When I prepare to land in a new country (or even state), I always look up my transit options and have a plan before my plane takes off. In Buenos Aires, my plan had some complications 🙂 . The best way to get a good exchange rate on your money in Argentina is to bring USD and exchange it downtown.
So I knew that I wouldn’t yet have pesos when I landed in Argentina and wanted to take a car from the airport. I ended up using Uber that was charged to my credit card to get from the airport to downtown Buenos Aires, but when I was waiting to pick it up, a taxi driver approached me and tried to get me to go into his car instead (Pro tip: If you want to seem non-threatening, maybe don’t order a solo female traveler to get into your car). Obviously, I did not.
The taxi driver went on to explain that Uber is not the way to go in Buenos Aires and that I should use taxis instead. However, because of the aforementioned money issues, (the yellow taxis don’t take cards) and this man’s insistence, I was not getting in that car.
I asked the man to leave me alone, he did and then My Uber rolled up a few minutes later and we went downtown without issue. This interaction wasn’t my favorite way to enter a new country, but it did give me an interesting insight into how Uber is seen here in Buenos Aires. But later I learned more about it.
Uber came to Argentina in 2016 and has apparently been on and off illegal ever since. Oops! I didn’t expect that I was participating in illegal activity while ordering a ride share, but here we are. Hopefully we’re currently in the “legal” section of things. The story is similar to everywhere else Uber has saturated – taxi drivers don’t want them to undercut their business. However in Argentina, that sentiment has been backed up by the courts and met with aggression by taxi drivers.
So not wanting to be contributing to an illegal venture, I learned what locals use instead: Cabify! Cabify operates in Spain and Latin America, specifically the below countries and states:
- Argentina: Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Córdoba and Rosario
- Brazil: Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, Curitiba, Campinas, Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro, Santos and Sao Paulo
- Colombia: Barranquilla, Bogota, Cali and Medellin
- Chile: Concepcion, Santiago, Iquique and Valparaíso
- Ecuador: Guayaquil and Quito
- Mexico: Guadalajara, Mexico City, Merida, Monterrey, Puebla and Queretaro
- Peru: Lima
- Spain: Alicante, A Coruña, Barcelona, Benidorm, Madrid, Malaga, Marbella, Murcia, Santander, Seville, Valencia and Zaragoza
- Uruguay: Montevideo
So to help you avoid any ride share issues in Argentina, let’s see what the Cabify experience is like.
Trips
So Cabify functions just like the Lyft or Uber app (but in Spanish 🙂 ). Basically:
- You put in the address you want to go to
- The app tells you the price
- You select payment method (I added the option of cash (efectivo) and chose that for the better exchange rate in Argentina)
- The app tells you when your car will arrive, shows you a map with the incoming car and tells you the car type, color and license plate so you can find it
The only difference is that there is no sticker or anything on the Cabify or Uber cars. If you’re like me and prefer visuals, this is exactly what using the app looks like:
Marketing
Now for a negative – Cabify’s marketing is the most annoying I have encountered in a long while…probably since Hello Fresh. I downloaded the Cabify app before I got to Argentina, and once I received DAILY emails for 4 days asking me why I wasn’t using their service yet. Calm down bro – I’m on the other side of the world and you know that since you have my location!
Then when I looked at the app for an estimate for the first time while in Argentina and then didn’t use it, I got daily emails for another 3 days in a row. And yes I know that I could “unsubscribe” to these emails, but at that point I was curious how far they would go. On the other hand, the app has also given me annoying notifications all the time asking why I’m not using it and there’s no way to turn them off!
However, one positive of this email barrage is that it gave me a discount code for 50% off my first 5 rides – sweet! Though they cap it at $500 pesos, which is basically $2 less on a ride, but since my last taxi ride was $5.50, that’s not bad.
One funny thing happened when I entered the code in the app though – I was told it expired what I thought was that same day until I realized…the dates are swapped compared to what we do in the USA (so 11/12/22 means December 11th, not November 12th)…what a dumb American 🙂 . So I got $2 off my $13.45 ride to the airport at the end of the month.
Reviews
Anyway, silly annoyances aside, I was hesitant to use Cabify because it doesn’t have great reviews that I can find. I raised my eyebrow at their 1.3/5 Trust Pilot rating (though I don’t know if they’re a reliable source – let me know in the comments) and their 3.7/5 rating on the Android play store.
However, in my anecdotal experience – I haven’t had a negative experience. It’s been the exact same as when I use Lyft or Uber. It did seem like a lot of the negative reviews have to do with interactions with customer service, which I haven’t needed to use so it’s possible that’s an issue, but I can’t confirm it.
Other Services
This isn’t the case in Buenos Aires but while doing research for this post, I discovered that Cabify has many other services they provide, similar to Grab in Thailand. In other countries they have the option to offer things beside getting a ride share with their app, such as renting scooters, small motorbikes or renting cars as well as having the app deliver your groceries. Sweet! If I’m in the other countries listed, I’m gonna try it 🙂 . One additional service that is available in Argentina but that I haven’t used, is sending packages in a rideshare.
Conclusion
One of my main goals with this blog is to make people aware of other options that I had never heard of before and wish I knew, especially if using US ride shares like Uber will lead to uncomfortable or dangerous situations in Argentina.
So Cabify is another option and I personally have had a great experience with them. My Argentinian friend I was visiting in Buenos Aires has also only had positive experiences using them for several years. So in case you’re looking for an alternative ride share option, I hope this helped!
What’s your favorite regional app?
I downloaded Cabify last night while prepping for a visit to Barcelona in a few months time (planning FTW).
Really delighted to open my inbox and your review was here – thank you so much.
Is it like Uber in that your data/wifi needs to work and they may park nearby and you have to find their asses? I would be using taxis only the non-fixed fare puts me off and I can’t speak Spanish.
Have so much find in Barcelona! And that was quite fortuitous – happy this could help 🙂 . Yes your data needs to work on Cabify the same as Uber, but I never had an issue finding the car. Their maps are very accurate.
Hey Purple, thanks for posting as per usual. I know this sort of off-topic relative to this post but maybe this could serve as an idea for a future post or what have you, but what would you have done as it relates to HEALTH INSURANCE while being retired early IF you weren’t such a huge traveler and lived primarily in the US? Thank you!
Hi Ken – thank you for reading 🙂 . I haven’t thought a lot about that since it’s not my situation and I’d be hesitant to write a post about it for the same reason since it wouldn’t be based on my experience (I only post about something that I’ve done myself). However, if I was primarily in the US I think I’d get on the ACA and buy travel insurance when I left the country like I did while working. I hope that helps!