TAXI.com

Since last year, the difference between Dispatch and regular listings have been blurred out, at least that's how I see it.
Regular listings come with shorter deadlines than before, often less than 72 hours. (I guess this is a growing trend that industry people want their stuff right away as opposed to next week).
So why then pay for Dispatch when the Dispatch listings are much less frequent? Why don't TAXI put all listings in one basket?

i asked this question on the forum myself a while ago. no one could tell, so i sent a mail to taxi. got no reply.

Way, way back when, there were only regular listings. Then there was a growing need for quick turnaround stuff and the Dispatch listing was born. At the time, the Taxi membership was asked if they wanted Dispatch rolled into the regular listings (at a bit of an increase in yearly dues) or to make Dispatch separate (carrying it's own annual fee). The end result is that separating Dispatch from the regular listings was the preference (not eveyone can turn something around in a few days and for those folks, paying for something they couldn't use didn't make sense).

So that's how we got here, the regular listings and the separate Dispatch listings. Now there's a lot of regular listings that have really, really short deadlines just like Dispatch listings. The line is definitely blurred and I'm not sure actually what the difference is between a short-term regular listing and a Dispatch listing. One thing about Dispatch is that they do it on a pro-rated basis so that you can do regular listings only but if you see a Dispatch listing halfway through your membership year, you can sign up for Dispatch and only pay the fee that's proprated for the remainder of your membership year. For example, you'd only pay for one day if you signed up for Dispatch the day before your membership expires

you're absolutely right, the difference between the short deadline regular listings and the dispatch seems so blurred that i see no point of the dispatch anymore. i'd suggest taxi gets rid of it and just run it all under the regular listings.

Dave summarized it really well and I agree that the lines have become a bit blurred.

The number of dispatch listings compared to the number of quick turn around ones that all members have access to seems to be small.

That being said, I always recommend to folks that they first sign up to be on Dispatch email (contact Taxi for that) and if they see a listing that they think they could benefit from, join at that time. Since the price is prorated according to where you are in your regular membership year, it's often not too costly to give it a shot.

Casey

Ah, that's interesting, Casey - I was wondering what happened to the dispatch emails. I've been on Dispatch twice, let it slide each time. And Taxi apparently does not automagically put former dispatcheez onto the dispatch email list.

Thanks for the heads up; I'll contact them.