Skip to main content

ComfortDelgro Taxi Launches New Taxi App, But Will It Beat GrabTaxi?

GrabTaxi has stolen ComfortDelgro Taxi's booking thunder since the app came into Singapore around April 2014. Comfort Taxi has launched a new app and will make this new app the de factor app by early March 2015.

Can a new design alone help ComfortDelgro Taxi kick GrabTaxi off its pedestal and regain its number one spot?

Comfort Taxi new app, ComfortDelgro Taxi Booking App, has a major design improvement from its predecessor. After you signed in, you will see the skyline of the Marina Bay area with different positions of the sun to show the various time of the day.

Though the booking feature is quite standard, it is an improvement from the previous design.

If you do decide to cancel, there is an option to feedback to ComfortDelgro the reason for the cancellation.

The new ComforDelgro Taxi app also has a menu button to select several options and the one that I liked most is the e-receipt option.

This eReceipt breaks down the various components of the taxi fare and you can email it to keep a permanent record of it. This is directly linked from the meter and as such only ComfortDelgro Taxi will have direct access to this.

I have received emails from GrabTaxi before but it doesn't break fare and can only give an estimate of the fare.

The new ComfortDelgro Taxi app is indeed a well done refresh to its previous app, which looked liked it was stuck in the 2000s with the advent of the smartphones. However, GrabTaxi has done more to disrupt the taxi booking scene that it will take more than just a new design to topple it.

From my discussions with taxi drivers using GrabTaxi, there are more benefits to using GrabTaxi than to get a booking from ComfortDelgro.

One of the benefits is that GrabTaxi charges a lower booking fee to taxi drivers than ComfortDelgro. Each booking from GrabTaxi costs the taxi driver about $0.20 while a booking from ComfortDelgro costs $0.30 with the 7% GST.  7% adds 2 cents to the total booking cost but a difference of $0.12 per booking will push drivers to use GrabTaxi.

Halio costs taxi driver $0.40 per booking and you can see why taxi drivers are not using this app.

GrabTaxi also has a "rewards" programs for drivers where a certain number of bookings a month qualifies the taxi driver for a reward, ranging from free credits to even mobile devices and tablets. Such "rewards" program was said to be non-existent with ComfortDelgro.

However, the race to be the number one Taxi Booking app will benefit both consumer and the drivers. Without the entry of GrabTaxi or the other taxi booking apps, ComfortDelgro would have continue to rest on it laurels and kept its year 2000ish app entering into the second decade of 2000.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Will mrbrown's post on Mr Tan Kin Lian's thermometer app "misadventure" promote technology ageism?

I am not ashamed to say I support Mr Tan Kin Lian as a presidential candidate because I believed in what he stood for. And when Mr Tan posted his "misadventure" with a thermometer app, I did shake my head in disbelief that he did that. Source:   http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/2013/07/we-could-have-had-him-for-president.html Thinking twice, there could be a possibility that Mr Tan misunderstood how this app work. Most  thermometer app take data from various weather stations to display the temperature on it. Yes, the technology savvy will do a #facepalm when they read the post and mrbrown's post demonstrated it perfectly. Wrote mrbrown , "Maybe the former Presidential-hopeful didn't realize he needed to upgrade to the Pro version of the app. Then his iPhone would not only measure temperature, it would also measure current PSI (PM2.5 included), tell you if you are having your period, and cook instant noodles. Good thing he didn't try to measure boil

How UOB's Paper Trail Amplifies IT Greatest Security Threat

UOB required you to do everything on paper. If you want to change your mobile number for your banking account with them or for your credit card, you need to fill up a form. Yet, this paper trail represented a potential security fail for the bank - Human Error. So a bitcoin expert walked into UOB to open a bank account. The bank employee had to print a form from a online pdf document to fill in this bitcoin expert's particulars. When it came to entering the bitcoin expert's email, that's when the forgotten art of handwriting was the most obvious of the digital generation. Wrote Robert Capodieci, My name is Roberto Capodieci, as most of you know. and my email address is very obvious to decode. It is not a p4l_l337_s0u1@gmail.com, but it is a more obvious roberto@capodieci.com, thing that, right after reading my name in the same form, should come out easy. Still, a data entry personnel of the UOB bank (or of a service provider the UOB bank uses) entered it as roberto

NEL Train Fault Shouts Lack Of Crisis Communication

The North-East Line train fault of 11 April 2018 was my virgin experience of a rush hour train fault since I moved to Punggol. One would have thought that with the number of train faults experienced by the North-East Line operator, SBS Transit, they would have improved the communications and handling of train faults. However, my personal experience told another story. First, there were no announcements at the Punggol LRT stations of the train fault even though SBS Transit manages them. The train fault was reported as early as 7.10am as I had a friend who was also stuck in the train. I boarded the LRT at Coral Edge around 7.30am and I didn't hear of any announcement nor was there any signage to inform me o the train fault at Punggol Station. Second, the announcement kept saying that there would be a 15 minutes delay, but 15 minutes passed and the trains, on both side, wasn't moving. If the announcement would be more frank to say it will be a longer delay, commuters would