Taxi Driver Online

Apologies for the shameless plug, but hopefully this will be of genuine interest to everyone!

http://www.airportbytaxi.com are the UK's first internet price directory for airport taxi fares. Using example fares submitted by taxi firms, users of the website can get a quote from their home town to the airport of their choice within seconds, giving a list of taxi firms, their prices, details about their vehicles and so on.

A number of taxi firms are already signed up, but the key to it's (and all it's subscribers) success is total UK coverage, therefore they have a special offer for new subscribers available online - a £10 six month trial subscription.

It's only available to taxi firms covering counties not yet listed on the site, so it's worth going for while it's still available (as a 6 month full-price subscription is £60!)

If anyone has any questions I'm happy to field them![/url]

Perhaps Taxi Driver Online should have a £10 charge for folks that wish to plug their wares.

We could then send old TDO on a nice holiday somewhere with the money.

Some cruel people might say the further the better.

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IDFIMH

If we could charge £1 a post with all proceeds to the Dusty benevolent fund then that would be very nice indeed

Trouble is we'd probably end up with a dead forum

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

And a pot-less Sussex.

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IDFIMH

so if £60 for six months in the introduction offer what is full price.
sound like one of those fly by night subscribe now and here nothing ever again websites.

no direct postal address or fixed landline makes it worse!

thanks for your comments steveo

Full price for 6 months subscription is £60, but we understand people can be apprehensive when it comes to websites - hence the offer of £10 for 6 months to let you dip your toe in!

There's nothing I can say on a discussion forum to reassure you totally that we're not a fly-by-night (believe me, we've seen other taxi websites and can see what you mean)... but we have to have a PO BOX for ease of mail collection, and we have to have a non-geographic number to show that we're nationwide and not tied down to a single area.

I hope you'll see the potential in our vision of getting people to consider taxis rather than automatically getting ripped off for airport parking, and give us a try![/b]

Since it's easy to compare prices for identical trips then I can see the attraction from the punter's point of view, but if you're not offering the cheapest service then I can't see the attraction from the trade's viewpoint.

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

It's more than a price comparison website - we found through our initial research that people don't consider the price alone.

That's why if your firm has, for instance, executive vehicles on offer, an icon displaying this appears next to your company name; and customers may well be interested to see that for not much extra they could get a 'posh' car to the airport to start their holiday in style.

Of course, it's also a good way to gauge your fares.... and 'good for punters' is good for everyone in the end, as more people will consider airport taxis.

Of course, if you sign up to a 'new' county now then you'll have the luxury of being the only listing in your area!

Yes, I don't doubt that there are 'pros' to the system - which you are clearly more than capable of outlining yourself, but of course you won't outline the 'cons', which is of course what we in the trade will do

My point about the pricing comparison is that from the punter's point of view it will make the dearer firms instantly uncompetitive and also drive down prices, which clearly isn't good for the trade.

But as you say, people don't shop on the basis of price alone, but to that extent I think websites like your own can be misleading if there is no proper grading system. Who, for example, decides whether the designation 'executive' is merited, and what exactly does 'posh' mean?

I've know firms to offer executive services and the like, but it's often just the usual cars and drivers but perhaps given a wash beforehand and a pair of chinos worn instead of the usual jeans and trainers.

In some ways your site could ease comparisons, but in other ways it may be misleading, since it's easy to compare price, but not quality.

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

no disrespect matty but this is the sort of website that plauges many a small business. in my old business i used to get serveral phone calls a week from various directory or listing type website all offering to be the only one listed in my area for a fee, and never to here of that website ever again, so please pardon my Scepticism.

is this the student project you were starting a few months ago?
http://www.taxi-driver.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1616&highlight=

Thanks for that TDO, there's some good points there that we can take onboard.

Steveo - well spotted, though I must come clean and admit we were just doing a little market research back then.... I'm a little old to be a student!

Just to field the point about price comparison/bringing down prices

Would you rather have 100 airport taxi customers a year paying a £80 fare, or 200 paying a £60 fare?

The problem arises when your competitors start doing it for £50.

When it comes to airport fares, the only one thing that is certain is that someone will always under cut you.

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IDFIMH

On a simple profits comparison then it would depend on costs - unless costs were greater than £40 then the 200 paying £60 would be preferable.

If your costs were £30 (say) then with the dearer runs you'd make £50 a run, thus profits of £5k. But with the cheaper runs you'd make £30 a run, but this would yield a profit of £6k, thus you'd be £1k better off with the cheaper runs.

However, you might be making a grand more in profits, but you're taking twice the time to make only 20% more profit, so is the extra time expended really worth it?

However, I think the problem that some firms may have with your system is that (going on the ones I've looked at) then if you have two similar firms offering the same service then it's a no-brainer - the £60 firm gets all the work, while the £80 firm gets jack.

So the £80 firm goes down to £55, so the first firm goes down to £50 and so on, and a price war develops and no one wins.

Likewise, if you have two firms competing for the same job on your site and both are offering the same price then they will both be reluctant to raise their prices, because if you assume that with the same price then they each get half the work, then if one raises its prices then it will end up with jack and the other will get all the work.

Of course, it's not as straightforward as that, but my first impression on looking at your system is that it would be attractive to customers, but not to the trade because it makes price comparisons too easy.

One presentational point - why aren't your URLs and email addies to external sites active?

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

As we agreed before - there's more to compare than just price, and people don't always go for the cheapest. If you do a search on a Hotel website, you don't automatically choose the cheapest, you look at the details of the hotel before you make your choice. That's the beauty of airportbytaxi.com - when you click on a taxi firm, we show as much information as the taxi firm wants us to display, including details of the actual cars available for example.

We haven't had a problem with deliberate and constant under-cutting by a small amount as yet, but we have identified that we would need to take steps to discourage this if it occured in the future.

My point previously was about economies of scale - millions are wasted each year on airport parking because people don't yet have the mindset to consider a taxi. Airportbytaxi.com is looking to change that, and even if your taxi firm features alonside 5 others, you'll still gain as there is more business available due to the increased awareness.

The web/email links - just an oversight i'm afraid, I'll get our designer to change that!