To be fair, the level up bonus was quite the reverse, erm. Those who were loyal supporters of the firm got shat upon.
I’m not sure how important loyalty is in modern business, particularly within firms with disruptive agendas. There’s an inherent conflict between firms like mytaxi and it’s customers (taxi drivers) as it’s strategic objective is to put them (us) out of business having tactically squeezed them (us) for every cent it can get along the way. Hail0 lost the trust of drivers in it’s home town when it introduced private hire vehicles to it’s fleet. mytaxi lost the trust of drivers in it’s homeland when it tried to introduce variable commission rates of up to 30%. In Ireland, Hail0 makes no secret of it’s desire to dilute it’s drivers’ incomes by openly lobbying for more taxis despite demanding discounts of up to 36% from it’s current drivers and despite it’s plan to cover 25% of it’s taxi rides with autonomous vehicles within 9.36 years.
MfH, not unusually, hit the nail on the head. The price elasticity of supply and demand dictates that offering lower fares increases demand. mytaxi’s discounts aren’t restricted to the PUC that the driver suffers. It frequently distributes vouchers to riders, discounting fares by up to 100%. In fact ,it drove me and mine to and from DAP free of charge this summer and has driven me home from the bar free of charge on a number of occasions. I’ve also seen the firm advertise half price taxis in London and I’ve heard of similar offers in a few rural villages around Ireland. The firm invests a lot of money in it’s attempts to monopolise our trade. MfH has also posted links to lobbying records. I’d suggest that every taxi driver, every taxi company and every single one of our unions should monitor those links and make sure those being lobbied are made aware that demand is being distorted by a firm that openly admits that it’s main objective is to harvest data for it’s parent company, Daimler.
I doubt mytaxi/Daimler have any intention of allowing drivers charge full fare. It’s interest lies in buying data and controlling customers. Charging customers full fare would reduce demand and therefore reduce the volume of data harvested and the volume of customers it controls. The only argument in favour of reducing demand is that it can’t cope with current levels. That doesn’t seem to bother mytaxi, while it might whinge at the authorities for more taxis it still throws vouchers around like confetti at a wedding, the confetti being at the wedding not necessarily the vouchers.
The irony in all of this is that while we are pawns in Daimler’s game, Daimler is a pawn in a much bigger game. While it invests billions of euros of it’s R&D budget in buying data for mytaxi, mytaxi openly shares all of that data with it’s main competitors via Google APIs. Google and Apple might seem to be being generous to Daimler et al in allowing them access to powerful software free of charge and in not pursuing commission on income generated by applications distributed by their toy shops but those firms aren’t noted for their generosity.