Riga

Riga – Taxify (and voucher code)

I must admit that I hadn’t heard of Taxify before I got to Riga, but it’s reasonably well advertised around the city. It’s a company which has its roots in the region (Tallinn in Estonia is where it started, but it expanded to Riga after that) and is a sizeable competitor to Uber. It works along the same principles, so I thought that I’d give it a go to get me from the hotel to the airport.

My flight leaves at 06:00, so to give me a lot of time, I got a taxi at 01:00, just in case it all didn’t work and I was stuck several miles from the airport. This taxi plan was much easier than the option of public transport as I’d have needed to leave two hours earlier to get the last tram. I checked out of the hotel, put my start and end points in the app and then the driver turned up three minutes later. All very efficient.

The bonus of this whole experiment is that I had a €5 code to use, so I expected that my journey would be cheap. What I didn’t expect is that the taxi fare only came to €4.80, so my entire ride from the hotel in the early morning was free of charge. That’s a definite bargain. And I’ve found myself at the airport much earlier than I had anticipated, but better to be too early than too late.

If anyone reads this wants a €5 voucher code, just use:

FZRH9

I think this works in any city that Taxify operate, not just in Riga.

One slight negative is that I accidentally ordered a taxi the night before when testing it, but I was able to cancel immediately so it didn’t matter. I do like that users can pick whether to pay by cash or card, and I think Uber insists on having a saved credit card, which Taxify doesn’t.

Anyway, I’d definitely use Taxify again if I’m visiting a country where it operates. They’ve tried to open up in London, but that plan failed and they’ve lost their licence, but they seemed pretty reputable and reliable to me from my experience.