RIDEGURU
UPDATE: This app is no longer available.
New ride comparison app
Posted 5 years, 3 months ago
Posted In
Rideshare News
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Posted By
Doug Feigelson (doug)
7
Rider
Ride Apprentice from San Francisco
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Comments
Can't tell if this is a joke or not...?
If not, I think you may have jumped the gun a little there on your market research considering there are already various apps that enable you to quickly compare Uber/Lyft prices.... The most obvious? RideGuru , aka the site you decided to post your advert on. Beyond that, there are many platforms that do this exact same thing.
I use an app called Bellhop because it has the best coverage in NYC, but then there is also Farewell, FairFare, and another one on the West coast that I can't remember the name of.
Not trying to say that you can't/won't be successful, but you may want to be a little more strategic in your product differentiation before investing further resources.
That said, I appreciate your entrepreneurial spirit and wish you the best on your new project.
-Brian
Hi Brian, no this is not a joke 😉 . Have you actually tried the apps you mentioned? All of them are nearly unusable except Bellhop. Rideguru and Farewell show horribly inaccurate prices–in a quick test, a $5.50 Uber Pool showed as costing over $10 in both apps (makes sense since they don't even authorize with your account–how could they know your prices?). FairFare is no longer at all functional and you cannot pass the signup screen.
Bellhop is a good attempt but bad execution. The immediate dealbreaker is that Bellhop marks up Lyft fares $0.50 - $2.00 [2]. Definitely not what you want when the purpose of comparing fares in the first place is to save money. Also Bellhop is missing Lyft Shared, which is one of the most competitive options. To book an Uber, Bellhop kicks you out into the Uber app, where you must wait for fares to load and actually book it through there (compared to Anyride, which lets you book any fare directly with a tap). Of course, Bellhop does let you…
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Hi Brian, no this is not a joke 😉 . Have you actually tried the apps you mentioned? All of them are nearly unusable except Bellhop. Rideguru and Farewell show horribly inaccurate prices–in a quick test, a $5.50 Uber Pool showed as costing over $10 in both apps (makes sense since they don't even authorize with your account–how could they know your prices?). FairFare is no longer at all functional and you cannot pass the signup screen.
Bellhop is a good attempt but bad execution. The immediate dealbreaker is that Bellhop marks up Lyft fares $0.50 - $2.00 [2]. Definitely not what you want when the purpose of comparing fares in the first place is to save money. Also Bellhop is missing Lyft Shared, which is one of the most competitive options. To book an Uber, Bellhop kicks you out into the Uber app, where you must wait for fares to load and actually book it through there (compared to Anyride, which lets you book any fare directly with a tap). Of course, Bellhop does let you call the marked up Lyft fares from their app 😏. Finally Bellhop is awfully cluttered and makes it very slow and clunky to actually identify the best fare. Compare this to Anyride, which sorts all fares by price in each category, so you can spot and call the best ride in seconds.
It's clear you've spent some time researching alternatives so I'd love to hear your feedback on Anyride or other thoughts. Also it sounds like you live in NYC–I'm working on Juno and Via support, two awesome options not supported yet by any other comparison app!
PS Rideguru is an awesome community, just not a good app!
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Hey Brian / Doug - full transparency I work at Bellhop so wanted to chime in quickly. This is a huge space and there's room for competition (keeps us on our toes too!) so we always welcome constructive feedback. We wanted to be 100% clear that Bellhop does not mark up any fares, be it Lyft or any others. Our goal is to provide full transparency for riders so they can easily compare across multiple platforms and get the best ride at the best price so we are never going to entertain charging users a different price than they would get using an app directly as it goes against our core mission. Our pricing comes direct from Lyft. The only times you would ever see a variance is if you had personalized pricing from Lyft (discounts, credits etc) or simply timing (prices change every millisecond). We are working closely with Lyft to continue to enhance our data. Also to clarify we have had Juno in our app for a while and are in discussions with Via. We're also adding two more pr…
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Hey Brian / Doug - full transparency I work at Bellhop so wanted to chime in quickly. This is a huge space and there's room for competition (keeps us on our toes too!) so we always welcome constructive feedback. We wanted to be 100% clear that Bellhop does not mark up any fares, be it Lyft or any others. Our goal is to provide full transparency for riders so they can easily compare across multiple platforms and get the best ride at the best price so we are never going to entertain charging users a different price than they would get using an app directly as it goes against our core mission. Our pricing comes direct from Lyft. The only times you would ever see a variance is if you had personalized pricing from Lyft (discounts, credits etc) or simply timing (prices change every millisecond). We are working closely with Lyft to continue to enhance our data. Also to clarify we have had Juno in our app for a while and are in discussions with Via. We're also adding two more providers to NYC very shortly which will provide the most amount of coverage of any app out there in the city. We have some exciting things in the pipeline so please do not hesitate to email us at [email protected] if you have any further thoughts! Thanks again for checking us out!
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Hi Nick, thanks for chiming in! I'm glad to hear that you all are not intentionally pricing higher than Lyft. Just now I tried my typical commute in both Anyride and Bellhop:
- Bellhop did not show the most economical "Lyft Shared" fare at all.
- Bellhop's Lyft price was a full $1.10 higher than the price shown directly in the Lyft app (and in Anyride)
I tried a few other routes too and had similar results. Our mission at Anyride is to facilitate a healthy and competitive transportation market and promote the interests of riders. We appreciate the early work that you all did which helped advance that cause. We'll continue to keep an eye on Bellhop and all transportation apps so that we can always give the most accurate recommendations to riders.
Doug
Founder, Anyride
I tried it. The first thing this app does is ask you for your uber and lyft login and passwords. If you don't give up your passwords, you can't use the app.
Talk about a red flag. I don't give away my passwords. Why do you need them? And why should I trust you to keep them safe?
Good question. I can certainly understand your hesitation to provide this information within a new app. The reason is that you must link your accounts is that Lyft and Uber both use algorithms which create dynamic prices which vary from person to person. So the only way for Anyride to know the exact prices that Lyft and Uber are offering you is for you to link your accounts. It's not like a taxi where prices are set the same for everybody. The link is also necessary since Anyride lets you call rides with a tap.
Linking the accounts requires SMS + password for Uber and SMS + email address for Lyft. These are then presented to Uber/Lyft using industry standard encryption. Uber/Lyft then give Anyride back an authorization token. Your Uber password is not stored by Anyride. As always, it is good practice to use unique passwords for each service you sign up for. Please let me know if you have any more questions!
Other apps I have used can access my account without requiring me to enter my Uber password. They take me to the Uber app, where I can authorize the app's to access my account. Uber has API's for doing this. You should be using those instead.
Unfortunately it is against the Uber API rules to use that particular API for a price comparison app, as you can see here:
"Please do not...Aggregate Uber with competitors."
https://developer.uber.com/docs/riders/terms-of-use
I need a ride to and from the I-90 barrington rd Park & ride to and from Sears corporate 3333 beverly rd Hoffman estates at 7:AM, and again going back at 4:30 PM and need to know the cost, one trip to, and one trip back. This will be approximately 4 days this week starting tomorrow.
Thanks,
Steven Henderson