The other week I was delighted to meet with Neal Fullman, top man at GetTaxi UK. I’ve long been a big fan of the concept of GetTaxi ever since I heard it was coming to these shores. However I’ve not actually had the opportunity to use the service so Neal offered to pop down and give me a guided tour of their service. Although it’s incredibly simple to use, GetTaxi actually packs an array of superb features under the hood, especially for SMEs and enterprises. For the consumer though, the use-case is utterly simple:
1. Bring out your phone and run GetTaxi
2. Order a taxi and watch it arrive on the near-realtime map
3. Get into the taxi, arrive at your destination, done!
What’s really useful is the ability to store your credit card details so you never need to mess around with cash again. I find this a highly compelling feature. Indeed, in my mind it massively simplifies the whole scenario of getting a cab. I rarely carry wads full of cash so “getting a taxi” for me usually involves a visit to a cash point first — and if you’re in a part of town that’s not got a lot of those around, that can be very annoying.
The second key point that I love about this service concept is that you don’t need to hail or call a cab any more. They come to you. And they’re committed. I cannot stand it when I flag down a cab — usually in the late evening, in the rain — and find that the driver doesn’t actually stop. Instead he does a very slow ‘drive by’, sticks his window down, on the off chance you’re wanting to spend £100 going back to somewhere near his home. If not, then the drive chucks you a cursory “sorry mate” and speeds off. Yeah. Super-annoying. All those concerns disappears thanks to GetTaxi.
Anyway, to the video! Neal and I actually stood in Richmond Green and I filmed the order process over his shoulder. Then we got in the cab and I asked him some more questions about the service. Here’s the video:
As Neal mentioned, it’s no surprise that the enterprise features of GetTaxi are getting so much interest. I can seriously imagine whole firms moving their taxi policy to the likes of GetTaxi. Why bother with cash any more? And when so many of your employees either have their own smartphone or a company issued device, why not standardise?
You can be up and running with your credit card added on GetTaxi in about 60 seconds from installation. (Or even quicker if you just want to do a cash fare.)
Pick up the apps via these store links: iPhone | Android | BlackBerry
That looks fantastic, I loved using Cabulous and Uber in SF so I’m installing the app now just in case I ever need a cab when I’m in the city.
Question though… what happens if I want to pay by card and I use the app to hail a cab but during the journey my battery dies or my destination is underground with no signal? (Euston train station for example).
Thank you for making this site very interesting! Keep going! You’re doing very well!
the future is here!! love apps – love the gettaxi app!
Good news!
fantastic experience!! A+
good news!
I even told my friends to take a look at your blog and in fact your blog is already bookmarked on my computer. Hope to see more of this.
I had the opportunity to try GetTaxi on Monday to get from soho to South Kensington – it was an absolutely wonderful experience. Had a good chat with the cabbie about both GetTaxi and Hailo (he loves having both of them and hasn’t settled on a favourite yet) and at the end of the journey paid by Amex without any additional fees or fuss.
For a later journey from South Kensington to Waterloo I first tried Hailo (to compare the two) which told me that no cabs were available due to the peak time (it was around 6pm so that’s fair enough). I loaded up GetTaxi and was told it would take 6 minutes for the cab to arrive – I was about to hit the big green button when I looked up and saw a black cab with his light on so I hailed that and hit the red button in GetTaxi.
About halfway through the journey I realised I had no cash and I hadn’t told the cabbie that I wanted to pay by card (they all request you mention card payment at the beginning of the ride) not to mention the huge fees associated with cabs paid for by card… thankfully one of my companions had cash.
I’m absolutely SOLD on GetTaxi – even if I would have had to wait 6 minutes I think that’s quite reasonable in peak times and the benefit of using a card without penalty is great.
The experience was also far superior to Cabulous which I’d previously used in San Francisco.
I look forward to using it again soon!
Good news!
When might we see a launch in the US? LA to be specific for my needs???