Transparency and Trust

One of the key features that has made Uber so popular is transparency. Taxis have always been the big unknown and one of the most probable service to rip people off. And that includes the premium authorized taxi services at airports worldwide, where the ripoff is simply the premium tariff. Before Uber, you never knew how much a ride would cost. That all changed and the taxi industry is slowly realizing that with applications like myTaxi bringing that transparency via their apps. But still when you simply grab a taxi at an airport, you never know.

I would say, whenever there is no transparency, there is potentially a ripoff is lurking... or there is something wrong with the service itself.

Healthcare services being probably the most prominent example. I wrote about this a few weeks ago. The snake bite story. And my own dog bite one to confirm the case. When I was admitted to the emergency room, I had no clue what procedures they wanted to perform (and they performed two different ones a week apart - my first visit lasted 40 minutes, while the second was more than 3 hours). I did not know the price for the vaccine nor how much it costed for an hour of sitting there and having the blood pressure checked. Then they send me the bills which I paid. And now they want $400 more and nobody can explain why.

Similar issues are with airlines and the jungle of booking classes, frequent flyer miles and upgrades. Some airlines, like United, are pretty transparent, which is why I like them. Some, like Lufthansa, guide you with a blindfold through a labyrinth where you finally realize you cannot upgrade because you booked V instead of Y or you don't get any miles for flying because you booked K. Or that you cannot get to a Lufthansa lounge holding the Lufthansa gold card and a Lufthansa ticket, because the flight happens to be a code share flight operated by Air Malta. At which point you really start appreciating the crude transparency of Ryanair. Of course, with Ryanair, you pay for everything. But you do so with premium carriers too. They just don't show that level of details on a ticket.

Recently I have had a pleasure to book tickets with Asiana. And I've been really amazed with their transparency. That includes showing clearly how many seats they have left in each booking class and at what price down to details like what information they collect depending on where you live etc. From a transparency perspective this is by far the best flight booking experience I've had.

Last but not least is safety. Each airline claims this is priority for them. Which  clearly is a lie with, for example, LOT, who kept operating the fleet of 737-MAX while other carriers had already grounded the aircraft. LOT only stopped when forced to do so, still claiming their aircraft were safe. Well, probably the livery was the difference then... Or the LO-6506 SP-LRF which was flying on one engine trying to reach a far away airport that was simply more convenient for the carrier. Murky operational procedures that result you have zero trust in what they say every day when demonstrating the safety procedures...

The bottom line is - when there is no transparency - that usually means somebody tries to hide something, so it is generally better to try another option, if possible. That also is the point why in the IT, closed proprietary standards and implementations should be avoided, especially when safety is considered.