Service BlaBlaKar (BlaBlaCar) to find fellow travelers and a cheap means of transportation. Personal experience. Communication with BlaBlacar support - Review of BlaBlaCar

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 tracked. When registering, a bunch of parameters are indicated: car, phone, attitude to conversations on a 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 will summarize the pros and cons of the 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.

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?

I will share with readers what “ridesharing” is in Russia. Consider the situation from the point of view of the owner of the car. Let's talk about what is missing and what to expect in the future.

About what it's like to be a passenger, Nikita spoke beautifully in the article:

Traveling in the passenger seat, you accept many risks, but the responsibility of the driver is even higher, and there are more threats.

I take on board absolutely unknown people, with my own character and bear responsibility for their life, both moral and administrative, and even criminal under article 264 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, in the event of absolutely fatal combinations of circumstances.

Remember, by taking a passenger, you not only get good company and fuel compensation, but also a serious responsibility.

My travel experience in Russia

In May of this year, offers from BlaBlaCar appeared in the issuance of Yandex schedules. This dramatically increased public awareness of what ridesharing is and attracted new users. It was at this moment that I decided to try to give a lift to the first passengers.

The main motive of ridesharing is entertain yourself on the road. Reimbursement of the cost of fuel is an exceptionally pleasant bonus, nothing more. At first, I even tried to set a zero cost, but the service does not allow this, setting the lower bar on its own. Okay, so be it, let's go to battle.

Route: Moscow - Smolensk, filled out a questionnaire, posted his own photo, car card and waited. Calls fell literally two days before the trip. After two conversations, the car was full and then everyone had to refuse. There was an understanding that there is a choice, and it is not necessary to settle for the first comer.

On the first trip there was a guy, let's call him Oleg, as well as a woman with a child of puberty. The family went to the back row, where they sat quietly all the way. But Oleg turned out to be an excellent conversationalist, not letting an awkward pause hang for a minute.

It quickly became clear that he was a techno-maniac just like me. This resulted in a serious discussion about Chinese smartphones Xiaomi and One Plus One. Discussed options for custom firmware, as well as whether it is needed on android root. Ran over Apple with its usability blunders in the interface. And about how they worsened with the transition to a large diagonal. We dreamed about what the next product would be after the Apple Watch - and then it was time for the first stop.

Imperceptibly overcame 200 kilometers, and for the first time I did not count the kilometer posts.

The first experience was great. But they say beginners are lucky.

Second and third trips. surprises

Only one seat was available for the second trip, due to the need to carry a large load in the trunk. The passenger was a man, almost 10 years older than me. That did not portend a lively conversation. But the expectations were not met.

Again comes across a great interlocutor. We talked about classical literature, discussed the problems of fathers and children, scolded the authorities a little, and eventually agreed that we need to start with ourselves. They shared their thoughts about a possible business in the outback, remembered what they did on the student bench.

But the third trip was a surprise. The passengers of the "fish" did not utter a word all the way, to all attempts to involve them in a conversation, they gave monosyllabic answers, and after half an hour they completely dozed off.

In general there is interesting people You can learn a lot in one trip. Who lives with what, what moods people have. This is important, while living in Moscow, you begin to forget how isolated we are from the other part of Russia.

Risks for the driver. What is the danger

But this is a serious stumbling block. BlaBlaCar guarantees nothing, neither security nor credibility. As one of our users wrote in the comments to the previous article:

Comrades, we are bringing drivers and passengers together. All. Our responsibility ends as soon as you personally decide to sit down with an unknown person or put unknown people in your car. No one will guarantee anything further. Keep your eyes an ears open, It's wild world, baby.
- Ulysses Simpson Grant

This stopped me from joint trips for a long time. But monotony is a terrible thing, and most importantly, dangerous. When you watch the writhing snake markings and trees running along the roadside with rare interspersed with villages for four hours, you start to fall asleep, as if reading a long sentence .

Another group of risks is legal. Formally, you provide services that require a license. Plus extract profit. It is not clear how to bring this out of the gray zone and legalize it in the current legal field. And BlaBlaCar says nothing about this side of the coin. Maybe you should ask Yandex how it happened that they also advertise a service with an unclear legal status in their schedules?

BlaBlaCar's attitude to the situation becomes clear after reading the paragraph Trust and Security in the FAQ on the website.

You can slightly minimize the risk by requiring a mandatory travel request through the BlaBlaCar apps and arranging a mini phone interview. But there is no panacea.

Technical side

BlaBlaCar has existed for more than 10 years, and still has some indistinct mobile app and a terrible site in terms of usability. My recommendations…

1. Disclosure of the driver's phone number occurs immediately. The system itself does not want to be used for its intended purpose. After all, it is much easier to make a phone call, arrange and come to the meeting place without leaving any documentary evidence of this contact.
   Solution: give the initiator of the trip the tools to show the phone number. Contact was made, he pressed the button, reveal the number.
2. There is no booking and reservation interface. If I have agreed with someone, then I have to edit the trip, reducing the number of seats.
   Solution: why not make a button, add the current interlocutor to the trip, with an automatic decrease in the number of seats.
3. When recruiting passengers, it would be convenient to have a group chat in which you can immediately convey necessary information for all fellow travelers and familiarize them with the rules of the trip.
   Solution: organize chat rooms where people will be added automatically if you confirm them for a trip.
4. The feedback system has no reference points other than the rating. But how can I give a bad mark to a person who just kept silent all the way. Yes, he did not entertain me, but he did not have to. Therefore, the grading system needs to be brought to a categorical one, when a separate score is given for each item.
   Solution: introduce a scoring system for different indicators of activity, for example, compliance with traffic rules, talkativeness, neatness, and so on, in addition to the existing comment field.
5. Feedback is what all trust is built on. But at the same time, BlaBlaCar does not encourage them to leave. Any online store is trying to persuade me to leave a review, and they promise money on the phone, and a discount, and free shipping. And then silence. The trip went well.
   Solution: ask the user to leave a review after the trip, send a notification by mail, SMS, push to the device.
6. There is no unified database of cars, which leads to completely different assessments of the level of comfort by owners. It seems to some that the Ford Focus is worthy of three stars in terms of comfort, and someone puts the BWM 3 Series 2 stars. Each owner is subjective in assessing his iron horse.
   Solution: create your own catalog, fix the class of cars, average consumption and cost of maintenance, and based on this, set the minimum cost of the trip and the level of comfort.

It is this unfinished and ill-conceivedness that is misleading. We are told how successful BlaBlaCar is, how many users they have, that they have more than 150 people on staff, and they can’t solve basic things. Maybe some of the major players will be interested in this topic and do something more adequate with greater security guarantees.

Conclusion

When I first started using the service, I treated it with a lot of mistrust. But the first call was like a tub cold water. No, he did not increase the level of trust, he only made it worse. The call was from a young lady, aged 22, who was ready to go to Smolensk with me, a 30-year-old man. One. Either the news background in the country made of me paranoid, or some people are not all right with the instinct of self-preservation.

Friends chuckle and say that it's all about the car, so if you specify some Renault Logan or a representative of the Volga Automobile Plant, then the situation would be different. But this does not bring clarity at all. Is a person in a more prestigious car a priori more decent? It seems to me that there is no logic and consistency of thinking here.

The general impression is: service is interesting through its concept. When entering the legal field, resolving issues with the status of drivers, the appearance of passenger insurance, it will be possible to talk about the emergence of a new player in the market. Now this adventure which cannot be recommended to everyone. I will say more: I am not ready to ride as a passenger with a stranger, because I am simply not sure of his driving skills and adequacy.