We wrote about Uber when they first came to Welling­ton so I’m not here to regur­gi­tate the many cons (though this ‘game’ about the life of an Uber dri­ver is worth a play, sim­i­lar to Action Sta­tion’s Pick A Path). The obvi­ous truth is that for pas­sen­gers, Uber is super con­ve­nient. Now there’s New Zealand-based com­pe­ti­tion in the form of Zoomy that offers the same con­ve­nience with­out the asso­ci­at­ed extreme­ly prob­lem­at­ic Uber name.

“Local­ly owned. Low­er rates. Bet­ter ser­vice.

Zoomy is cur­rent­ly avail­able in Auck­land & Welling­ton. We built Zoomy on the belief that when dri­vers are treat­ed bet­ter, they pro­vide a bet­ter ser­vice.”

But how do they stack up?

I’ve been tak­ing Zoomy reg­u­lar­ly for a cou­ple of months now, and my ver­dict is: it stacks up pret­ty well. Here’s some loose thoughts as a review.

  • Zoomy used to say that their point of dif­fer­ence for pas­sen­gers was that they don’t go into surge. This is no longer true — when I went to get a ride to the opera from home, the Zoomy app told me I was look­ing at $14-$17. Mean­while there was no surge on Uber, and the ride cost me $9.
  • Con­verse­ly, since Zoomy has shown up, Uber seems to be more like­ly to go into surge mode. Dri­vers can dri­ve for both com­pa­nies, so it seems Uber is try­ing to defend its turf by charg­ing  2.3 or even 3x.
  • Dri­vers for Zoomy need to have a pas­sen­ger license. In order to make the most mon­ey though (accord­ing to an Uber dri­ver who was approached by Zoomy but declined), they also need to be reg­is­tered for GST, which you might not be if you were just after some extra income.
  • Uber’s net­work has had a cou­ple of years to learn about best pick­up points, so I’ve strug­gled with a cou­ple of Zoomy pick­ups at the super­mar­ket — no I can’t just come out of the carpark and cross the street with a shop­ping cart full of bot­tles and cat­food. More users will mean Zoomy learns bet­ter, because Uber was­n’t great at this at the start. But for now I have had some dri­vers can­cel on me after I’ve wait­ed ages because they took the wrong turn.
  • Accord­ing to one of my Zoomy dri­vers, they’re topped up to $10 for all min­i­mum fares (which are $5.95, same as Uber’s except Uber also charges a 55 cent book­ing fee). I don’t under­stand how that can pos­si­bly be a sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­el. Accord­ing to this 2015 arti­cle half of Zoomy is owned by the rich­lis­ter Spencer Fam­i­ly. I’m no busi­ness jour­nal­ist so I have no idea where the mon­ey is com­ing from, or going to. When I ask dri­vers, they say they like that the mon­ey is going to an NZ com­pa­ny. They don’t say that they’re mak­ing more than with Uber.
  • Many of your favourite Uber dri­vers are prob­a­bly dri­ving for Zoomy now as well — unfor­tu­nate­ly your least favourites may be too, like the dude who’s like a vap­ing fedo­ra come to life who man­ages to reek of cig­a­rette smoke too. Cars are gen­er­al­ly the same as on Uber — most­ly Prisues and those Hon­da hybrids with real­ly low back seat roofs that ruin your hair. I don’t think the dis­co Uber is on Zoomy which is a bit sad.
  • Zoomy starts charg­ing you when your car gets near you, so beware if your dri­ver pass­es you by and goes around the block and then picks you up, because it will bring an extra charge. If you con­tact the team, you’ll get this returned to you.
  • Speak­ing of the sup­port team, they’ve upped their game in the past month or so. I had a bound­aries issue with one of the dri­vers and they were nice about it and put in an exclu­sion so I won’t get that dri­ver again. Don’t both­er try­ing to con­tact them on Twit­ter though because they haven’t updat­ed since 2015.
  • I did­n’t write this review in order to get free stuff, BUT here’s my pro­mo code if you want to start using Zoomy — I think you get $10 free and so do I —  X3R7UUD. You might also get a free code when you down­load the app, and keep an eye out for a 50% dis­count rate often adver­tised on Face­book.