Of all the pointless rebrands I’ve seen recently, the clear winner is FREE NOW. For some reason, the mytaxi black cab app – owned by BMW and Daimler – decided that being called mytaxi was clearly too obvious and easy to remember, so switched to FREE NOW …..
I know this is now a pan-European brand, but I’m not sure that FREE NOW necessarily works better in multiple European languages than mytaxi. I didn’t even have a problem with Hailo, the original UK name.
It looks like the bodged rebrand has an upside, however. In an attempt to win your business from taxi apps with more sensible names, FREE NOW is offering many Amex customers either 40% cashback on all rides OR £100 for taking 10 rides until 14th December.
You need to see if either of these offers is showing on the ‘Offers’ tab of your online statement page, and save it to your card.
I have both versions. My Platinum card has ‘40% cashback on an unlimited number of rides’ and my British Airways Premium Plus card has ‘£100 back when you take 10 rides’. The latter is better for us as we do a lot of £10 – the minimum fare – rides to school and back.
With two months to take advantage, this could work out very nicely indeed. It could even swing regular Uber X users over to black cabs.
If you don’t already have a FREE NOW account, using Rhys’ promo code of ‘rhys.jon’ after downloading the app will earn you £5 credit.
PS. If you missed it, take a look at our recent article on the 10 best reasons to get the free American Express Preferred Rewards Gold credit card.
(Want to earn more miles and points from credit cards? Click here to visit our dedicated airline and hotel travel credit cards page or use the ‘Credit Cards Update’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)
About Head for Points
Does anyone ever use the free now app often? Mine doesn’t give a price quote like say Bolt or Uber. How do you know what the cost may be before starting your trip? I’m in the app now, says 27 mins to get to me, not sure how long you have before you have to cancel, but when they show up, you ask what the price is then get in or not? Even at 40% off, I want to know the approx cost.
Anyone able to access Avios.com since the update? Getting “We seem to be experiencing difficulties – please try again later”
Sorry if this is a silly question. I never used the app before the rebrand. How do I figure out what the estimated cost would be? Would like to know if ordering a cab to take me to Gatwick (from East London) works out to a bargain with the 40% discount.