On my last Abuja trip I was sitting in the plane and had no one to pick me up at the airport, I remembered TiketMobile had relaunched and also reading that it was like 3k to town, I was elated and quickly opened my browser to make a booking. While my internet was dulling I immediately thought, ok a phone number would be so much easier at this point.
Luckily it opened and I signed up easily and booked for an airport pickup. I was worried I may not hear back from them in time as I hoped they would just send me the driver’s number. They called in like 2 mins to verify the booking and the driver called me in another minute trying to verify when we would take off. I was able to sneak a quick SMS off to him when we hit the runway and he arrived the airport when my flight arrived as well, save for the vehicle traffic at the airport, the experience was smooth.
On an earlier trip to Abuja i tried using EasyTaxi, even though the flight was delayed for hours and I installed both the iPhone and Windows Phone EasyTaxi apps, I was unable to book for a taxi to do an airport pickup (this is likely because the app uses ur current location, so in Lagos i cannot book an Abuja taxi). I was however able to use EasyTaxi in Abuja, much to the amazement of my cousins, that it actually worked in Nigeria. I did use EasyTaxi back to the airport on this trip. I can’t remember if I had to haggle on the price with the driver, but having a fixed price with TiketMobile is definitely reassuring.
My return journey with TiketMobile wasn’t as smooth though, even though I am partly to blame. Wasn’t sure where in town i would be, so I could not order a pickup, eventually did so about 1.5 hrs to the flight time. Unfortunately, they did not send me the drivers number until much later after we had a difficult time linking up. The taxi driver was very polite and did his best to make the airport in less than 30 mins, but I did miss that flight though, had to get on another one.
All in all, it was a fairly good experience, my only issue was that they did not send the driver’s numbers in time, electing to have the driver call me first instead. While this is ok, it may be more urgent for me than the driver, so I would be more inclined to call them. I suspect the second driver did not want to make the call, maybe credit? Also a phone number or even SMS booking would not be a bad idea, web is kool but at urgent times that phone number is essential.
I only hope TiketMobile expands to lagos for airport pickups and dropoffs soon, with fixed low prices