Taxis affiliated with Kakao Mobility Corp.’s taxi-hailing service are parked at a parking lot in Seoul on Sept. 14, 2021. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Feb. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — Kakao Mobility Corp.’s taxi-hailing service is selective in choosing passengers depending on their destinations, the Seoul metropolitan government said Wednesday.
The city government carried out a fact-finding ‘mystery shopper’ test during the period from October to November last year after complaints poured in from citizens having difficulty calling taxis, particularly when travelling a short distance.
The test was carried out by a group of research company workers who pretended to be passengers and called a total of 841 taxis through the Kakao Taxi, the most popular cab-hailing app in South Korea.
The success rate for calling taxis when going only a short distance from downtown to suburban areas on weekday nights was the lowest at 23 percent.
Under the same conditions, however, the success rate for a long-distance trip was 54 percent, more than twice as high as for a short-distance trip.
“The success rate was significantly higher for long-distance passengers, particularly on weekday nights when the number of taxi passengers is usually high,” the city government said.
“This result raises doubts about the correlation between Kakao Taxi’s provision of information on passenger destination to taxi drivers and their selective attitude in choosing passengers.”
Even after taxis were called, 1 in 5 taxis (21.3 percent) took more than 10 minutes to pick up the passengers.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
