To Grab A Cab Faster - Use GrabTaxi App.

The last post I wrote was about two months ago, in February. Some of my friends and readers have asked: ‘Hey, Are you all right?. Are you still driving a cab?’. Surely, some must have also wondered whether I'm still around in this world!. Unsurprising. At 67 and still driving a cab on our busy roads, anything could have happened to me, right?! Well, Thanks God, I'm OK! but I owe everyone an explanation for being quiet thus far.

Like I've said before, my explanation is quite simple. Apart from getting older and lazier, I'm not enjoying cab driving as much as I used to.

Strangely, I still like to blog but I write only when I've something interesting and worth sharing, if not, I would only be spewing old stuff and wasting everybody’s time. I would rather be quiet and spent time reading and enjoying other brilliant writers' blogs like those I follow here.

Here, I also promise not to repeat the subject matter of my three preceding paragraphs again. It's boring!.

Now, I think I've something worth sharing. It's GrabTaxi App.- a third party taxi booking application which commuters can download onto their smartphones to book and get a cab faster than your call booking to COMFORT. You can read more of this application at this link GrabTaxi. and the story of the founder of GrabTaxi here.  (Link)

This free GrabTaxi App. is super efficient because it locates and alerts ALL brands of cabs (Comfort, SMRT, TransCab, Premier etc) closest to your pick-up point. Therefore, your chance of getting a cab is better and faster. If you call Comfort to book a cab, ONLY Comfort taxis get your messages. So, by simple law of probability, GrabTaxi App. is more efficient because your call booking goes to ALL taxi companies, not just Comfort cabs. Your net is casted wider.

Apart from helping taxi commuters to get a cab faster, GrapTaxi App. also helps taxi drivers to improve their income from more call booking and trips. I hope more taxi commuter and taxi drivers (including Comfort taxi drivers) use this App.

Please allow me to digress a bit. 

Presently, many taxi drivers join Comfort/CityCab because of their copious amount of call bookings and certainly not because of their better incentives, cheaper rental or treatment of drivers. If taxi drivers of SMRT, TransCab, Premier gets more taxi bookings from GrabTaxi App., more taxi drivers will join these taxi companies, not just Comfort. When that happen, hopefully Comfort will treat their drivers better than what they do now. 

Right now, Comfort runs the biggest fleet of taxis in Singapore with about 16,000 taxis, i.e. about 61% of the market share. Therefore, they monopolize the taxi industry and is the "Big Brother". Usually, they set the taxi fares, rental rates, terms/incentives for hirers, etc and other taxi companies follow close to it.

Now, I understand from my taxi buddies that Comfort sack their drivers at their whims & fancy because they have a long "Q" taxi drivers desperately waiting to join them. In addition, my buddies stressed that there is an economic reason for their vicious action in getting rid of drivers who commit trivial mistakes or received frivolous passengers' complaints. 

My buddies explained to me that for every hirer of Hyundai Sonata taxi they sacked, Comfort gets an additional rental income of $10 per day when they lease out the same taxi to a new hirer. 

The old-expelled hirer pays $105 rental per day but a new hirer now pays $115 for the same taxi... a difference of $10/taxi/day. If only 5,000 hirers of Sonata taxis (Comfort has about 12,000 Hyundai Sonata ) are sacked and the same taxi is re-cycled to new hirer, Comfort gets an additional rental income of 5,000 taxis x $10 x 365 days = $18,250,000 per year! 

Wow! $18 million a year! With this astronomical amount of easy money, which can come in as extra year end bonus, gives COMFORT office staffs that added incentive to strive harder for that "you-know-what" target. So, you now know why Comfort sack their drivers quickly esp. Sonata taxi hirer.

My buddies are probably poking fun at Comfort or their stories are just urban legends. On the other hand, how do you debunk or reconcile this "myth" when Comfort has an incentive scheme to reward passengers who lodge successful complaints against taxi drivers with free gift of taxi vouches worth close to a hundred buck! To Comfort, more customer complaints and more sacking means more easy money.

Comfort and myself are supposed to be partners in the taxi business. One cannot survive without the other. Yet, behind my back and in the name of protecting their brand of taxi, you have a partner who has devious schemes to back stab you needlessly. This is what I call betrayal in a partnership! Nevertheless, I still like to believe what my buddies told me is purely a "myth".

Now, coming back to our GrabTaxi App. As Singapore runs on a free economy platform where consumers has the freedom of choice, the foregone conclusion is that taxi booking will eventually be dominated by GrabTaxi, Uber or another company simply because super-efficient App. taxi booking will replace out-dated call booking. This is evidenced by Temasek's recent multi-millions dollars investment in GrabTaxi.

For too long, Comfort has relied on its market dominance and has stagnated in improving its services. The arrival of GrabTaxi has quickly shown how outdated many parts of Comfort’s business model are. 

To survive and thrive, Comfort needs to refocus on its core business, that of leasing cabs to drivers with better rental rates and treatment of their drivers, among others!

Read more: Why GrabTaxi is giving Singapore’s largest taxi operator a run for its money http://www.techinasia.com/grabtaxi-eat-comforts-lunch/

Install GrabTaxi App. here (Install)

 

P/S: I think my Comfort Days are numbered !!
. (24th April 2014)
.!!

Updated on 1st Sept 2014
True enough, I was terminated on 28th Aug, 2014.
Read my post about my termination here. ( Link )