| rev:text
| - Shut the front door! I can reserve my cab on the interwebs? Meowzah!
Sure can! At least with Associated, I haven't checked with anyone else yet. It's Christmas party season and I anticipated a super long wait time to get through the dispatch to reserve myself a cab out to a friend's birthday party. 11 minutes on hold with #TAXI and then another 7 minutes on hold with Associated while I waited for one of their customer service people to come on the line and take my address. I considered myself lucky having waited less than 20 minutes at 630 on a Saturday... and even luckier still when my cab was here within 15 minutes of that. I had budgeted about an hour just to be on the safe side.
On my way to my friend's house, I communicated my delight at the short wait times on the phone. My cab driver smiled and said, "You know, you can also reserve your cab on our website. Everyone has a phone with internet these days! It's so fast. The problem isn't getting a cab, it's getting through to dispatch. This cuts it down! And you can even check and see if a cab is on its way to you after you've reserved it."
SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!!!! How is this the first I'm hearing about this?
We predrink a bit at my friend's house before heading out. I decided to test the website reservation feature. I head to Associated's website. It looks a little archaic and I was skeptical about the online reservation system. But I clicked the button, input my name, phone number and pickup address and hit "book." Within seconds, I had a confirmation number. It took me a little bit of snooping to find the spot to track my reservation after that (hint: Click on online reservations again, click book online, and from there you'll see a menu option that says "track & modify my order. If you're on a mobile phone, do this in a separate web browser from your confirmation number so you don't lose it easily.) This was at 8:20pm and I had reserved our cab for 8:45pm. Around 8:41pm, I plugged in my phone number and confirmation number to check on the status of our cab. It was only 1km away! Refreshing the page brought me more updates. Right up until it said our cab had arrived. We headed outside... but there was no cab! Egads! As I was expressing my dismay at what had so far been a painless process, our cab rounded the corner and we were on our way.
Lesson: Skip the phone and order your cab online.
Improvements to the system: I was expecting a text message confirmation at the very least. Adding this to the system so I don't have to log on from my phone to check the order status would make this process a 5-star one in my books! Also, a text message or a call when the cab arrives out front (like what you get when you phone dispatch or use #taxi) would also be wonderful!
Anyway, kudos to driver from Associated Cab #88 for telling me about the online reservation system. He totally made my evening!
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