If you’ve ever stood on the street with your arm out desperately waiting for taxi, hunted for a taxi number, or been told there’s a 60-minute wait for a taxi, then Get Taxi is for you. Get Taxi lets you order a taxi, be informed it’s arrived and pay, or via an intuitive app and is designed for consumers and business accounts.
The thinking behind Get Taxi is to provide a safe method for women – and men – to order a taxi, as well as providing a quicker, more efficient service, by cutting out the middle man.
Get Taxi is available for Apple iOS, Android and BlackBerry. Launch the app and it uses your phones’ GPS to find your location. Click ‘Get Taxi’ and a map shows the nearest taxi’s current location, along with the estimated arrival time and distance (right). The cab moves across the map as it gets closer.
Once the taxi arrives a text message is sent to your phone (below), with information about the type of car and registration along with a phone number and photograph of the driver and the rating (something you are encouraged to do on completion of the journey).
Neat extras include a ‘Cancel Ride’ button and green dialler to directly call the cab – say for example you want to find out where it is or with any special directions. You can also pre-book a cab too.
Choose to pay cash or via a credit card – for which there’s no surcharge, unlike other cabs where there is typically a 12.5% extra. Once you enter your credit card details they are stored in the app.
So how does Get Taxi work? Get Taxi recruits taxi drivers and installs a GPS unit with a 3G sim card (worth £200) in the cabs. This is how information about rides is sent – so the driver doesn’t need to make calls. Get Taxi then takes 10% of each cash cab ride
Of course taxi security is an issue for many people. Get Taxi doesn’t recruit minicab drivers – in London they are all black cabs, who who trained for the knowledge. Currently 1000 taxi drivers have been recruited throughout London, with 1200-1500 on the waiting list.
The interaction – from the cab being ordered to it arriving – is monitored. In addition, any time a cab driver’s rating drops below three stars, he or she is de-listed.
Get Taxi is currently available in London, Russia and Israel with other regions and countries joining later.
We’re really impressed with Get Taxi, the interface is clean and user-friendly and it looks like an efficient way to order a cab. We’ll be road testing it very soon, so we’ll let you know how we find it.
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