DiDi: Ride Hailing in China Reviews

We used DiDi a lot while traveling in China. Sometimes Chinese drivers can be shady- we had one that talked on his phone and drove recklessly and one that made three intentional detours that resulted in a much higher increased fare. this app asks you to enable recording while on the drive- do this because when you have a bad experience they ask if they can access the recording. There are also buttons to immediately call the police if you find yourself in a bad situation. When we had the driver who took the detours, DiDi asked immediately if detours had been taken, and only charged us the estimate. The only downside, sometimes it doesn’t translate into English automatically so one of my friends had to take a picture with her phone on a translating app to see what it said. It has a great feedback section for every ride!

I had a driver that didn’t know where he was going and made many wrong turns. How this is possible is beyond imagination since DiDi has navigation. At one point he started hitting himself and crying. This scared me so much I was afraid for my life! this app customer service only said that I didn’t need to worry I would get to my destination in time. A 30 minute trip took 1.5 hours and they didn’t care at all. The next trip in the same city the driver took me out of my way and added fees for tolls that were higher than the actual fees. About half my trips with this app involved some problems with the driver cheating me in some way. More than a year later and I have never used their service and have not had any issues with any other substitutes! If you reach out and contact them about a problem they say they will respond, that response is simply a phone call to ask if you filed a complaint and another promise to contact you. It ends up wasting your time and creating a bad image for the company. Be nice to yourself and others, don’t use this app

Navigating China without knowing Chinese can be difficult but DiDi is a huge help. That being said, there is room for improvement. I have 2 main suggestions.

First, once a car has been called the destination cannot be changed. This issue only appears on the English this app app. The Chinese app allows a change in destination en route, so many drivers will not take you to a different location without an official request through DiDi . This function should be added to the English app.

Second, you might visually know where you want to go on a map, but not know the address (especially if it is in Mandarin). Most map applications allow you to drop a pin on either side of a route and it does the address estimation for you. Not so on English this app. you must type in your destination and then sift through suggestions that might be in Chinese or English and try to choose the right one. Dropping a pin to choose a destination would improve the efficiency of calling a car.

I got off the this app & forgot to take my phone.

Just 3 minutes later, I realized that phone was in car.

Since my phone was out of battery, I was not able to call back to reach the driver. Then I used my wife’s phone to call this app’s customer service hotline, they asked me about the details but they claimed that driver is on another trip already, they can only contact driver after such trip is over due to safety consideration.

Also, they refused to tell me either driver’s number or passenger’s number, even no information on when such trip can be finished......whatever they said is ask me to wait for their investigation.

Obviously they have no news for me and I won’t have chance to get both my phone and the years data back !!!

Their service team asked me to call police, I really want to get my data back because it’s more important than the phone itself. I went to police station, a police officer shouted at me because they think it’s the matter of this app, they kicked the ball to the other side but I lost my phone & data!!!

Few days later, I received phishing messages on my new phone to ask me to login on fake iCloud websites, because they want to unlock the phone.......they tried many times even called me, the phishing message & call are paid service on internet!

this app, you should do something to make improvements by taking REAL action instead of saying so!

Goodbye to this app!

The best and only Taxi App you can trust while living and/or traveling in China! Just do yourself the favor of downloading DiDi , set up International credit card and navigate the user interface in order to familiarize your self with it.

It’s unquestionably not easy to navigate anything in China without knowing Chinese and inputting addresses and/or locations can be challenging in any local app. Yet, this is due to the fact that using Pinyin (Chinese-Romanization) writing it’s difficult if you have not taken Chinese.

Regardless... of this, there are no other truly viable options with an English friendly GUI, that gets you where you need to go. We have been using this app for nearly four months on a daily basis and we could not live without it.

Traveling in Shanghai and don't speak any Mandarin. Needed a way to get around so tried this app. Used it 10 times. First major issue is the English interface for entering starting location and destination is maddeningly bad. Locations super easily found in Google maps don't seem to exist. After 10 mins of trial and error I can usually find a location nearby, but often not the actual location. The credit card payment only accepts Visa, but doesn't tell you that (or at least that was the issue for me). After 10-15 minutes of frustratingly trying to set locations, the pick up and drop off worked great and payment seemed to work fine. One tricky part is the driver might text you in DiDi and it was in chinese. There are some default replies that you can give, but was never really sure if we understoood each other. Seems like lots of easy fixes, but foreigners are clearly not their target market.

A flight attendant was sexually assaulted and killed couple days ago by a this app driver. I’m only rating this app a five star here so that people can see my comment. I was using this app a Friday night in some busy areas in Beijing by my self when the this app driver locked me in his car and ‘jokingly’ threatened to rob me. He was playing with the car lock and be like I know you have money and stuff. I called this app right after and this app says that I’d have to go talk to the police and there’s not much that they can do. The driver started to text me a bunch of really awful curses and threaten me that if I ever go to the police he will find me cus he knows will I live. In the end this app paid me 5 yuan for compensation and that’s it. Girls, never ever ride this app by yourself especially at night.

The most useless rendition since this app got a hold of Uber and royally messed up a functional system. DiDi always chooses to show your pick up pin as the nearest ‘popular’ spot or something, and that is often across the street or around the corner from where you actually are and drivers picking up will mostly be going the opposite way from where you need to go. When you cancel due to this idiocy, they automatically renew your request so if you aren’t paying attention another driver might already be on the way even though you may have already flagged a cab. Try also doing this with frozen fingers and the pin constantly moving when you try to zoom the screen and you have yourself a recipe for some serious rage! Btw I speak Chinese - so this review isn’t coming from frustration of being unable to communicate with drivers, just from the utterly stupid user interface of DiDi.

this app is useful app for getting around in China. The prices are competitive and the cars are clean. The only complaint I have is that drivers frequently call my phone to ask for directions, even though I'm not in difficult to find locations. I've already given the address and my GPS location is accurate, so it's annoying when drivers don't look at or are unable to read the GPS and address within DiDi and prefer to waste my time talking to me about it. One star taken off for this. Maybe you'd like it if you need daily free Chinese language lessons about how to give someone directions. But for me, a daily user of this app for years, I've had enough and wish the drivers were trained to read the GPS.

Used it once to get from hotel to Beijing airport. All in English until the end of the ride. Got some message with an exclamation point and 2 buttons, all in Chinese. Turns out it was asking me to OK the 5 RMB toll. I hope he got paid. They really need to translate the messages.

The other issue was when I was waiting for the car. When I went away from the status screen there was no obvious way to get back or to even tell a car was on the way. Finally I tried to schedule a pickup, and it said don’t schedule pickup with one already active. Clicking in show details got me back to the car status display.

Still, it’s marvelous to be less of a dependent child in China. Now I need we chat pay from a US credit card.

If you use an American or any other than a Chinese number the 1st time a this app cancels on you for a no-show they will disable your app for 3 days without notice or anything. First time it happen I deleted my app and tried to reinstall and rebooting my phone. When it happened again I had a Chinese call them and they suspended my account for 5 days for my second no show as the driver will send you a message say “walk to me as I can’t come to you” when you respond with “NO” he will report you saying you never showed up.
Pretty stupid for a company to suspend your account when I spend 300 rmb a day driving back and forth to work. They are taking money out of their employees mouth they should impose a small fine of 20RMB to the driver and if you don’t agree then suspend the account!
All I have to say VERY POOR BUSINESS PRACTICE! LOL morons!!
Funny you can still call a this app and still pay with wechat!

Before the English this app app, I dreaded traveling around my city. Now I feel empowered and excited to go beyond my local neighborhood. I feel safe and cared for. I have used their live representative several times and have been extremely satisfied with the results. I love that they provide instant access to police and emergency contacts. I can even choose to block a driver I do not want to ride with in the future. Before using this app, I had so many terrible experiences with city taxis with no one to help me. Gone are the days of smelly taxis, rude drivers, or being ignored for rides because I am a foreigner. Thanks to this app, I can enjoy my time in China and thrive.

I tried this maybe a year ago and DiDi was terrible. Now it’s usable and I use it nearly everyday for work. The location is still not as accurate as it could be. So sometimes you have to send out a search party to find your driver.

As a company the customer service in English is also MUCH better than it had been.

The cars and drivers- well that’s a crap shoot; most drivers are courteous and professional; once is a while you get a real character. The one I had the other night I’m sure was drunk. He played on the radio phone the same horrid song for the 30 minute ride which seemed like it would never end. If that wasn’t bad enough he’d get out of the car at stoplights. Why? I don’t know.

Compared to Lyft which I used for the two weeks I was in Orlando last year, this app has a LONG way to go but again - huge improvement over a year ago . this app English is definitely going in the right direction! Maybe a year from now I can give them 5 stars!

I have spent countless hours trying to get this to work.
Problem 1) My app shows cars are available in the area, but upon request, the wheel would spin endlessly and no car will confirm. On the contrary, my girl friend next to me, works immediately. I’ve tried to request car in many different cities across China, still same issue. Again, my gf’s app would work perfectly.
Problem 2) it accepted my USA credit card (upon repeated entry), the first time around. But when I couldn’t request any car, I tried changing CC. However, it would now say bad internet connection and would not accept my foreign credit card, even tho I am on hotel Wi-Fi or my 4G signal. I don’t have a Wi-Fi connection issue even tho it keeps saying I do! Super frustrating.

I tried redownloading several times, still doesn’t work!

Nov 16, 2017: The English version works great in Changsha, but the choosing of destinations can be frustrating unless you know the exact name needed.

In a near-future version, can we choose the destination by choosing a place on the map? Or can the this app app work in conjunction with the Apple map to choose pickup and destination locations?

UPDATE Apr 1, 2018: To the developers, can you please add the ability to create an address list of places. Instead of only being able to choose by a street address or neighborhood name, let the user choose a name for the place. For example, instead of having to choose "Beautiful Life, 51 Wuyi Lu," let the user change it to "Xiao Pan's house" or "Wanda Mall."

DiDi itself is cleanly designed and has some decent features, however the main reason I needed DiDi was to get from my hotel in Shanghai to Disney approximately 13 miles (21 km) away from my hotel. (This was a work trip. Disney was a weekend plan if you wondering. ) The wait times are completely made up. My ride said 6-7 minute wait and it’s been over 90 minutes so far. While there may be multiple drivers in the area. They may not be willing to drive that far so you will just sit in “waiting for drivers” limbo wondering if someone will pick you up. My guess is if it is a shorter distance the drivers are willing to drive you but if you need to go very far in Shanghai, do yourself a favor and get some cash because you need to take the subway or a regular taxi.

This company does not care for your safety. A flight attendant was raped and killed by a this app driver a couple months ago, this company issued an official (but hardly genuine) apology and promised to look into the issue of disciplining drivers. Yesterday, a young girl was raped and killed by another this app driver, whom another passenger has reported sexual harassment only one day prior. this app did not take any relevant action to the complaint, and continued letting said driver to pick up customers. The company’s ONLY goal is to make money, there’re no regulations, and disciplining drivers would cost them more than they gain. Therefore nothing has changed since the last tragedy, and nothing will change after this one. One can blame the company, blame the police, blame the government, but if you value your life, I suggest boycotting this company/app for your own safety.

Just like a lot of other things in China, DiDi is not foreigner-friendly. It says they allow you to make payments via foreign credit cards, but when I tried to set it up, it kept glitching. Gotta verify with my card provider that I didn’t get any bogus charges.
The customer service option might as well be non-existent. They have pre-determined questions, and when you request online support, you get only two options. One, of you already had a ride, you can ask about that ride. Two, you can ask “other questions” but you just first choose your type of service.
No options for payment setup issues, even though I had received a message telling me to contact customer service.
I didn’t find the option to request a live support agent to talk to.

Living in China, DiDi does sometimes help to get a taxi or private car when you’re in a low-flow area. However, my biggest gripe is that the assignment of cars seems fairly unintelligent—it seems to be based strictly on distance. For example, I am often assigned cars going the wrong direction, or on a highway passing by, or on a major street who would need to do a significant turnaround. All of these result in a significant wait time until the assigned car arrives. Within that wait time, I will usually see at least 1-2 cars pass me on the street.

All in all, DiDi covers the basic functions, but don’t expect too much intelligence. There are no major competitors though, so it’s this or nothing.

There r two girls recently get killed by this app driver, the one was in May, and the company was promised will improve DiDi , but today, another innocent girl was killed by another driver. She even text her family and friends for help, and her friends contact the staff when they lost contact with the girl, but the customer service was lagging and won’t give out the drivers information, therefore the police couldn’t have anymore info for search the girl. The most important is that this driver was reported the day before by another lady, she was escaped from the driver when she found out something was wrong n report it to the customer service but the company still didn’t do anything but still give make the driver available on DiDi . Like I said, get it if u don’t want to live anymore

There r two girls recently get killed by this app driver, the one was in May, and the company was promised will improve DiDi , but today, another innocent girl was killed by another driver. She even text her family and friends for help, and her friends contact the staff when they lost contact with the girl, but the customer service was lagging and won’t give out the drivers information, therefore the police couldn’t have anymore info for search the girl. The most important is that this driver was reported the day before by another lady, she was escaped from the driver when she found out something was wrong n report it to the customer service but the company still didn’t do anything but still give make the driver available on DiDi . Like I said, get it if u don’t want to live anymore