London taxi app Hailo is to be taken over by mytaxi, the European taxi app owned by Daimler.
‘Taken over’ is perhaps not the right word, since the CEO of Hailo will become the new CEO of mytaxi. Hailo shareholders will be in the minority in the new business, however, and the acquisition is a reflection of investor pressure following huge losses in a failed attempt to break into the North American market. There will also be substantial job losses in London.
Within 12 months the Hailo name and app will disappear. The business will be absorbed into the mytaxi app. The upside is that you will be able to use the app to order a cab in nine European countries.
Hailo is currently running a promotion with British Airways Executive Club to earn 1,000 Avios. As there is no certainty that this deal will continue once the business is absorbed into mytaxi, you might as well take a look now. You have four days left!
You need to download the Hailo app (from the Apple or Google Play stores) and take your first trip before 31st July. The journey can be as short as you like.
You must have added your BAEC number into your Hailo profile for this offer to kick in.
Note that you must be physically in London for the app to give you the option of adding your BAEC number.
Going forward, you will earn Avios on all of your Hailo trips at the rate of 1 Avios per £1 spent. The company used to offer a flat 100 Avios if your ride takes you to any London airport but I can no longer find any references to that.
Full details can be found on this page of ba.com – scroll down to the Hailo deal.
Note that Hailo is being very slow at adding on the bonus Avios. I don’t know anyone who has got them yet, although it is possible that the company has always planned to do them in one go once the offer ends.
(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for the latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios from current offers and promotions.)
About Head for Points
I made use of this promotion in Feb/March this year. It took almost 60 days for the 1,000 bonus Avios to post to my account
+1 poit’s arrived for me on day 60.
*points
Took about a month to post for me, used a taxi in March
is there a minimum fee applied with hailo? I tried last night to get a very short trip, to get the promotion, and it was quoting a min of £10 for every trip, no matter how short, which seems excessive?
Hmmm …. Gett has no minimum, we use it regularly to school when it is raining, or I take it to the tube.
+1 on the £10 minimum coming up. I just tested a journey to take me to my next door neighbour and it says the estimate is £10. However, this is only an estimate, so I suspect it’s a system thing with Hailo that they don’t accurately predict very short journeys. I’m going to try it tonight for a very short trip back from the cinema to see what happens.
http://gb-lon-passenger.support.hailocab.com/customer/portal/articles/713754-what-is-the-minimum-fare-
Thanks for the link. So it seems there is no min fare between mon- fri 10am-5pm…
Ironic how the min £10 the rest of thw times is there “to increase your chances of getting a taxi” lol
There is some logic because, when a driver accepts your job, he still has to get to you. He isn’t being paid for that time. Hailo clearly assumes drivers need an incentive to turn their light off and lose 5 minutes getting to you at peak times.
I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but I went to the MyTaxi web site and couldn’t find any information about countries (or cities!) in which they operate. I did establish that there’s a MyTaxi site for Italy so I downloaded the app to my phone thinking it would be useful whilst on a short stopover in Pisa this weekend (prior to catching Qatar flights to BKK as a result of an HFP alert to great business class fares as usual!!).
However, when trying to see if a car could be ordered from the airport into the city it seems that MyTaxi doesn’t operate in Pisa.
My thoughts here are that Uber make it very clear on their site what countries/cities they cover and I feel that MyTaxi are missing something here!!
I used the app in March and I had to write and complain to BA before the Avios were added. But I finally got them on 25 July.
I wasn’t actually sure that I would get them as the trip was taken in Manchester, not London, so I am quite happy