Taxi-seekers in Qatar are having a hard time booking Karwa drivers this week following an intermittent call center outage.

According to state-backed transportation company Mowasalat, the problem was due to a technical issue that only affected users for a few hours on Monday and Tuesday.

However, this morning, customers continued to complain about booking problems when trying to reach 4458888:

@Mowasalat_QAT IT booking system down since 4 days. What a (bad) joke! @dohanews

— Salvino (@salvag63) July 21, 2016

In a statement yesterday, Mowasalat apologized for the “technical hiccup,” which it said especially affected taxi availability at Hamad International Airport (HIA).

It added that as IT worked to remedy the issue, the company has advised drivers to work overtime and to spend their shifts ensuring taxi availability on the streets, popular hotspots and at HIA.

Apps

Alternatively, customers can use Mowasalat’s smartphone app to request a taxi booking, and get picked up by the Karwa nearest to their current location.

ILoveQatar.net also has this handy list of ride booking apps – including Uber and Careem – that let you book a cab without having to make a call.

According to Mowasalat, the company is taking steps to avoid any further outages in the future:

“We are planning to constantly evaluate through feedback system from the taxi app and enhance our features for higher availability system and highest customer satisfaction,” it said.

Were you affected by the outage? Thoughts?