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2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-13 00:26
Every day, thousands of drivers go on long-distance trips alone instead of taking one or two fellow travelers and at least partially compensate or fully cover the cost of gasoline.
This type of travel is beneficial not only economically. With the company, time flies faster and the trip does not seem so dull. The idea is great, you must admit, but two fundamental problems arise.
- How can drivers and suitable travel companions find each other?
- A question of mutual trust.
Today we will tell you about the BlaBlaCar service, which successfully solves both problems and, more importantly, it really works. This is not some kind of fantasy, but an already tested and debugged service with a million successful trips every month. The beauty is that BlaBlaCar, in spite of everything, is successfully taking root with us. The number of service users in Russia has grown so much that now we can safely broadcast about BlaBlaCar as a federal-scale life hack.
The essence
So, BlaBlaCar is a replacement for intercity buses, trains and minibuses, presented as a web service, as well as in the form of mobile applications for Android and iOS.
The search procedure is intuitive and maximally unified for the driver and fellow travelers. The driver indicates the parameters of the route with all the related information in order to avoid misunderstandings, after which he waits for a response from those who are with him along the way.
For potential travel companions, everything looks even easier.
We indicate the desired point of departure and destination with an accuracy from the city to a specific house, after which the service displays suitable offers from drivers.
Security
The level of trust when you first contact BlaBlaCar is decided by registration. A person will have to use only their real data: a photo, phone, email, and to increase loyalty, you can add your social profiles. This data is moderated and verified by the support service, and muddy personalities are instantly cut out of the service when complaints are received about them.
After the trip, the driver and fellow travelers leave public reviews about each other, on the basis of which the reputation of each user is built.
During the initial interaction, the driver is not obliged to personally contact potential fellow travelers. The offer of a person who does not like you can simply be rejected from the application interface, and a preliminary call will help to further increase the level of mutual trust. The phone numbers of the driver and fellow travelers are hidden, but they can be exchanged by mutual agreement.
Only for women
For objective reasons, the beautiful half of humanity such trips seem to be more risky. To solve the problem, BlaBlaCar provides a special "Only for women" mode. This option completely excludes a male person from the selection. In general, such a sweet ride with no less sweet conversations about everything.
NO TAXI
There is nothing especially entrepreneurial to do here. One of the key rules of BlaBlaCar is exclusively social orientation. Splitting gas costs is fair and fair. Price higher than fuel costs - please go to commercial carriers. As mentioned above, if the rules for using the service are violated (this also applies to price changes), a complaint is written to the driver, and he is promptly blocked.
User facts
Now we need to dispel the assumption that the service is actually bullshit and is used by three and a half people. For a simple example, we make two searches: drivers who are going to go from Moscow to the Moscow region and other cities, as well as drivers heading to Moscow from the Moscow region and other cities.
At the time of this writing, the first request had 1,805 offers, and the second - 1,833 offers.
Total
We asked the developer for statistics on prices offered by drivers in BlaBlaCar for some current routes. If we compare them with the travel costs in the classical way (by trains, buses and minibuses), we get the following figures:
- The trip costs a passenger one and a half to two times cheaper.
- A driver who has taken two or three fellow travelers with him will fully compensate for the cost of gasoline.
Don't forget about comfort. The convenience factor is difficult to calculate, but any person understands perfectly well that driving in a private car is more pleasant than in a bus.
For all its coolness, the service is absolutely free. Payment for the service is carried out directly by fellow travelers, without the participation of BlaBlaCar. We do not know how these guys are monetizing, but the fact remains: at the moment this is one of the most promising social projects that can make people's lives better.
BlaBlaCar.ru service website
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