Dubai Taxi (II)
This is completely my personal experience.
I had earlier also made a note on Taxi’s in Dubai. Still my experience to board a taxi is to wait for an hour atleast.
Dubai Taxi has now announced making available taxi on an sms. I tried earlier many times calling the call centre to get a taxi, but out of about 3 times, only once did I get a reply, that too after one and half hour.
Lets hope that the Dubai Taxi gets better this time.
Not only you might have to wait to get a cab in the mall or any other public place, you will also have to be very patient when you make a reservation by phone.
Two issues with making reservation by phone (I’ve been using 042080808, no others were answering):
1. you never know when the cab will actually arrive – can be 10 minutes, can be 2 hours. The reservation desk do not give you much info on how long you should wait. Sometimes though they say straight ahead it’d take time or that they don’t have any cars available in the area now.
2. it can take HOURS literally. Last week I waited for 2 hours, 1 of which the cab driver spent on looking for the house – despite my and my houseboy attempts to explain where the villa is. And yesterday the cab just never showed up – despite my nagging on them every 30 minutes (reception kept on saying "they are coming, ma’am") – well, I waited for 3 hrs!!! (I have lots of free time these days), and just gave up having my friend picking me up.
I do join shabbirp in her/his wish for taxi service to improve in Dubai soooooon!