Has GrabTaxi reinvented itself in Pattaya?

[wpcoe]

In the beginning (several years ago) I was a frequent user of GrabTaxi as the price was quite reasonable (actual metered fare + B50) and drivers responded quickly.  As time went by, the prices went up -- way up! -- when they stopped using the meter and used some proprietary fare calculation.  The past couple years I've only used them between my home in Jomtien and Bangkok-Hospital Pattaya or the Pattaya Nua bus terminal.  The fare has been around B300.  Sometimes B270, sometimes B320, but generally B300.

 

Today I was running late, having intended to use the baht bus up Thepprasit and then up Sukhumvit.  In addition to me getting a late start, it was taking forever for the bus on Thepprasit to fill up, so in an act of desperation, I fired up the Grab app and requested a ride.  After over a dozen "no drivers available" messages I got a driver to accept my ride.  I had entered PTY75 in the promotion field to get a B75 discount, and then the app showed a price of B134.  Wow!  Even without a B75 discount, that's only B209 -- a BIG reduction.

 

Next new thing was waiting at FoodMart for the driver, the app said he was there, but I didn't see him.  Then he called and said he was right in front of me.  He WAS!  In a plain white sedan with no markings.  Didn't see that coming.  Literally.

 

When we arrived at the hospital he showed me his phone indicating a B134 fare, so I gave him B140 and thanked him.

 

When I got home the usual e-mail receipt was in my inbox.  Get this:  The B134 was BEFORE the PTY75 discount, and I should have paid B59.  Oh, my.  I sent an e-mail asking for a THB75 credit, but beyond that, why doesn't the app show the full fare MINUS the discount and indicate the amount to be paid?  Apparently the drivers don't know either?  How easy will it be to avoid an argument when a passenger insists on paying B75 less than the app shows?

 

Regardless of the discount, it seems (a) the fares have come WAY down and (b) they no longer exclusively use metered taxis?

[tolsti]

I use Grab several times every week. Never had a problem for my route from central Pattaya to Pratumnak or from Wongamat to Pratumak. The promotions pop up on my screen regularly  and I am currently using the 75bht discount. 

 

Did you miss the 100 Bht discount last month?

 

 

[1BADDAT]

Its called Grab now and they have Grab Taxi, Grab Bike, and Grab Car.  You don't have to be a taxi driver to drive for them, much like Uber.

[wpcoe]

7 hours ago, tolsti said:

I use Grab several times every week. Never had a problem for my route from central Pattaya to Pratumnak or from Wongamat to Pratumak. The promotions pop up on my screen regularly  and I am currently using the 75bht discount. 

 

Did you miss the 100 Bht discount last month?

 

Have you noticed the fares drop over the past few months?

 

As recently as 16-Jan-2017, I used Grab from Bangkok Pattaya-Hospital to Jomtien and the fare was B325.  That route in reverse today was B134 (before applying discount).  That's a big drop.  Maybe today was a fluke?

 

On 02-Feb-2017, I used Grab from Home Pro North Pattaya (the one on Sukhumvit) to Jomtien and the fare was B300.

 

I knew about the B100 discount,  but in general I'd become so disillusioned with Grab Taxi that I only used them when absolutely necessary.  e.g. Semi-ambulatory from hospital, or when buying enough items at HomePro that using a baht bus was not practical.

[tolsti]

my fares haven't changed (apart from when using the discounts) but they are a regular set of routes at set times of the day. I think that they may apply flow costs depending on demand and time of the day. That may be affecting costs??

[Kabula]

I've used the taxi service many times and found it to be great on long trips, especially before 6 a.m.

 

I seldom get a response in heavy rains which is understandable.

 

I found them to be fair and reasonable.

 

I never had a complaint.

[wpcoe]

3 hours ago, tolsti said:

my fares haven't changed (apart from when using the discounts) but they are a regular set of routes at set times of the day. I think that they may apply flow costs depending on demand and time of the day. That may be affecting costs??

Oh, dear.  That doesn't support my hopeful theory that they had reduced fares in general.  I realized they were using "flow costs" based on time/traffic when the fare for the same route (e.g. Jomtien to the hospital) varied from B270 to B325 in the past year or so.  Seeing a fare yesterday of B134 for the same route raised my hopes.

 

Just now (100pm) I checked the app, and the fare is again B134, but it's basically the same time as yesterday.  I'll try to remember to check the fare a different times, like 5pm rush hour.

 

It wasn't just the fares that led me to back away from using GrabTaxi.  Several times, I had arranged rides in advance, usually with confirming phone calls from the driver, the night before I had reserved a Bell Travel bus from the North Pattaya bus terminal to Hua Hin, a once-daily non-stop bus.  Three times the drivers no-showed, which put me in a bind to find transportation to get me to the bus terminal on time.

 

Also, mid-afternoon I consistently was unable to get a GrabTaxi driver to accept my request from Central Festival to Jomtien when I had bags of groceries (including perishables) mid-afternoon on weekdays.  Yesterday was shaping up the same when, after at least a dozen requests (the app sends the request three times automatically before returning a "no drivers available" message and I did it at least four times) before the driver in a white sedan accepted my request.  The app didn't wait very long before aborting and re-trying to find a driver.

 

I've also noticed that the app only shows me one or two taxis in my area, instead of taxis throughout the city.  In the past I would often get a request from drivers across town and I would wait 10-15 minutes for them to arrive, but at least they would.  I wonder if the app no longer sends out requests city-wide to drivers, or only to the ones close by which seem to be the only ones showing on my phone.

 

Also, with all the updates to the app, I can no longer find a simple way to re-request a route I've previously used.  In the past I could select a ride from the history list and press a button to request the same route again.  That was a very useful feature.  Has it been relocated to some other part of the app?

[BsBs]

Anybody can use the discount ?

[tolsti]

If you have the app on your phone... yes. Current one is PTY75 and is valid for 3 rides before 15/3/2017

[elgenon]

How do you find out about the discounts?

 

Has anyone used Grab from downtown Bangkok to Suvarnabhumi? When Uber started a high set fare to Suvarnabhumi I gave up on alternates to taxis. Plus when Uber said traffic was bad and, therefore, the fare would be even higher, the traffic was not bad.

[tolsti]

The discounts pop up in the notifications section on the app. They also appear on the opening screen.

[siam2007]

Still ridiculously expensive, as 325 Baht in Bangkok is more than I pay for a trip from my home in Bangna to Don Mueang, which is almost 40 KM. The cheapest GRAB TAXI in pattaya (which is operated by the yellow-blue Mafia-Meter-Taxis) for a 2 KM ride I needed was 200 Baht.

the private limousines should be GRAB CAR. If these arrive when you actually want a GRAB TAXI, then some drivers or the Mafia r doing something illegal

[wpcoe]

8 hours ago, siam2007 said:

Still ridiculously expensive, as 325 Baht in Bangkok is more than I pay for a trip from my home in Bangna to Don Mueang, which is almost 40 KM. The cheapest GRAB TAXI in pattaya (which is operated by the yellow-blue Mafia-Meter-Taxis) for a 2 KM ride I needed was 200 Baht.

the private limousines should be GRAB CAR. If these arrive when you actually want a GRAB TAXI, then some drivers or the Mafia r doing something illegal

Have you tried pricing a route recently, like this week?  I was shocked at how much the fare has dropped for Jomtien to Bangkok Hospital Pattaya.  From ~B300 in January, to B134 this week.  I've been checking the price a couple times daily, and they still seem to use "surge pricing" but the fare has never been higher than B148.  That's a big big drop.

 

The B134 fare was in an unmarked white sedan, not a metered taxi, and was summoned as a regular Grab ride, not Grab Car.

[wpcoe]

Holy cr@p, in my awe and wonder about the drastically reduced fares by Grab, I missed an important factor.  I just now noticed at the bottom of the app are icons for GrabCar and GrabTaxi, and that GrabCar is selected by default on my phone.  I've been dealing with GrabCar this whole time, not GrabTaxi.   

 

Why does that matter, you ask?  Well right now GrabCar from Food Mart to BPH is showing a fare of THB147.  Select the GrabTaxi icon and the fare returns to a more normal gouge of B350.

 

I had it backward in my head, too:  I thought GrabCar would be more expensive than GrabTaxi, but it's waaay cheaper.

 

That also solves a couple other mini-mysteries:  (1) why I had a nice white sedan for a ride rather than a taxi, and (2) why the app only showed one or two vehicles available on the map.

[wpcoe]

I've been taking quite a few GrabCar rides recently and the app is often erratic.  I captured screen shots of this ride from Tesco Lotus on Sukhumvit, and I seem to see similar lurching around about half the time I request a Grab ride:

 

 

Notice the red tail lights on the little car icon. The poor thing keeps flipping back and forth.  It flipped around so quickly at times that I missed a few screen shots.  On the app it's even more noticeable as there is a swing motion animation of the car as it happens.

 

On the initial screen shot (just after the app confirmed the ride), the time was 12:51pm with a 10-minute expected arrival time.  The last screen shot shows it arriving Tesco at 1:09pm, 18 minutes later, which again seems typical of my rides.  They tend to arrive quite a bit later than the app estimates.

 

(In case the animated GIF completed before you scrolled down to this message, here's a link to see it again.)

Edited May 4, 2017 by wpcoe

[pehice]

hello,

 

Can you tell me if it is ok to use grab around Pattaya ?

 

And it is always cheaper than usual taxis ?

 

Any discount code to use ?

 

Thank you.

[Guderian]

15 hours ago, pehice said:

hello,

 

Can you tell me if it is ok to use grab around Pattaya ?

 

And it is always cheaper than usual taxis ?

 

Any discount code to use ?

 

Thank you.

Yes, Grab works great nowadays, though make sure you have the latest app. I've used it five times in the last month and the longest I've had to wait for a taxi was 8 minutes, and that was because the guy got a bit lost in the village where I live, it's usually just a few minutes here (just off Thepprasit, so it's a busy spot). I don't know if the fares are cheaper than the taxis, but they seem reasonable to me and it beats trying to explain where you live over the phone to a taxi driver who hardly speaks a word of English. I'm impressed that they've got their act together at last. Some years ago when they first started up in Pattaya I downloaded the app as I wanted to go to Bangkok Hospital in Pattaya. The app could find Memorial and International, but not Bangkok, so I ditched it. It all works fine now, I'm glad to say.

[KittenKong]

19 hours ago, pehice said:

And it is always cheaper than usual taxis ?

Everything is cheaper than normal Pattaya taxis. They are Pattaya's biggest single rip-off.