All sins of Bolt. The driver tells us why he and his colleagues prefer Uber

After an interview with the head of Bolt in Poland, the amused drivers began to report to our editorial office. Alex Kartsel announces that in the first half of this year, former Taxify will overtake Uber in terms of market share. According to people who work for both applications - it's just wishful thinking. One of them, Łukasz, explains why in his opinion Bolt is unable to compete with his American colleague.

Expansion in several Polish cities - this is Bolt's idea of ​​dethroning Uber on the Polish market. The Estonian startup boasts that it is expanding its service, introducing new categories and already serving 13 major cities in Poland.

Ambitious plans of the Polish head office may spoil one fact - dissatisfaction among application drivers is growing. And in the context of ambitious announcements about expanding the business is a bad news.

Bolt's strong start

Taxify was really loud in last year's holidays. Startup has accused its customers of up to 50% discount. Suddenly it turned out that from one end of the city to another one can go for literally 10 zlotys. Customers liked it. People who had both applications installed on smartphones declared that 80 percent they do courses through Taxify, temporarily leaving Uber on the side track.

At the same time, the drivers, as partners, did not lose anything, because Taxify paid out full payment for the course at the end. Promotions were therefore a "worry" for Estonians and their investors.

Sielanka, however, passed quickly. Taxify has become somewhat more recognizable in the market, has won some drivers and started to limit the scale of discounts.

Today, with Bolt, I can do every fourth course. I thought that after the promotion the company will take care of passengers and drivers in a different way. Even if the support is improved - Łukasz tells us, who 4 years ago quit his job as a merchant to make money on transporting people.

From his perspective, however, these were extremely flawless hopes. Until recently, Bolt had its headquarters at ul. Stawki in Warsaw. It happened that there were meetings in which unhappy drivers passed their comments "upstairs".

Not that it changed a lot. The Lord listened to us, nodded his head, and still remained old. But at least we knew where to turn - he says.

From March Bolt moved to a new headquarters - one of the prestigious office buildings in the center of Warsaw.

Łukasz says that he did not hear anything about the new location, the platform did not mention anything about it. But that's nothing, because the problems occur even in the case of a simple call to the slide through the application or Facebook.

Uber has its flaws, I will not say. But I know who to turn to if the passenger is aggressive. I get feedback information within 5 minutes. In Bolcie, this is very lacking. The application shows me a white spot, and when trying to contact them through Facebook, the answer sometimes comes after 2-3 weeks - the driver notices.

And in his opinion, there is something to complain about.

When they reduced the minimum rate from 10 to 9 zlotys, I did not protest because it was still an open action. The worse is that they make hidden promotions at our expense. That is why most of us treat Bolt after neglect. Me and my colleagues turn on Bolt only when there are no courses in Uber. It is such a zaphyrziura between courses - he emphasizes.

What is it actually about? Łukasz says that Bolt is notoriously understating the value of the courses. This could be considered a simple application error, if not for the fact that it is reportedly occurring in 8 out of 10 cases.

I will give you an example - the driver continues. I took a course from Prague to Mokotów and further towards Ursus. A total of 25 km. After 20 km I checked the meter - it cost 38 zlotys. That's why I was very surprised when after reaching the place it turned out that the customer has to pay the same amount. According to my calculations, I should earn about PLN 50 - he adds.

Bolt therefore blocked billing at the moment when his driver should earn the most. After exceeding 20 km, the rate increases to PLN 3 per km. It seems, however, that these several zlotys is not yet a great tragedy. But - my interlocutor emphasizes - the scale of these activities means that regularly driving drivers lose as much as PLN 300-400 a week.

Suddenly, it turns out that the price list looks completely different than the Estonian startup shows. Theoretically, the client pays PLN 4 for "slamming the door", PLN 1.3 per km and PLN 0.25 per minute. - In practice, for a kilometer, we can take a zloty - says Łukasz.

For this reason, riding Uber is to be more profitable for drivers, despite the fact that Americans take 25 percent of each course. commission, and Bolt - "only" 20 percent.

Drivers, however, had to find their own ways.

In a fan page on Bolt, one of the drivers described how to manually change the target location. Thanks to this, by slightly moving it, he was able to add to the account the few zlotys that the application deprived him of. However, this should not be the case, I think it was due to a system error. Has he been patched? I do not know, our friend was simply blocked by the application - says Łukasz.

My interlocutor also adds that during the meetings with representatives of Bolt, the problem of driver verification was discussed. This is supposedly limping compared to Uber.

I have my assessment in Uber and she is assigned to me as a driver. In Bolt, just jump to the new partner, which takes maybe 5 minutes and cyc ... again, I have an average of 5.0. This does not encourage you to look after your reputation - says Łukasz.

At the end, however, he adds that regardless of whether he uses Uber or Bolt, it is difficult to talk about good earnings today.

If you drive 35 hours a week, you can get up to PLN 2,000 per week using the applications. By deducting fixed costs, gasoline and commission, it may come out of PLN 3,500-4,000 a month on hand. It's good that I still have private courses - says Łukasz.

With a request to respond to these allegations, we went to Bolt. The press office replied that:

a) The company stopped accepting drivers while it was still operating at ul. Stawki and put on contact by email, which is "more effective and allows for faster response."

b) The billing system has been changed from the mentioned forks in the "pre-paid price". - At the time of introducing changes, there may have been isolated cases of irregularities - the algorithm that estimates the travel prices had to adjust so that it would work more precisely - writes Bolt.

c) The platform admits that for some time (due to intensive development) the time of accepting and considering complaints was longer, currently the average response time of the driver is to be closed in 18 hours.

d) The company knows the cases where drivers change destination addresses. - This is unacceptable without the passenger's knowledge and consent. If the drivers are notoriously changing their destination, our security devices automatically block the account of such a driver, and we check if there was any irregularity - we read in response.

e) Bolt confirms that changing a partner entails the need to create a new driver account, although he is working on a new system that will eliminate this need. At the same time, each new account has the highest rating initially - this is the system setting. - However, only the rating issued by the passenger is an assessment included in the average rating for the driver - the platform reserves.

All sins of Bolt. The driver tells us why he and his colleagues prefer Uber