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Maximising the undervalued Ryde

GMT+8



I’ve been using private hires for the last 2 years to commute to work due to personal reasons and I really hate it when there are unexpected surges.

So I’ve been switching around Grab, CDG (Zig), Go Jek and Ryde and here are my thoughts on them.

Although I did try to use TADA, I didn’t really get any drivers and gave up. 
I've also heard of GeoLah but need help to comment on it. I did come across this review here

My view of Grab / CDG (Zig) / Go Jek

Apps

Things I like

Things I don’t like

Grab

Drivers are available and short waiting time. 
Very competitive base price.

The price surge is insane

CDG (Zig)

Drivers are readily available, I'm pretty much screwed when even CDG dies on me. 

I get Flash vouchers occasionally

Price surges are also top-notch,.
The taxi-meter option doesn’t help when there is a 10% admin charge on Credit Card Payments

Go Jek

Drivers are available too, but relatively lesser than Grab and CDG.

The base price can be lower than Grab. I get off-peak vouchers occasionally or clock trips with Trust’s Stamp Coupons to get $5 after 4/5 Rides

Wait times are relatively longer than the other 2.

I will normally try them when Ryde dies on me and if it’s really too expensive, street-hailing is my last resort. 

let's go on to Ryde.

Ryde App Features

some features are available in other apps too.

Features

Things I like

Things I don’t like

cheaper fare
Pay per seat (RydeFlash)

About 17% lower than prevailing fares for 1 seat

+ about $0.50 for 2nd seat,
up to 4 seats

When it’s too cheap, no drivers will pick me up.

Price surges

Seems to surge slower than other apps

surge way sharper than other apps.

Preplan rides

Pre-book your trips and lock in the fares so you won’t be affected by prevailing surges

Tip: set them up during off-peak hours.

If the driver is early we can leave 10 min ahead of schedule.

Surges at the time of booking are applied to the price.

At times the prevailing fare at the time is slightly lower than the booked price.

Drivers might mistakenly pick up the scheduled job for a Job now.

I will need to cancel the job and re-post it as drivers face cancellation penalties and can’t take new jobs in between either.

Not all drivers can stack their trips ahead. Hence, most bookings only get picked up closer to the actual time.

Review trips

I can mark drivers under my favourite list and block drivers that I don’t vibe with.

Mark drivers as favourites have no effects while drivers also have a disincentive to pick me again that week.
(driver campaign-related)

RydeCoins

cash-liked and can be used for other services like rydeSend.

The expiry date renews by 6 months after each transaction.

Irreversible

Ryde+

15% discount on trips with Card payment,
Cashbacks on Rydes that covers the Ryde+ membership fee.

excludes Rydeflash/RydePool, so I can’t stack the discounts.
Cashback campaigns are getting less attractive each month.
PS: Using RydePool is way cheaper and apparently you don’t have to share the ride with other passengers for now.

Maximising Ryde Value.


Stretch the dollar

Apart from Ryde+, Ryde has a shop on Shopee and Lazada.

By stacking shop vouchers, bundle discounts and platform vouchers. you should be able to get 25% – 30% discounts, or even more. After that, just top up your Ryde wallet

Example: 


For every 100 Shoppee coins = $1, that's an additional $8 discount. 
This means that you can get a total discount of $50 comprising of a $15 shop voucher, $27 from a bundle discount and $8 from shopee platform voucher.

So the voucher value of $180 is now reduced to $130 which brings about 27.78% of savings. 

**Fun Fact:  follow Ryde on IG. there’s a monthly giveaway of $3 each month.

 

Prebook RydeFlash

Pre-booking during the off-peak periods so that you only pay the base fare and not surge pricing.
Periodically “edit trip“ to refresh pricing, "re-post" if it’s cheaper and "cancel" if it’s not.

By using this strategy, I can normally get between 40-50% cheaper than the prevailing fares. Even if I'm caught off guard, the discounts from vouchers will make sure I'm not paying the top dollar at all times.

Also if you're new to Ryde, click the referral link here. 
Sign up on the weekends of March 23 and we both get rewarded with $10 of rydeCoins.

Please support me by following and liking my pages below:








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