This is pretty neat.
I’ve used taxi booking text services before and invariably the are rather smart. I don’t like speaking to people on the phone. I don’t have a nervous tick or anything when it comes to dialing folk I don’t know, it’s just I don’t like uncertainty in the form of a stupid telephone agent. You know when you try to book a cinema and you say ‘Lakeside’ and the human on the other end of the phone says ‘London? Ok,’ and you have to spell everything out phonetically to get anywhere. Then trying to read out your card details to the numbskull becomes eminently painful. The author of this piece, Stuart Corner, feels my pain too — as (Australian) speech recognition systems don’t like his North of England accent too much.
So texting is good.
If you want a taxi in Brisbane, it won’t cost you more than a standard text message to book your ride.
Link: iTWire – Book your cab via SMS
Unlike telephone bookings, there is no surcharge applied to the taxi fare: the caller pays only for the SMS at whatever rate their mobile plan charges. They also do not have to wait, at busy times, for the phone to be answered.
MTX’s Pocket Portal mobile application provides travellers with the option of downloading a series of booking forms to their mobile phone. Once downloaded, the forms sit locally on the handset, allowing customers to enter their booking details for as many regular pickups they want, or for one-off pickups, and then to book a cab simply by sending an SMS.
It’s not just text — they’ve also, smartly, implemented a mobile application for booking rides. Genius. They licensed the technology from UK developer Amplefuture. So, if you’ve ever booked Addison Lee online, I imagine the mobile version works very similar. Smart.
Speaking of which, it’s just ridiculous that this sort of mobile application system doesn’t exist for 1) Addison Lee and 2) black taxis in London.
You know who’d be good at implementing something like that on the front-end for the consumer? ShopQwik. Mark from ShopQwik is, incidentally, coming to the SMS Text News Unlimited Drinks on Thursday.
Funnily enough we have been working on a solution with a partner and will be releasing before the year is out.
Its taken a little longer because we’ve been looking to produce at least a European wide product that we could add more locations if more suppliers signed up.
Eventually it would be nice to get more than one quote and pick the best one for you based on wait time and price.
Mark
Has anyone else used Virgin trains automated telephone booking service? I would rather stand in front of the 12:50 to Holyhead than ever attempt to use their “did you mean Llangollen” when I said “Chester” arse of a system. And then trying to tell it that I wanted 1st class instead of the super-chav-saver-weekend-discount-only-on-days-with-the-letter-z-in-it ticket was just head banging against a wall stuff. I swear the automated robot voice that said “I’m sorry, your accent sounds like you are dribbling after drinking 10 pints of cheap lager” had sarcasm in it!!
So the theory of booking things without having to speak to humans who invariably read from cue-cards, are intelligence-impaired and don’t speak the local language sufficiently well is a blessing. But the technology has some way to go before speaking to an automated robot works well enough. So texting – yes that’s the answer. Parsing a piece of text that reads “chester” and figuring you meant “llangollen” just won’t ever happen!! So bring it on, let text ordering blossom!
steve/itagg.com
As a resident of Brisbane, I can confirm they’ve actually had SMS ordering for a long time. No fancy apps or forms, just text your name, pickup, destination, and number of people to a standard number (0428 13 1924 ), and they’ll dispatch you a cab. Don’t make the message clear enough, and you’ll get a text back telling you that you need to re-order, which can loosely be translated as “sober up”.
If Yellow Cabs have a new system that involves fancy Java/Symbian software, they’re yet to announce it on their website (yellowcab.com.au).
I just text my cab company with my details and thats how I bookmy taxis. I’ve had no problems when booking my taxis from Heathrow Airport. The company I normally use is http://www.heathrowminicabs.com . they have always been reliable for me. Sometimes I just book online as well.
can sumone call me a taxi