I often go out on the town for a few delicious Anheuser-Busch products, and I make it a habit to never drive home. If you pass the parking lot of a bar on a Friday morning you will most likely see my POS parked in the lot. So if I didn't drive home, how did I get home? I called a cab of course.
Being a smart person with a plan in place, I am prepared for the night ahead. I have 4 cab numbers programmed in my phone, and also have a laminated card in my wallet that contains all the cab numbers. I have been out enough to know how long it will take depending on the day of the week and I make sure to call the cab before I am ready to go home.
So I call the cab and tell them to pick me up at the bar. This poses a problem however as there are 50 other drunk people looking to get home as well at the same time, and unlike me they are not super nerdy about preparing for a ride home.
So my cab driver calls me saying he will arrive in 1 minute and as I head outside 5 drunk a-holes get into my cab. The driver just drives away with the passengers as I chase behind. the cab driver says "Are you Chris?" and anyone can just say "Yes" WTF that's the worst process ever. What does the driver care who he picks up, its money no matter what. Plus he doesn't get reprimanded for doing it.
So I call again, and another cab is sent out. By this time there are just clusters of people standing outside the bar. It is going to be a fight for the cab, and groups usually trump individuals in the fight.
After losing several cabs and ending up waiting for hours in the cold, I developed a new strategy. Instead of calling a cab to pick me up at the bar address, I find another location, across the street or around the corner. As long as the bar is not "on the way" to my secret location, I usually get the cab without any trouble. However, the problem with this strategy is that at a bar, I could just sit in the warm heat while waiting, but if I'm 100 yards away I have to go out in the cold and wait there for the cab. If it showed up and I wasn't there, it would just leave.
So what is the point of this story? The point is that Taxi Magic should add a feature where the passenger is sent a code that the driver must verify. That way the driver knows they picked up the correct person. That puts some accountability on the driver to actually provide good customer service for the brand they work for and for Taxi Magic.
The End
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