Promotional codes were for partner, not general use: Hailo Singapore

SINGAPORE: A set of Hailo Singapore promotional codes - CITI and STAR - which were circulated on online forums, were meant for employees of the taxi-booking app operator's partner and not for general use. That was why it decided to remove the unused credits in non-partner accounts on Tuesday.

In a statement to Channel NewsAsia on Wednesday (Nov 5), the operator said: 'Last week, a set of Hailo promotional codes which we provided to the employees of a Beta Trial partner to help us test our service accidentally found their way onto a few online forums. These forum posts did not include the information that these promo codes were made available only for the employees of our partners and not for general use.

'Yesterday, due to the widespread entry of the codes, we made the difficult decision to remove only the unused credits in non-partner accounts. However, during the preceding week Hailo had honoured literally thousands of free rides passengers who had discovered the codes in the forums.

'We deeply apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused and we hope that our valued passengers enjoyed the thousands of free credits we did permit and understand that we handled the situation as fairly as we could,' it added.

Irate consumers had turned to Hailo's Facebook page to complain about the incident, while one user also alerted Channel NewsAsia on Wednesday about the 'disappearance' of the credits.

Maria Lee-Figueroa said in her email at 10.42am, that her 'credits 'magically' disappeared this morning when the expiration date is supposed to be tomorrow, Nov 6'.

'Upon checking Hailo's Facebook page, I realised that I'm not the only one facing this issue and there is no reply from Hailo so far regarding this and other issues raised by other commuters/users of the app,' she added.

Hailo later posted on its Facebook page that they had sent out a message to passengers about the limitations on the codes.

Hailo's code for the general public, HELLOSING, expired on Nov 2 as it was for the launch week of the service. The new kid to the third-party taxi-booking scene is a joint venture between London-based Hailo and SMRT, and only went live last week.

The incident comes on the heels of Senior Minister of State for Transport Josephine Teo's announcement on Tuesday that the Ministry is looking into introducing basic regulations to protect the safety and interests of commuters.