Using Didi for first time
 

Traveling to PVG this weekend. Loaded the didi english app and was planning to use upon my arrival to get to my hotel and then around SH.

Is there a special area to call for Didi in the airport? Is there a ride-sharing location? I use Uber in the States so much now that I rarely take a taxi.

Thanks,

Depends on how good is your Chinese.
Nothing wrong with taxis.

AFAIK there is no designated area for didi drivers parking on airport property. You would have to contact them and give them instructions so they can swoop in. Maybe go to the hotel in the middle of the terminals, DaZhong hotel, and wait there or ask the desk clerk for assistance with this.

Then why not just take a taxi? I cannot imagine for a first time user of didi this would normally be any faster than taking a regular taxi.

I think it may just be much more straightforward taking a taxi.

I also feel that DaZhong Hotel should be a better place for DiDi pickup.

You could take free 5 minute shuttle to Ramada and use that location for pickup. You can try typing in your destination on the english app, if you can't find it on list you could ask desk clerk for help.

Taxi would be easier but then again going to China you must have some spirit of adventure to begin with.:D

Couldn't find DaZhong Pudong Airport on Didi english app listings.

This is a good destination to get the party started in Shanghai.;)

I am not familiar with the English App. Can they show current location? Otherwise hotel staff may be able to help.

The default for current location is gps.. or you can type in english location or destination but its limited to a fairly small number of places. Which makes it pretty limited. ie: Tried "Disneyland" comes up nothing...have to type in "Disney". Plus when you type in "Starbucks". It limits the total results to a lot smaller number than the total in shanghai, like 10. Maybe accepts pinyin, didn't go that far into it.

I guess I had assumed the queue for the taxis would be very long. After a 14 hour flight, I just want to get to my hotel. I had asked if there was a special location as some airports in the US have special areas for non-taxi pickup areas. They are just as convenient and generally I find Uber cheaper than car service or taxis.

The Didi driver will want to call you. They do this reliably. This presents you with two problems: (1) Roaming assuming you don't have a Chinese SIM and (2) Language assuming you don't speak Chinese.

The app does translate for you from English to Chinese and has some stock phrases (I am at the GPS location) but they will still try to call you and you'll have the above two problems. I live here and always have a Chinese speaker nearby when I use Didi. Last night at Shenzhen Airport there's a specific place for e-share cars (ie Didi) and sure enough the driver called even though I messaged him. I always look for teenagers in this situation: they tend to speak English and understand the conversation I need them to have.

I'd get a taxi if I were you.

Drivers will not call an international number.

Yes. Exactly. They won't. This raises the risk that the pick-up won't take place given that they love to phone first and double, triple, check that you are where you say you are.

I love Didi here and I have a China number and place myself near someone young and friendly looking for the inevitable moment that the phone rings.

Arriving at an airport, as a first time Didi user, I would get a taxi rather than try to work things out Chinese-style. IMHO it's doomed to misunderstanding and failure.

An English Didi app? Is it fully functional compared to the Chinese app?

Question about payment: It says that international credit cards only work with expensive rides. So if you have a China issued debit card, will they take that? Or can you pay cash with Didi instead?

If you have a China issued debit card (ie a Union Pay card) then you should link this to WeChat pay and link WeChat pay to Didi. That way you can pay for anything in China no matter how trivial the cost and all journeys are simply charged to your card via WeChat.

I use the English version and it actually functions great. Search is good for location and destination. Text chat auto-translates between your English and the driver's Chinese so some communication is possible even if there are no teenagers around to speak to the driver on your behalf when he inevitably phones.

You can also pay cash.

Ah. My version of WeChat is the non-China version. Is there a China version that comes in English and can use WeChat pay?

There's a simple workaround for this.

Somebody must send you a Red Packet. It can be for RMB1. If you PM me your WeChat ID then I can send you one.

Then, magically, the Wallet function will appear in your Me menu and you can add your Union Pay card and you're good to go.

This trick was told to me when I moved to China six months ago with the "international" (ie English) version of WeChat that didn't apparently have the Wallet function. It worked. I've since done it for others.

Just watch out entering your Union Pay card details. The application is very particular about the name you enter matching the name on the account to the exact upper and lower case letter and spaces between names etc. People have tried and failed because their helpful Chinese bank has entered invisible spaces in the account name between names and after the name. If it fails for you then it's almost-certainly because your account name is not exactly what you think it is.

I am leaving PVG today and although my hotel resisted me using Didi and a friend suggested I would have to use a Chinese telephone number, the two times I used Didi yesterday went well.

I plan on using Didi this morning to return to the airport. However, I noticed that unlike Uber I have not received an email receipts.

When I go into settings, I get stuck when trying to get an invoice because I am asked for the "TaxPayer ID". I click on this and see a window that says this must be 15, 18, or 20 number with caps.

What are they looking for? If this is distinct to China is there another way to get an electronic receipt?

I never registered for invoice on Didi. I hailed taxis only, but never a personal car. Taxi drivers can still give me receipts.

This was a short stay so only 2 taxi rides, 3 Didi rides, and a bit of walking. I far and away prefer the Didi cars and drivers.

The driver that took me to the airport this morning had a very nice clean car with a/c. He was courteous and took me to the entrance for DL at T1 (pvg).

The Marriott downtown almost forced me to use taxis but never again for me. This will also encourage me to try Lyft to see how they compare to Uber where both are available.

Anyway, I prefer to use my office credit card in the Didi app rather than always converting cash but my office demands a clean paper trail so I need to solve the mystery line.

How does one contact Didi customer service when they cannot login to their Didi account?

When asking Didi CS how to get an invoice, they suggested I log out and then login again. I did that while still at the Shanghai airport. However, I never received a verification code via SMS despite several attempts.

Now back in the USA I still am not getting a verification code by SMS or any other means. Since I cannot login to my account I am also frozen out of CS chat. So how do I contact Didi to seek a solution?

This is just an update to say that Lyft sent me to the Didi FB page which allowed me to send an email to Didi support. They responded this morning and hopefully we are on a path to recovery of my account.

In Wechat, for those that are still unable to see the Wallet option in their Me menu -- I was able to search for "Wallet" using the magnifying glass/search icon. Once in the Wallet screen, it let me add my US credit card and now the Wallet option shows permanently.

Only thing now is figuring out how to link WeChat Pay to my Didi account -- it keeps saying it's successfully linked but then it doesn't show active in Didi...

Has anyone been able to sign up for Didi recently? I keep trying but I cannot get the text message confirmation. I change the country code to US (have also tried Canada) but never get the text message.

Did you get this to work to actually do a transaction or receive / send money?

Though you can add it I think with the new restrictions in China around currency, unless you have a valid China based bank account your account isn't really active. Both my US and Chinese phone have wallet active but I can't receive nor send anything.

If you can secure a Chinese bank account then everything is possible, the first step is finding a bank that will give you an account with just your passport. I hear most now require forms of residency.

No luck with my US phone, but with my Chinese SIM card no issue, just no Ali/WeChat pay. Didi is a must unless you get Taxi from Hotel or Airport, getting anywhere else is a total challenge.

I don’t understand why Chinese’s drivers always call. Back in the Uber days the Chinese Uber drivers always called as well. Over the summer I spent some time in Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand, and last winter I was in several European countries, the Uber drivers never called, they just turned up. With Didi, I almost always select the Chinese option that translates to I am at the point I say I am at on the GPS. Yet about 50% of the time they still call, leaving me either saying “Nihao Chifu, ding wei, ding wei, ding wei” the driver sounding confused and repeating the same thing I couldn’t understand, me repeating ding wei, and after a few seconds he says “halla” and I say “xie xie” and hang up.

Then about 2 minutes later as I am walking to my pick up point, and I see on the GPS he is waiting where he should, he will call me again, and I will say Masheng, Masheng Masheng, and he will repeat everything as if now I understand Chinese, and I will repeat Masheng, masheng, he will sa Halla, I will see xie xie, hang up, get in the car about 30 seconds later, and he will laugh about how confusing it all was.

This leaves out the 10% of trips where the driver just drives clear past the pick up point, and I see him blocks away, and he calls me and yells at me, and I don’t have the Chinese to fix the situation, and eventually he cancels and my Didi rating gets dinged.

Also, I never use Didi to leave the airport. I find that the taxi lines are never that long. It just is not worth the hassle. Once, last summer when I was with my girlfriend who is also foreign, but studied Chinese in university but she is better at reading and writing than speaking, we took a Didi out of PEK. It was a bit of a nightmarish experience, we spent like 10 minutes trying to find eachother in the parking garage.

"Nihao Chifu, ding wei, ding wei, ding wei.”

For very simple Chinese to use in this situation, I'd suggest instead:

Wei? Shifu? Wo deng ni!

That is, "Hello? Driver? I'm waiting for you!"

Thanks, I’ll give that a try the next time.

I still wish that they just wouldn’t call me at all.

For US travelers, is Lyft almost as good as Didi?

Lookout antivirus triggered Didi as spyware, so I'd rather not keep it on my phone.

Agree that the calling adds confusion and some uncertainty, but FWIW, I speak no Chinese and had no trouble in either SH or BJ ignoring the call and using the Didi English-language message suggestions ("I am at my pin location, please pick me up now" eg) to communicate with drivers.

During my last visit to PVG, my first time using DiDi from the airport, a local told me that a lot of drivers meet with riders in the parking structure in between the terminals. So off I went. Sure enough when I pinged for my ride, a phone call came in from the driver. Being slightly less than useless in Putonghua, I handed the phone to a guard who walked over, noting the confused look on my face, who proceeded to explain to the driver exactly where we were. After the conversation, he pointed out that drivers like to know where in the parking structure you are and to use the parking structure locators (L2, section A19).
Five minutes later, a guy walks up with our chat open on his phone and identifies himself as the driver. We walk over to his Roewe 550 Plug-in Hybrid and he drives me to the Le Meridien. Easy Peasy.

At least for foreigners, easy destinations such as hotel, train stations and malls work best with the app. If a lot of people go there, chances are that DiDi has it in its database.

Lyft doesn't work there anymore. It used to work with DiDi until they took over Uber.

I was able to sign up using Project Fi from my desk at home (San Francisco). Funny that the confirmation text came from a 408 number...

Sorry for the late reply -- I didn't try sending/receiving as I could never get it to link up with Didi which was my main need. My local friend ended up creating a whole new WeChat (and Pay) account for me to use instead...

I signed up for Didi from the US, and used a US debit card to sign up, in October. This is on their English-language app, which worked really well in SH and BJ in October.

Thanks, as I carry both my US and my local CN phone I use Didi mostly from my China and live doing it with old fashion cash. May look to load up Didi on my US and suck the data and overhead to try for my next trip here.

I'm going to bite the bullet this year and get a local bank account to link to Alipay and go fully local this year, done with cash and US CC are useless at anything but the biggest places. China is moving far faster than US to cashless and Visa and MC should be worried, LOL

The didi driver is often a taxi driver. Taxi can be hard to get in some areas at some times of the day, so the app is still useful.