I don't use a taxi app in Budapest -- the good old phone dispatchers still work just fine and I almost never wait more than 10 minutes for a cab -- but in Berlin I use the "MyTaxi" app all the time[0].
The thing I find interesting is that MyTaxi is loosely coupled with the drivers. There is no obligation to pick up MyTaxi fares, you can go about your business as a cabbie and take MyTaxi fares when business is slow. Seems to work quite well for the drivers.
This morning I had to wait probably 15 minutes before a driver took my MyTaxi order, but considering how bad the phone-dispatch service is in Berlin I call that a win.
Everything else is very Uber-like: electronic receipt, pay in app if you like, tracking of the car on its way to you (more or less).
Oh, and two very neat features: you see your cabbie's full name (this feels safer to me) and you can save them, after rating, to a "favorite drivers" list, which I assume the service will use to help improve customer satisfaction.
I had the same in Madrid. Tried to get a taxi for 15 minutes. After that time I had already walked to the next taxi rank and got in the first taxi there. Mytaxi always showed cabs close by but wasn't successful. Wasn't even a busy day, the taxi rank was more than full.
As much as I don't like uber, surge pricing can be a really helpful feature that I would like to have with cabs as well.
Or even just let cab companies compete on price, maybe with some limits. When they could compete on price in Budapest it's true that a lot of tourists got ripped off, but it was awesome if you could afford one of the more expensive companies. Once they introduced uniform pricing the better companies got flooded with calls and availability dropped... and tourists still get ripped off, but probably less often and usually when coming from the airport.
The thing I find interesting is that MyTaxi is loosely coupled with the drivers. There is no obligation to pick up MyTaxi fares, you can go about your business as a cabbie and take MyTaxi fares when business is slow. Seems to work quite well for the drivers.
This morning I had to wait probably 15 minutes before a driver took my MyTaxi order, but considering how bad the phone-dispatch service is in Berlin I call that a win.
Everything else is very Uber-like: electronic receipt, pay in app if you like, tracking of the car on its way to you (more or less).
Oh, and two very neat features: you see your cabbie's full name (this feels safer to me) and you can save them, after rating, to a "favorite drivers" list, which I assume the service will use to help improve customer satisfaction.
[0]: https://de.mytaxi.com/index.html