Thanks for your feedback. We are working on the language on the website. Believe it or not, our pricing / services page (https://www.solve.com/pricing/) explains this service much better than what's been done in the past, but you're right that there's room for improvement. The next version of the site will be launching this month and is a bit clearer.
I think the entire airport experience is a mess and one of the few things I can think of that's actually worse than 20 yrs ago. If you guys gain deep knowledge about their process and can then make it more efficient via technology, it would be huge.
Suggestion: have the autocomplete on that page default to exact match for the IATA code first. I tried entering SIN and had to scroll through a bunch of other airports first.
Awesome feedback! We're launching a new version of our platform in a week or so and we're fixing a fair amount of the autocomplete and airport/airline search issues.
This type of service has actually existed for about 20 - 30 years and a decent number of people use it, but there's never been 1) an easy way to book it and 2) price transparency. We've solved those two issues and we believe many more people will book the service once they're aware of it. Plus, frequent travelers want to move quickly and safely and we help make that happen.
On the topic of price transparency, can you discuss the breakdown of the pricing between different airports? I've traveled enough that I'm not particularly interested in anything besides expedited immigration, and I can totally accept that it's expensive to get a person past security and buy you into the line, but I'm confused about the difference in pricing for, e.g., LHR, where $220 gets you fast tracked, and SFO, where $375 doesn't.
That totally makes sense. Right now, we're working with a fair amount of fragmented suppliers. At airports with higher demand, we're able to decrease pricing due to scale.
As for places like SFO - in the US in general (Miami and JFK airport being the exceptions), no company has access to meet clients at the gate for international arrivals, so this service isn't as in demand.
We're also still working on crafting our wording and how to pitch the value props to our clients.
For airports where it says does not include fast track immigrations/customs (except for the US), we usually have an expedited immigrations/customs. Another agent will go stand in line a head of time and you can cut in with them, or they'll know the immigration officer and simply walk you to the front. It's true for all airports we service except for the US airports.
We definitely want to make this type of service available to more people in the long term and we believe that increased awareness/volume will help make that happen. TSA Precheck has been helpful to the masses within the USA, and perhaps we'll head down a similar path internationally. Airports in general haven't been very technologically-focused and even at this early stage, we're seeing an opportunity to help airports improve.
I think you missed the point being made. TSA Precheck has not made things helpful. It has merely allowed people of means to return to the status quo ante before TSA existed. It has come at the cost of less freedom and a lowering if expectations on how government should treat people without means.
