Track your chauffeur live with My Ride, no app required

Every booking comes with a private ride page. Here is what it shows from the moment you confirm to the moment you are dropped off, what each status means, and how to hand the link to the person who is actually travelling.

Of all the messages that reach our dispatch desk, the shortest is the easiest to understand: where is the car? You are standing in a hotel lobby with a suitcase, or watching an arrivals board from the other side of the world on behalf of your managing director, and a confirmation email from last week is not much comfort. My Ride is our answer. It is the page behind every AmstelCab booking, and it shows you the ride as we see it — including, once the chauffeur is on the move, where the car is.

A page, not an app

There is nothing to install. My Ride is a web page that opens in whatever browser your phone or laptop already has, and it needs no account. The link is in your booking confirmation; if you have lost the email, go to amstelcab.nl/my-ride, enter the booking reference — it starts with SR and is in the confirmation — and we email a six-digit code to the address on the booking. The code is valid for ten minutes and opens your personal ride page. That step is deliberate: the page shows the chauffeur’s name and position, so we want to be sure it is you looking.

Once open, the page holds everything about the ride in one place: the live status, your chauffeur’s name, the vehicle and its licence plate once assigned, the pickup and drop-off addresses, the pickup time, the flight number if there is one, the distance, a button that reaches dispatch on WhatsApp and, once the ride is paid, the invoice as a download. It is also where the person who made the booking can cancel it, free of charge until one hour before pickup.

The six statuses, and what each one means

The top of the page is a timeline with six steps. Each one is set by a real event — a dispatcher assigning the ride, the chauffeur confirming a step in the car — rather than by a timer, so what you see is what is happening.

1. Confirmed. Your booking is locked in. The price is fixed, the time is in our planning, and you will hear from us again before pickup.
2. Chauffeur assigned. A chauffeur has been matched to your ride. From this point the page shows who is coming, in which car, with which plate.
3. Chauffeur on the way. The chauffeur has left for the pickup point. This is the moment the live map appears.
4. Chauffeur arrived. The chauffeur is at the pickup point and waiting for you — at the door of the hotel, or, for a Schiphol pickup, inside the arrivals hall with your name on a sign.
5. Ride in progress. You are in the car. The map now shows the route to your destination and how far is left.
6. Completed. You have been dropped off and the ride is closed; the invoice follows on the same page.

Behind the scenes, the chauffeur moves the ride along from the driver app in the car — On my way, At pickup location, Passenger on board, Finish ride — and each confirmation reaches your page within moments. If a ride is cancelled, the timeline gives way to a note that says so, with the time.

The live map, from “On my way” to “Finish ride”

From the moment the chauffeur sets off, the page shows a map with the car as a marker carrying the chauffeur’s first name, the pickup as a pin, and the distance and minutes still to go. Once you are on board, the destination appears and the same map follows the ride until the chauffeur closes it. A line above the map says how fresh the position is — live, updated a few seconds ago — which is the honest way to show a moving car.

Occasionally that line will read “location paused, last seen …”. That is not the car stopping. A phone pauses location sharing when the driver app is in the background — while the chauffeur has the navigation on screen, for instance — and sharing resumes the moment the app is back in front. If the pause worries you, the WhatsApp button on the same page reaches dispatch, who are looking at the same ride, and once a chauffeur is assigned you have a direct line to them as well.

What is the map for, in practice? Mostly for timing. Leave the lobby when the car is two streets away rather than ten minutes early. Finish the call in the office, because the marker says the chauffeur is still on the Stadhouderskade. For a Schiphol pickup you do not need it at all — the chauffeur is inside the hall before you land — but the person who booked for you, at a desk in another time zone, can watch the marker leave the airport and know that the guest is on the way.

Booking for someone else: the booker sees it too

A great many of our rides are booked by one person for another — an executive assistant for a visiting director, a hotel concierge for a guest, a daughter for her parents landing from abroad. My Ride is built for that. Put the traveller’s name and phone number on the booking and your own details as the booker, and the confirmation and every status update reach both of you. The traveller receives their own ride link; you keep yours. The chauffeur greets the guest by name.

For the booker, four moments matter and the page marks each of them: the booking is confirmed, the chauffeur is on the way, the guest is in the car, the guest has safely arrived. You never have to ring the guest to ask, and the guest never has to ring you to say. Our corporate chauffeur service is built around this, with invoicing and one contact at dispatch for all of a company’s rides.

Sharing the link with a guest

The ride link is personal: anyone who has it can open the page and see the ride, the chauffeur and the car. Treat it like a key. Forward it to the person travelling — by WhatsApp, text or email — and to nobody who does not need it. If you book for a guest, they get their own link anyway, so in most cases there is nothing to forward. Links do expire; if yours has, the page says so and points you to the lookup, where the booking reference and a fresh code open a new one.

The page does not replace the people. Dispatch answers the phone and WhatsApp around the clock, and if you would rather hear a voice say “your chauffeur is in the hall”, you still can. The page is for the moments when you would rather look than ask.

Changing or cancelling from the page

Plans move, and the page allows for it. Cancellation is free up to one hour before pickup and is done from the ride page by the person who booked; inside that hour half the fare is due, and once a chauffeur has been dispatched the full fare. A ride that has started or finished can no longer be cancelled from the page. To move a pickup time, add a stop or change an address, message dispatch on WhatsApp from the same page and we adjust the booking — the price is recalculated as one fixed amount, never as a meter.

For airport pickups you rarely need to change anything, because the pickup already follows the flight. Put the flight number on the booking and the timeline does the rest: the pickup time moves with the landing, the free hour of waiting starts when the wheels touch down, and the booker sees the marker leave the airport once the guest is in the car.

Where is the car? Open the page. That is the whole idea.

Questions, answered

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