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Taxi hailing apps fail expectations
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China’s two major taxi hailing applications hoped to outbid each other when they started offering more incentives to drivers and passengers who book cabs or pay fares through mobile payment apps, but passengers complained when demand exceeded their payment and transaction network capacity.
China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba-backed Kuaidi Taxi raised the minimum subsidy for passengers to 13 yuan (US$2.14) per ride yesterday after rival Didi Taxi said earlier yesterday that it will cut at least 12 yuan and a maximum 20 yuan for each taxi ride that are paid through Tencent’s WeChat payment service.
In Shanghai, the starting fare for a cab is 14 yuan.
Drivers will also get extra bonus for each order they receive through the taxi apps.
Kuaidi Taxi vowed that it will “outbid our rival by 1 yuan no matter what they’re offering.” It is also offering 15,000 passengers free taxi rides, while Tencent-backed Didi Taxi will offer WeChat users free items in one of its popular smartphone games.
The two companies started to offer the incentives last month but the price war has escalated since Monday as heated competition in the mobile payment sector extended to taxi hailing as Tencent and Alibaba hope to boost use of mobile payments.
But some passengers complained the apps could not cope with demand.
A Shanghai office lady surnamed Chen said she failed to pay through the Didi Taxi app and she had to pay cash.
“I hope the taxi apps ensure the stable operation of their network before starting to woo consumers with cash incentives like this,” she complained.
Passengers also left messages on Didi Taxi and Kuaidi Taxi’s official microblog page on Sina Weibo to complain the apps failed to locate their positions.
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