What's with all this "gentle giant", "ape", "large lad".... just 'cos you've lost a few pounds?
Anywaysanall, I jotted down a brief list of feedback that might or might not interest them, have I overlooked anything of significance?
Discounts - Drivers who engage with the depot, providing feedback, are told they aren’t allowed charge the booking fee as per fare card but the T&Cs communicated drivers in general suggest drivers are allowed charge full fare in accordance with local tariffs.
Hospitality jobs - Banner doesn’t always display in app. An opt out facility (as previously available with Hail0) is desirable.
Airport pick ups - Passengers aren’t being directed to the pick up points given to drivers. Pick up points aren’t always accessible, DAA staff seem to be unaware of the arrangement the authority has with mytaxi.
Driver App:
General - Client side programming is poor at best resulting in unnecessary delays in the User Interface updating as it waits for irrelevant responses from the server. Effects include:
- delays in displaying the appropriate action button (Go Free/Go Busy/Etc) when the app is called from background to foreground.
- delays in loading fare input screen.
- unnecessary inputs and delays in fare input process.
Users don’t need to watch and wait for interactions between the app and the server. Hail0’s UI understood that which is undoubtedly why the vast majority of drivers view the mytaxi app as a poor man’s Hail0. Using the fare input as an example, with Hail0 I entered the fare pressed a button to confirm and the app immediately told me I was free whereas mytaxi feels a need to tell me that it’s processing what I entered and eventually ask me to press OK when it’s done before telling me I’m free. As a user I don’t need to know what it’s doing and I don’t care how long or how many attempts it takes to process the fare, my bit is done when I enter the fare.
Non existent jobs - Whatever way jobs are dispatched seems to result in countless offers that don’t materialise in jobs if accepted. As a driver gets used to the accept button doing nothing other than displaying a bouncing car for a short time he loses interest and certainly won’t refuse a street hail during the time it takes the app to decide whether to give him the job or not. I appreciate that offering jobs to several drivers at a time is designed to improve efficiency for riders and/or encourage drivers to accept faster, perhaps without thinking about the cost/benefit implications. However, one of the things that makes Uber’s driver app infinitely better than mytaxi’s is the fact that all job offers materialise in jobs if accepted within the allotted time.
Distance to jobs - it seems that the mytaxi app aims to display the driving distance but reverts to straight line distance if it’s unable to obtain driving distance (for whatever reason e.g. unable to connect to Google, Google flood limit hit, etc). On the face of it driving distance provides better information but Hail0 used straight line distance which resulted in all jobs appearing to be further away when drivers switched to the new app. This undoubtedly contributed to problems riders reported on (social) media during rebranding. Interestingly, a colleague who highlighted the precise cause of this issue was told by support not to waste it’s time! Obviously, the different methodologies cause some confusion among driverssettinc their radius sliders.
Mapping - The navigate facility was a useful addition but the button is too big and in the wrong place as it frequently covers the pick up flag. The map zooming in as the driver approaches the job is a vast improvement from the Hail0 app but it’s not perfect as it often over-zooms leaving the pick up flag off the displayed area. The (blue line) route doesn’t always display. It tends to fail to load for several consecutive jobs at a time suggesting that Google’s flood limits are being hit.
Navigation - The app passes latitude and longitude to the Google Navigation app. Most of the time that works well but occasionally the results are poor e.g. if the coordinates relate to the back of a house it might navigate to the road behind the address. Passing the Eircode or text address where available would work better.
Tolls - The facility to enter tolls at the fare input stage has improved the process but why not have the figure automatically appear, perhaps in editable form. There’s only a handful of toll roads in Ireland so it wouldn’t take a whole lot of time/effort to geofence them. Uber does it!
Destinations - Displaying job destinations on the offer screen could increase acceptance rates and would increase commission revenue as good jobs would be unlikely to be left uncovered.
Job Feedback - The in app procedure for reporting errors and claiming no contact fees is unnecessarily cumbersome, often requiring drivers to type what is already blatantly obvious from the option selected. As an aside I find some of the (presumably automated) responses to error reports obnoxious and condescending. I note from taxi fora that many of my colleagues agree with me. Providing defined inputs to report errors suggests that the firm expects a certain level of errors to occur, in which case you should accept that a driver who makes an error and reports the fact that he made an error knows that he made an error hence he doesn’t need to be told to be more careful in future.
