BlaBlaCar - benefits for passengers and drivers, how to use the service. What gives the status of an ambassador

Many active users of the popular site and application for finding fellow travelers Bla Bla Car are familiar with the beautiful-sounding word "ambassador". Let's figure out what the concept means for this resource, and how dictionaries define it.

The term "ambassador"

Abstracting for a while from "Bla Bla Car", let's analyze other definitions of this word:

• Ambassador is a purely diplomatic term. This is the name of any official envoy representing a certain country in another state. It can be a permanent, plenipotentiary, extraordinary ambassador.
• Representative, participant in negotiations on behalf of a third party.
• Messenger, messenger of goodwill.
• Promoter for any event.
• A representative of a certain well-known brand, demonstrating the values ​​of the latter with his life and activities. The agreement of the ambassador with the company does not make him its employee and is not official - it is something like a sponsorship contract. Neither the direction of activity nor the budget of the brand depends on such a representative - he remains only a representative of the corporation, sharing and promoting a personal example of the value of the brand.

Having analyzed all the definitions of an ambassador, let's go directly to Bla Bla Car.

Bla Bla Car Experience Levels

On the companion search resource, there are five categories of experience for drivers registered on it:

• beginner;
• confident user;
• advanced user;
• expert;
• ambassador.

So, what does an ambassador mean to drivers? The highest level of experience in Bla Bla Car, directly dependent on the activity and duration of the driver's stay in the application and on the site, which along the way is a litmus test of past fellow travelers' trust in him.

What gives the status of an ambassador

What is an Ambassador Driver? Users of this status have a number of advantages in Bla Bla Car:

• guaranteed trust of fellow travelers;
• ambassadors can be the first to try out new app options;
• such drivers are often invited by the project managers to participate in decisive surveys, they are invited for interviews, etc.

The users themselves, who have given status, note the following:

• in almost all trips, the places in their cars are occupied by fellow travelers;
• the status inspires confidence - from a number of trips of the same type, passengers are guaranteed to choose an ambassador's car;
• the highest category allows you to influence the operation of the application, site, developer projects.

Speaking about the fact that this is an ambassador driver, we note that the same five categories are valid for fellow passengers of the Bla Bla Car website and application.

Ambassador "Bla Bla Car": how to become one

To become an ambassador driver (what is it, you already imagine) on the resource, you must:

• indicate and confirm your phone number and email address in your personal profile;
• indicate your travel preferences (music, conversations, transportation of pets, etc.);
• have a photo avatar;
• have 12 positive reviews from your fellow travelers;
• the percentage of positive reviews must be more than 90% of the total;
• in Bla Bla Car, the driver must be registered for at least one year.

These indicators are updated regularly by the moderators of the service - daily at 2 am.

If you, having learned that this is an ambassador-driver, also decided to become one, then you definitely need to do the following:

1. Complete the "About Me" section 100%:
   • 15% - confirmed phone number and e-mail - this information is important for your future travel companions to quickly contact you and discuss all aspects of the upcoming trip.
   • 15% - avatar: having a personal photo in your profile where you can clearly see your face is a decisive factor for many passengers.
   • 15% - preferences - this is the attitude to music and smoking, and three levels of your talkativeness - Bla, BlaBla, BlaBlaBla (a reference to the name of the application - "Bla Bla Car").
   • 30% - brief reference about yourself: name, age, description of yourself as a person and a driver.
2. Get feedback from your passengers - they can rate the trip in 4 categories: "Disliked", "Normal", "Good" and "Excellent". To advance to a higher level, you need to have at least 90% of the reviews of the last three categories. In order for passengers to give you positive ratings more actively, do not skimp on the relevant reviews for them too - according to statistics, 75% of users will answer you with a similar mark.

Becoming an ambassador driver at Bla Bla Car is very simple - you need to offer trips as often as possible, be punctual and friendly with your fellow travelers, use safe driving techniques, and remember to leave feedback to passengers.

The disappearance of the driver of an Audi car, Taras Poznyakov from Lvov, who went with fellow travelers to Kyiv, allegedly using the platform for drivers and BlaBlaCar passengers, makes you wonder how safe such trips with strangers are. "Apostrophe"Understood whether resources for finding fellow travelers can protect their users and how drivers and passengers can avoid possible troubles.

The times of "rooks" and "rook carriers" have passed, - now you rarely meet a person on the road with his hand raised, who hopes to get to his destination for an acceptable amount. In cities, taxi services appear like mushrooms after rain, and between settlements those who do not like regular minibuses can travel with fellow travelers - there are plenty of services where you can find a companion and share the cost of gasoline with him.

Perhaps it was on such a platform that Taras Poznyakov, who disappeared in early April, found his passengers. This story originally featured BlaBlaCar, the most popular driver and passenger search service in Ukraine. However, the Ukrainian representative office of the Apostrophu company said that so far they have no confirmed information that the missing Taras Poznyakov found fellow travelers precisely on their service. On the fact of the missing driver, criminal proceedings were opened, and on April 12, the Main Directorate of the National Police in the Kiev region reported that in the village of Novoselki, Kiev-Svyatoshinsky district, Poznyakov's Audi A6 car was found in one of the local garages. Evidence that may indicate a crime was also found in the car - bullet casings and traces of blood. The investigating authorities are investigating how the car ended up in the garage box.

Supply and demand

BlaBlaCar's website states that their service is available in 22 countries worldwide; this platform is also the largest in Ukraine. The company claims that so far they have never had problems with car theft. “We are actively cooperating with the police and doing our best to sort this out,” Yulia Krupenko, an employee of BlaBlaCar, who is responsible for media relations, told Apostrophe. She also said that BlaBlaCar is constantly communicating with relatives of the missing driver, in addition, the police were provided with technical information that could help in the investigation.

“With the help of the BlaBlaCar service, tens of millions of trips have taken place, and for us this case is unprecedented,” BlaBlaCar told Apostrophe.

According to Alexander Yatsenko, co-founder of Autostop, another service for finding fellow travelers, the story that happened to Taras Poznyakov could happen to anyone sooner or later, because a lot of people use such services every day. “But on the other hand, in the case of using an online service, there is at least a chance to filter (passengers or drivers), refuse an offer to go with the wrong person. Therefore, despite this situation with BlaBlaCar, I am still sure that using such services is much safer than just taking people in the middle of the track,” he told Apostrophe.

The Autostop platform is one of the three most popular travel companion search services in Ukraine (together with Poputka.UA). Autostop has existed since 2010 and has 16.5 thousand registered users. According to Yatsenko, he and the second co-founder Andrey Gornyak have practically not developed the resource for a year, in fact, letting things go by themselves.

Yatsenko believes that it is simply impossible to check everyone who registers on the platform. The usual set of technical tools that help cut off dishonest users is working with social networks, in which you can view a person’s profile, see if he has friends, who they are, etc., as well as viewing reviews about the driver; in addition, there is verification of new users through mail and phone number. “It gives a certain level of security,” says Yatsenko. - The SIM card can be tracked, because then not just anyone can register, but a person with a certain phone number that is inserted into a certain device, from which a message and a response can come. But in practice to protect people from similar cases completely impossible, rather, our task is to minimize the risk as much as possible.”

In terms of the potential business of services like Hitchhiking and BlaBlaCar, to conduct universal checks on all drivers and Vehicle, for example, for the availability of insurance, it is impractical, Yatsenko is sure. "Uklon" (ordering a taxi online, - "Apostrophe") takes a commission (from drivers), but he does not make sure that every time he filters out each driver. You can get into a dirty car and the most you can do is write a review or call Uklona and tell them about it. Perhaps they can do something, - says Alexander Yatsenko. - But this is not the primary filter, when someone comes, looks at the car or checks in the morning, like in a taxi service, whether everything is in order with the car. For our users, the priority is to get to their destination, and not necessarily arrive clean. Demand dictates supply.

As for the issue of security, Yatsenko is sure that this issue will always be on the agenda; if the insurance market was more developed in Ukraine, it would be possible to attract companies to insure both drivers and passengers from various troubles that may happen on the road.

Only for ladies

BlaBlaCar claims to check all profiles, photos, reviews and travel offers. On the resource, Facebook and LinkedIn social media accounts are linked to profiles. This allows you to view the page of a potential companion and understand how comfortable it will be with him on the road. The platform also has a “Women Only” option, which can be used by both a female driver and a passenger. "This great way feel safer, especially during the first joint trips,” the company notes. To this end, the avatars for women on the site were made purple, and for men - blue. Users are also required to indicate their gender during registration. BlaBlaCar offers to use the "Reviews" option - about those who use the resource regularly.

Drivers are assigned a "level of experience" - from beginner to expert and ambassador. Latest status means that the driver has the highest level of trust from the BlaBlaCar community. Experience is evaluated according to the following indicators: confirmed email and phone number, maximum completed profile, the number and percentage of positive reviews from fellow travelers, and the duration of using the service.

One of the BlaBlaCar ambassadors, Artem, told Apostrophe that he received his status a year after registering on the site. The usual route of Artem is the road from Kyiv to Nikolaev and back. He also traveled across Europe last summer and drove all the way to Portugal, picking up fellow travelers via BlaBlaCar along the way. “It was always okay,” he says. - I try to make sure that the person has a photo, and the profile is filled out as much as possible. Now, after this incident (with Taras Poznyakov, - “Apostrophe”) I plan to go to Lviv, if people book, I ask them to post links (to profiles) on social networks, because I am also responsible for other passengers. I say that I can refuse you a trip if you do not provide full information, passengers understand, agree.

Artem tells one unpleasant story that happened to him once with a passenger. “The person booked the trip not from his profile (on the social network), there was no profile picture, nothing. The passenger turned out to be some kind of criminal, from his telephone conversations I understood that he was in prison. But I took him. Not only did he not pay for gasoline (laughs), he also stole a washer on the way to the gas station, ”Artem said.

When he drove the passenger to his house, he promised to get up for the money, but he never showed up. Later, Artem found out that the passenger wrote from the profile of his friend, found the page and the fellow traveler who deceived him by the phone number, and then contacted BlaBlaCar support. On the site, the passenger's profile was blocked, so now a person cannot use it. “After that, I began to check people more carefully,” Artem admits.

BlaBlaCar told Apostrophe that they are constantly working to improve existing security measures for users and introduce new ones, for example, insurance products, as well as user identification systems based on identity documents. “This allows us to increase the level of reliability of the service and the trust of fellow travelers to each other. For our part, we are doing everything possible to ensure that all these options appear in Ukraine as soon as possible,” the company said. In the near future, a full-fledged trip booking system will also be launched on the BlaBlaCar website in Ukraine, and after some time, a service payment system will appear, which for its part implies user identification through payment instruments.

Hello, friends!
I continue to adhere to the principle of "I tried it personally - I told you." Today I want to tell you about a freshly acquired experience. I have long been worried about the performance and reliability of the service BlaBlaCar, but I was somehow afraid to conduct such experiments on myself.

Nevertheless, THIS happened to me and nothing terrible happened :).
Some time ago it was actively advertised on TV and on the Internet. Of course, I could not pass by. The idea itself is very cool. In fact BlaBlaCar this is a community of people who are looking for fellow travelers, either as a driver or as a passenger. The driver of the car saves on gasoline, and the passenger gets from point A to point B cheaply and comfortably.

The first thing that comes to mind is safety. And the fears are mutual. On the one hand, you get into a car with a stranger, on the other, an unfamiliar passenger sits down next to you. Personally, I never let down people voting on the road precisely for safety reasons.
Let's see how the service works on my personal example of three days ago.

Task: to get from the city of Belorechensk to the airport of Krasnodar (91 km). I was returning from vacation and missing the plane was not part of my plans.

Solution 1

Taxi. Private transfer on the specified route costs about 1500 rubles. Ideal, but the most expensive.

Solution 2

Intercity bus. The ticket price is about 225 rubles. Of course, the bus will call in all villages and farms and the travel time will obviously be the longest. Plus, you need to lay down the time to get from the bus station to the airport.

Solution 3

BlaBlaCar. I remembered the community quite by accident and decided to check if there are progressive Kuban people on the site :). It turned out that there are.

And then, as they say, the "stars" converged. On the date I need, at the right time and at the right direction there was exactly one car, and end point route — Krasnodar airport! I did not expect such a development of events. Of course, one could assume that on the road Belorechensk - Krasnodar every day someone dangles, but that with delivery to the airport ... .. this fact bribed me completely.

The second important factor is the cost of the trip. As you can see in the screenshot, it is lower than the cost of a bus ticket. In the end, the trip cost me 150 rubles.

In the search form, you can set the date or navigate the site's offers (yellow highlights the dates that are relevant for trips). You can also immediately see the availability of seats, the age and gender of the driver, the presence of reviews and preferences.

! Service BlaBlaCar according to your desire can filter offers. N / R is a very useful feature for women. If you know in advance that you will only go with a girl or take an exclusively female person as a companion, then you can immediately specify this in the settings.

The next step is registration in the community. I will not describe the process, since all the steps are very simple. The fastest solution is to register through your VKontakte or Facebook account. Then you will be asked to verify the phone. The code received in SMS will need to be entered in a special window. Verifying a phone is a sort of security check.

You can write a message to the driver or call him immediately and clarify the details. Please note that at this stage you can see the phone number.

Actually, that's all the wisdom in using the site. The service will inform you about the response to the message via e-mail. Tangible plus - application BlaBlaCar You can download it to your smartphone and use it while traveling. I never cease to be amazed at the power of human thought. And how do such brilliant ideas and ways of implementation come to mind?

From the moment I heard about the search for fellow travelers Blablacar, I fired up the idea to use it. True, on daily trips to work and home, I still wanted to travel alone, but long trips I just decided to experiment. I just went to the neighboring regions for interviews, and there was an opportunity to give someone a ride over a distance of about 200 km. The added incentive was that I was no longer working and any extra income would be welcome. Well, as you know, any manifestation is interesting to me.

To date, I have been able to ride twice with passengers found on Blablacar. In general, I am satisfied, and I will write about my latest experience.

To work in the service, you need to register, after which all contacts between the driver and the passenger can be traced. When registering, a bunch of parameters are indicated: car, phone, attitude to talking on the trip - bla-bla level, attitude to smoking in the car, to pets.

When planning a trip, the driver registers it, and the passenger sets his route and looks at trips that are suitable for the route and time. The initial and destinations, departure time. You can also set intermediate points: this will allow you to find not only passengers traveling from start to finish, but also those who travel only part of the route.

Next, the cost is set for each segment of the journey, you can immediately enter the number of free seats and any information useful to passengers. The service automatically calculates the estimated travel time, and for those passengers traveling from a waypoint, it will calculate the estimated time of arrival at that point.

Once completed, the trip is published for passengers to see. Usually, most of views fall on the day of the trip and the day before the trip. In every trip you can see those who watched it.

The passenger can contact the driver in two ways:
- call (the phone is visible if the driver did not want to hide it),
- write a message through the service (then sms comes that someone tried to contact). In this case, you can read the message only on the site, which is not always convenient on the road.
The service allows you to find a person's profile by his phone number, so that in the call field you can go to the site and view his data - profile, travel history, reviews.

On the last trip between the two regional centers (I will discard the route segment from my city to the first regional center as unpromising), I managed to pick up fellow travelers in both directions, and the fellow traveler in the first direction then asked for me and back (and received a discount).

Calculate the economy of a joint trip:

Expenses:
Gasoline: 300 + 300 = 600 rubles.
Cashback for (5%): - 30 rubles.
Toll road: 80 + 80 = 160 rubles.

Total: 730 rubles.

Income:
Passenger No. 1 (round trip): 200 + 150 = 350 rubles.
Passenger No. 2 (back): 200 rubles.

Total: 550 rubles.

As you can see, even with such a weak load the trip paid off by 75%.

I will write a little more about my impressions of the service. This is the first such service that is convenient and pleasant to use: nice design and thoughtful interface. There is a system of ranks depending on the experience gained - for this you need reviews. True, I don’t have any reviews - no one wrote like that, but if they had, they would have increased the chances compared to other drivers. The very first time I got a very interesting fellow traveler, and we talked all the way (I learned a lot of interesting things, I hope that he too).

I'll summarize the pros and cons Blablacar service:

+ The formation of the route is conveniently thought out: you can break the route into segments in order to capture fellow travelers in waypoints, for them the cost is set separately and the time of arrival is considered;
+ The service is well promoted on the Internet, unlike previous analogues;
+ If you fill the car completely, you can compensate for all expenses and even stay in the black;
+ As a rule, fellow travelers are modern "high-tech" people, and it is more interesting to ride with them than with a random fellow traveler picked up on the road.

- It is difficult to find a fellow traveler if you go on a route that is well traveled public transport(for example, between regional center and regional);
- There is no guarantee that the passenger or driver will be adequate. I was reading other people's reviews, and someone gave the driver a low rating for not driving fast enough (who knows what "fast" means for the reviewer?). In addition, I came across a passenger who treated me like a client to a taxi driver, and not like a partner to a partner.
- It is impossible to plan the workload of the car in advance, as many passengers call an hour or two before the trip. The same is with the drivers: of all those who have declared, some are refused for unknown reasons, and passengers have to urgently fit into other cars.
- Over time, the service plans to introduce a commission, and this will make the possibility of communication without paying a commission impossible, after which it will greatly lose in convenience.

In general, the service is very good, and I would gladly use it in the future.