1.I had this lofty thing of doing my bit for the environment and that urge to economise. So, with the twin aims of improving my’carbon credits’ and attempting to be a responsible citizen, I attempted to book through telephone, one seat in Airlift shared taxi for a drop to the Bangalore Airport. The person answering wasted about five minutes asking my contact information and pick-up address and then declared that I would need to book the shared taxi on-line and not through telephone.
When asked, the person confirmed that he was speaking from a call-centre - obviously hired by Airlift.
The on-line site wanted payment in advance through credit card or through pre-paid coupons available from More or Nilgiri outlets. I was cautious and decided to check the actual usage of Airlift shared taxi in my neighbourhood(CV Raman Ngr) and so elected to purchase the pre-paid coupons. The nearby More outlet had a small placard of Airlift but neither the salesmen nor the supervisor were aware of the pre-paid coupons system or whether they had any in stock!
The shoddy arrangements in-place for the bookings and the extremely negative feedback from other fellow members of Mouthshut.com convinced me that discretion would be the better part of valor! I decided to go in the BMTC’s Volvo bus.
In the context of shared taxis, I had in Nov 08, used a’Zoom’ shared taxi- those guys were prompt and I had been picked up in an Indica taken to their Indiranagar -Ulsoor office and transferred into another taxi with one more passenger. We had reached the airport well in time. However, it now appears that their business in this area has folded up.
Also in this context - talking of irresponsible and misleading reviews - there is a fairly detailed and glowing review of Zoom by Supriya Khandelkar in’Citizen Matters.in" - check out this link -’https://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/view/581-bial-transport’. Its fairly obvious that the reporter hasnt bothered to check out the facts - in fact her closing lines in the review are - "The city for now seems to have a range of options for everyone to reach the international airport on time. Happy flying!"
Oh yeah? Going by the reviews of fellow Mouthshut members, it would perhaps would be more like’enjoy the rip-off, the adrenaline rush of waiting for the cab and also miss your flight!’