Scheduling a ride the night before
Why the driver search starts ten minutes ahead rather than the moment you book.
Most trips are fine to hail. The ones that are not are the ones with a fixed time at the other end: a flight, a clinic appointment, an interview, a bus that leaves whether you are on it or not.
For those, Topsy lets you set a pickup time when you book. The trip then sits in your upcoming list until it is due.
The ten-minute rule
Here is the part people ask about. When you schedule a trip for seven in the morning, Topsy does not assign a driver at eleven the night before. It begins looking ten minutes before your pickup time.
That sounds less reassuring than a driver locked in overnight. It is actually the opposite. A driver who agrees at eleven at night to be somewhere at seven has, by seven, possibly finished their shift, or is across the city, or has taken a long trip that overran. The commitment is worth very little. Searching close to the time finds a driver who is genuinely nearby and genuinely available.
It also means no car is held idle for hours, which is why scheduling does not carry a premium for reserving.
What this means for cancelling
Because no driver is assigned until ten minutes before, cancelling any earlier than that costs nothing. There is a long window in which plans can change for free. If your flight moves, cancel and rebook for the new time.
Trips that repeat
A scheduled trip can also repeat, either daily or on the same day each week, as a series of between two and twelve trips. Cancelling the series cancels every future trip still in it, and each is refunded rather than left as a credit.
For a school run specifically, Topsy Teens handles it differently and better: an arrangement runs on the weekdays you choose between a start and an end date, and trips are put in the diary a few days ahead rather than a whole term at once. That way you are not paying for sixty journeys before the first one has happened.
Practical advice
Set the time you want to be collected, not the time you want to arrive, and leave room for the road. Accra traffic is the variable that scheduling cannot solve for you. What it can do is make sure the search for your car starts before you need it rather than at the moment you are already late.