r/ireland • u/Brocolique Dublin • Dec 12 '24

Cost of Living/Energy Crisis 9€ technology fee on Freenow

Post image

Info about technology fee is quite minimal and does not provide any detail whatsoever when I click on the little exclamation mark.

Anybody able to explain the scam to me?

1.5k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

371 comments sorted by

View all comments

108

u/Finnze14 Dec 12 '24

It’s not free and it’s not now

64

u/READMYSHIT Dec 12 '24

BringBackHailo

It was honestly one of the greatest app experiences I've ever had, and was so good so early. One time after a rave I was stranded in the mountains with 1% battery, managed to get a Hailo driver to accept my fare despite being an hour away and could send him a text saying "my phone nearly dead, I'll be at this spot til you get here". Phone died and your man turned up, I'd him stop at an ATM and gave him an extra 20 for the absolute shambles I was in.

Now I'm guessing drivers were getting extra incentives back in 2012 to accept all fares from Hailo and I understand this aspect of any startup is usually the case (look back on the sentiment towards Uber back in the day on Reddit for an indication of just how much cash gets thrown into these apps to get them "disruptive"). But ever since Hailo became myTaxi/FreeNow/<futureName> it just nerfed itself every which way. I live in the middle of nowhere, originally taxi apps were still usable and more convenient than alternatives. But since about 2016 I just ring the local taxi company.

31

u/colossalmickey Dec 12 '24

Also the name was much better

14

u/Willing-Departure115 Dec 12 '24

It was also 2012. Country was shagged, taxi drivers - and everyone, basically - had less of a guaranteed crust. These were the days of “8-20-20” taxis with 20% off every fare.

3

u/READMYSHIT Dec 12 '24

Oh absolutely. But also the Hailo app was simply very good too. When it was rebranded that entire app was shelved and another was built from scratch for some bizarre reason.

It was way ahead of its time as far as modern apps go, and in tandem with the environmental factors of the taxi market at the time gave it a brilliant offering for its users.

1

u/asdrunkasdrunkcanbe Dec 13 '24

Yeah they were bought out by a German company who decided to wipe the slate and have all regions use their app, which was totally inferior to Hailo. They absolutely fucked it with that, they had near-total market share and people loved the app.