Our Welcome Pickup experiences have been mixed. It works reasonably well with a pickup from a hotel, apartment, or AirBnB… but it breaks down with pickups from airports. On an extended vacation in Scandinavia this past summer, we had several pickups schedule, but had so many problems with Welcome Pickups that we vowed never to use them again for an airport pickup. The problems we encountered are below.
No one ever met us at the arrivals area with a sign, as promised.
The drivers never respond to text messages via the Welcome Pickup app, so that feature appears to be broken.
You can never get to a live person at Welcome Pickups when there is a problem.
The specific instructions as to where we should meet the driver in the airport are never communicated to the driver.
The service is simply using a local dispatch to call a taxi driver, but the dispatch never sees what we are sent from Welcome Pickups and has no clue what services we were promised and have paid for.
Most of the drivers are angry and argumentative, especially if they have to come into the airport, which is part of the promised service for what we paid.
We had one driver that we finally connected with via phone, but he could not understand why we could not come out and find him. He was in a black taxi, and there were about 30 black taxis!
We had one driver who argued with us that we were at the wrong terminal, like it was the pilot’s fault for parking the plane in the wrong place.
There are no refunds if there is a problem and we abandon the ride and find our own taxi.
Bottom line, it is easier to grab a taxi when you get to the airport than booking in advance and paying a premium for the Welcome Pickup service. They do not deliver what they promise.
Additional Note: I am posting this on public forums as there is no place on the Welcome Pickups site to email the company or have any human communication about how frustrating it is to be their customer.