Groundlink Car Service Review
Groundlink is an app based driver service which matches passengers with professional drivers in a number of cities around the country. They describe themselves as, “GroundLink provides corporate clients and leisure travelers with safe, reliable, and professional chauffeured car service in major cities around the world.”
Recently Groundlink made some noise with a generous offering of ride credits for Visa Signature/Infinite cardholders. I know myself and several others ended up racking up some nice credit. You can see our original post for details on getting up to a $30 credit and 15% off. Plus get another $25 credit signing up with this referral link.
Groundlink Car Service Review
Recently on my trip to New York City, I had a need for a car from my hotel (Park Hyatt New York) to Newark Liberty International Airport. After checking out Uber and seeing it would cost about $70, I opted to use my newly found credits with Groundlink.
Choose A Vehicle
Groundlink offers a number of different vehicle options. Unlike rideshare services like Uber or Lyft, passengers are not allowed to ride in the front seat. This means that smaller cars will max out at three passengers and you’ll have to move up to more expensive options for four or more.
Here are some of the prices quoted from the app for our trip from the Park Hyatt New York to Liberty International Airport:
- Economy: $55 before discount + tip and fees
- Luxury: $65 before discount + tip and fees
- VIP Sedan: $102 before discount + tip and fees
- SUV: $115 before discount + tip and fees
Had I not waited until about two hours before, I should have also had an option for a Mercedes-Benz for $150 or a Stretch Limo for $183.
Scheduling A Ride
In certain cities Groundlink has an Uber like “Ride Now” option, but for the most part you are going to be scheduling your ride ahead of time. This is quite intuitive in the app and even gives you the ability to inform the driver of your flight so he/she can time their arrival based on any changes to your itinerary.
Since we had four people our options for Groundlink were limited. Ultimately I chose for an SUV considering this would give our party of four plenty of room and it cost the least amount of money. Note that Groundlink also provides car seats for a fee of $20, but we had brought our own saving some $$$.
The Booking Confirmation
As mentioned above, the booking confirmation is incredibly straightforward. Originally I tried to schedule my ride for 3pm, however the app said no cars were available at that time. Fortunately a simply change to 2:55pm fixed that. Strange, but it wasn’t too much of a hassle.
On both the final screen before confirming my ride and on the email confirmation (shown above), I was able to see the entire cost breakdown. As you can see, Groundlink charges you a tip and a few other fees. Fortunately, they also allow credits to be used towards these things. While I didn’t notice it at the time, I was only given a 10% discount instead of the 15% I should have received as a Visa Infinite cardmember.
Groundlink Ride Review
Once my ride was scheduled, we went about our business of packing and checking out of the hotel. At 2:38pm (about 17 minutes before scheduled departure) I received a text message that our driver was on route. Then, shortly before he pulled up at 2:53pm I received another message indicating that he was arriving. That second message gave a car number (2473) and a description (CHEVROLET). He pulled up in a Cadillac Escalade about a minute later with the number prominently displayed on the passenger side window. A nice upgrade from a Chevy.
When taking car services in the past, I have always experienced drivers who were a bit more friendly than ours on this day. I’m not complaining because he wasn’t rude either, but he was to the point. He helped me load our luggage into the back of the Escalade, got in the car and drove the 45 minutes to the airport without saying a word. While the ride was quiet, it went smoothly and the views of the Manhattan Skyline as we emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel were nice too.
One final thing I will note is that we weren’t offered waters or anything else during this trip. This did not bother me, but it is a bit different than with other car services I have taken in the past. It was a bare bones ride service wise, but the car was incredibly comfortable.
Groundlink Review Wrap-Up
One of the frustrating things for us was the necessity of booking a larger vehicle for four people, but we found our ride was comfortable and the ability to schedule it was convenient as well. If you have less than four, Groundlink may actually be the same price or even cheaper than Uber/Lyft in some circumstances.
In the end, I was glad to give Groundlink a try, especially considering their generous offer allowed me to take a ride for free. I’m also glad the tip was included and transparent which made the entire ride go completely as planned. If I am in a Groundlink city and am in need of a car, I’ll definitely give them another look and at the very least compare their rates to Uber/Lyft.
Have you tried Groundlink before? If not, sign-up and get a $25 credit. If so, feel free to share your Groundlink experience in the comments!
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is the old king of travel rewards cards. Right now
bonus_miles_full
Learn more about this card and its features!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
WOW _ I had set up an account and was ready to book an upcoming trip . Fortunately, I hadn’t given any CC info. I guess I will go back to Lyft – I’ve never heard of Blacklane, but maybe I’ll take a look.
Without a massive amount of credit, which you seem to be the only one that escaped the disappearing account with more than $100+ of credit, there is no chance you would have taken a ride that was 2x the price of another service. This is a very self-serving post, it’s your blog so you do you…but ground link is an overpriced sham.
With dannys ! obsession and Mark’s poor writing skills your expansion and efforts to increase traffic are not going well.
Hey Phil thanks for reading and supporting the blog. I wanted to especially thank you for taking the time to read my work, it is much appreciated. Hey man you do you – keep up the good work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I use Blacklane when it makes sense (in Paris, for instance, where it’s cheaper than a taxi/uber). I’ve had great experiences with them. Similar booking process. Hit me up if you want a referral lol
GroundLink is overly expensive and ever cheaper than the most expensive Uber ….. I added 130 dollars worth of credits via the signature visa sign up and they deleted my account, luckily I booked immediately so the reversation was honored…. the ride was nice and driver was professional but 128 dollars for a 15 minute ride in a suburban wasn’t worth it to me
I’m still locked out of my account too. I have an upcoming ride that is $125. I have no way to know if the ride reservation is still intact, and if so, if I’m on the hook for all or part of the $125. I had multiple credit cards in my account and I have no idea whether they will use one of them to charge me, or for how much, if the ride is even still an option.
Same here, got my account deleted for adding more than one Visa card. If they wanted to restrict everyone to one promo they could have done that. Deleting the accounts was unnecessary and counterproductive.
This company is terrible. Take a look at frequent milers comments from their initial promotion. They cancelled everyone’s account and removed the credits from their accounts.
Fk groundlink – they deleted my 5-yo old account because I had added two visa infinite account promos. they are utterly unscrupulous.
I think you would receive a different opinion about this company if you asked other customers (or simply googled) from the first “promotion.” Not only were people not awarded the credits from adding their Visa cards to their profile but the money was removed and sign-in names changed. I was not able to sign into my own account. When I reached out to GroundLink I heard crickets. No response via email, Twitter, Facebook, etc. I know you probably receive a commission for saying they are great but I wouldn’t promote a company that has no response to any complaints. Feel free to google “Greg+ GroundLink +no credit + no response” & see if I’m the only person.
I’m sorry for your experience AJ. I don’t have any financial relationship with Groundlink and only have a personal referral just like every single other member. I had the same issue where my account was locked on the first day but they fixed it after a couple of days without me having to email them and my credits were there.
Either way, I’m not promoting them. I am sharing my honest opinion from taking their service and sharing the same referral code every member has. I’m glad you are able to share your experience so others know what you went through before deciding if Groundlink is worth it for them.