Flywheel - The Taxi App 4+

When I first started using Flywheel it was great: I never waited more than 10 minutes for a cab the average time was 5 minutes. Five stars all the way!

Most of the time that is still true. However, recently wait times have gotten longer and it is clear that some drivers are trying to game the system; instead, they are just shooting themselves and all their cab driving comrades in the foot. I hear drivers complain bitterly about having to compete with Uber. Yet I have drivers regularly cancel on me after making me wait. I give good tips; so that is not a likely factor. Recently my appointed driver actually pulled over right in front of me and picked up a guy then canceled on me even though I was clearly signaling that I was his ride (the app has a flashing light for this purpose). My name is very female, so there should have been no confusion about the gender of the person being picked up. I hope that driver got a puny tip for his trouble: he is the kind of driver that makes it hard for other cab drivers to make a living- the reason for the Uber competition.

The idea of being able to order a Taxi ahead of time and know that I can rely on it to be there early in the morning for my airport ride is fantastic. And it really is great…when the app actually works. This app is so full of bugs that it’s sometimes completely unusable for ride scheduling. Some days I can’t even enter a pickup address because the map functionality doesn’t work.

I learned the hard way to NEVER open the payments tab in the app before arriving at my destination because the app will erroneously start charging my card. Simply opening the payments page triggers a charge before the ride is even over. There is no option to see what will be charged to the card on file in advance or to confirm the payment. I had one ride for which I had two separate charges get automatically applied to my card and then the driver announced at the end of the ride that he didn’t accept app payments (drivers are not actually allowed to do this) and I had to pay him with my card again! I ended up paying over $100 for a 15 minute ride to the airport and I had to reach out to customer support to get refunded for the two extra charges.

Today is November 30 I tried to use the app and it would only crash on startup. Too bad this app was nice and useful. Had to fall back on the phone call method today tho. It was working well for me over the summer but haven’t used it now for 8 weeks but I see another review says it was already broken October 30? Tried going to web site clicking contact support but it’s only for drivers. Have a new iPhone maybe that’s the problem but it seems they aren’t keeping up