The IT Nerd

Today and tomorrow I’m travelling to the US to see a couple of customers. This gives me a good opportunity to try out some tech that I’ve never used before, plus revisit some tech that I’ve written about in the past and pass along some tips. One thing that I’ve never had the chance to use before is Hailo which is an app that allows you to get a taxi and pay for it using your smartphone (iOS and Android versions are available). I used it for the first time today as my wife didn’t feel like getting up at 3AM to drive me to the airport and it was dead easy to use.

After downloading the app, you enter a credit card into the app. That way you never have to exchange cash with the driver or hand over your credit card to him or her. Payment right down to the tip is done electronically. Once that’s done, it uses the GPS functions of your phone to determine your current location and you can get a cab in two taps. So that you know who’s picking you up, you get a picture of the driver and the cab number. You can even phone the cab if you want. And according to the company, they also individually approve each driver. That creates a really good sense of security.

Once you’ve virtually hailed your cab, you can see it on a map head to your location in almost real time. When it is about a minute away, it will warn you that the cab is approaching. That’s a handy feature. You get in, travel to your destination and en-route you can pick your tip level and upon arrival rate your driver and pay. You can classify it as business or personal and you can get an invoice e-mailed to you.

Gripes? Only two. One of the things that the app can do for you is to help you to pick the destination. However I could not pick Pearson Airport. I could only pick the street address for one of the buildings on the airport grounds. the second gripe was that when I went to pay, the app quit unexpectedly. The payment process worked as the cab driver got paid and I got an invoice, but this is clearly a bug that needs to be addressed.

Hailo is currently available in London, New York, Toronto, Chicago, Boston, Washington DC, Dublin, Cork, Madrid, Barcelona and Osaka. It’s coming next to Montreal and Tokyo as well. If you’re in one of those cities, you should have a look at Hailo if you have an iPhone or an Android phone. The app for the most part does deliver on its promise to make it easy and safe to grab a cab and pay for it.

UPDATE: Version 3.2 was released after I wrote this review. It now has a feature called Places which uses Foursquare’s extensive database of locations to make it easier to find places you’re looking for. I haven’t tested it. But I will and I’ll write an updated review.

This entry was posted on November 11, 2013 at 5:16 am and is filed under Products with tags Hailo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.