming I have guessed the company correctly thats starts Cab:

If you read further into the T&C's and the customer pays by CC, you dont get you money until the credit card payment has cleared their bank account, they then charge you a fee to receive your money.

There is no reason you cant use lots of Apps at the same time, giving you a wider chance of getting extra fares

Hi John,

Thanks for the detailed reply, much appreciated. I'm certainly not trying to knock the app and the likelihood is that I may well give it a bash to see how it affects my takings. Not sure you're quite getting where I'm coming from about the discounted work though as this is my general bugbear. The fact is that if I as a radio taxi used the app I'm effectively increasing my cost per job of my radio work whilst also paying even more to yourselves per job than my radio work. If I'm on a job thru the app I'm knocking myself out the radio system and it's potential(less discounted) jobs for the duration of that job. That could well average over an hour a day out the radio system. So the big question is, is it worth continually discounting work to gain more work? The answer is probably yes but it's where it's all leading to that worries me. I know the demographics of attaining business are always changing and apps are an ever increasing way of gaining work but it's us drivers that are the ones having to pay for discounted fares. The app may be free but £1 discount on every job is really quite a lot in these very tough times for us drivers.