Today, I attended Hailo offices at Somerset House to hold my monthly meeting with Hailo CEO, Mr Andrew Pinnington:
Before attending the meeting I put out on Twitter if there were any questions that members and non members wanted me to ask; Bearing in mind, the meeting is only for an hour, it is impossible for me to go in there with a list as long as your arm as there are other issues I wish to discuss with Andrew.
These are a few of the questions I received on Twitter:
Q. STOP CHARGING 10% ON OUR TIPS
A; It is something we ( Hailo ) have been looking at due to drivers concerns, and to be honest we are looking at a new range of payment options that could be a set fee , like a subscription and also different levels of % that a driver could pay to HAILO.
Q.STOP PRIORITY DRIVERS
A. We are aware that this is unpopular with drivers and this is something we know that needs looking into; from our perspective HAILO are looking forward to hopefully raise more capital which we can then use to promote us more which will lead to more jobs at all times and thus leading to the end of priority drivers as such.
Q. MORE ADVERTISING?
A. Yes, we fully understand that we need to advertise more and “shout louder” but this is tied in with the next round of funding that will be with us shortly.
More advertising is crucial, we know that, but we need the funds to put this into action.
Q. ACCOUNTS / FIXED PRICES/
A. We are aggressively looking into accounts and larger volume users, but, we will not be going into the Fixed prices market in an attempt to match or enter the race to the bottom price war. We are finding that passengers appreciate the great service our drivers offer to the public.
Andrew went on to say that user numbers are up and driver numbers are also rising which means that he is seeing more members of the public coming onto the Hailo platform and experiencing fantastic response times by drivers, which is the best form of advertising ourselves.
He also said that the take up on FP to Heathrow has also shown a rise and driver feed back has been positive. There is to be another major injection of cash coming into HAILO which in turn will address issues of advertising and driver enhancements.
