Interview with GetTransfer CEO Alexander Sapov on Surviving COVID, Legal Disputes, and Rebuilding Driver Trust

When travel collapsed in 2020, few companies in the private transfer space faced as stark a test as GetTransfer.com. The platform, which connects travelers with professional drivers across more than 100 countries, had been on a steep growth curve when the pandemic brought it to a near halt. Thousands of bookings were stranded. Repayments were delayed. Legal disputes followed. CEO and co-founder Alexander Sapov steered the company through all of it — and came out with a clear-eyed account of what went wrong and what changed. We sat down with him to hear it directly.

Q: You launched GetTransfer.com with a specific model in mind. What problem were you actually trying to solve?

Alexander Sapov: The private transfer market was dominated by agencies adding layers of markup between passengers and drivers. We wanted to cut that out. Our idea was simple: let travelers book directly with verified, professional drivers at a fixed price. No surge pricing. No mystery vehicle. You know exactly who is picking you up and what you will pay.

Q: How did you build trust on the driver side of the marketplace early on?

Alexander Sapov: Driver quality was everything. We built a vetting process covering language ability, local knowledge, vehicle standards, and customer ratings. Drivers on our platform are independent professionals, not employees. That gives them flexibility. But it also means the legal and operational relationship is more complex than in a traditional employment model. That complexity mattered a lot when COVID hit.

Q: Take us back to early 2020. What did the first weeks of the pandemic actually look like from inside the company?

Alexander Sapov: It was a near-total stop. Borders closed almost overnight. Flights were grounded. Our transaction volume fell to almost nothing within weeks. We went from a growth mindset to pure crisis mode. Every conversation became about survival — for the company, for our drivers, and for the thousands of customers with prepaid bookings.

Q: What happened to those prepaid bookings? Customers were obviously expecting repayments.

Alexander Sapov: Yes, and we owed them. The issue was the scale and speed of it all. We chose to process refunds in a structured, prioritized way rather than a chaotic first-in, first-out queue. That decision made operational sense, but it was slow. Some customers waited far longer than they should have. That waiting created frustration, and that frustration, in some cases, turned into legal action.

Q: How many cases escalated to formal legal disputes?

Alexander Sapov: A small number, but each one was serious. The legal environment was complex because we operate across dozens of jurisdictions, each with different rules on force majeure, cancellation rights, and refund timelines. UK law is different from UAE law. German consumer protection looks different from what you find in Southeast Asia. We had to bring in external legal counsel to manage cases jurisdiction by jurisdiction.

Q: Did you feel the company handled those legal obligations well?

Alexander Sapov: Not perfectly, no. We were honest with ourselves about that. The biggest failure was communication. Customers deserved timely, clear updates on when they could expect to recover funds. In too many cases, they did not get that. The silence made the legal risk worse than it needed to be. We learned that lesson the hard way.

Q: What did you actually change as a result of those legal and reputational challenges?

Alexander Sapov: We reviewed everything. The terms were rewritten. The refund policy now has explicit timelines instead of open-ended language. Customers receive automated status updates throughout the cancellation and repayment process. And we built a multilingual support team specifically to handle disputes before they reach the legal stage. We wanted resolution to happen in conversation, not in court.

Q: You mentioned legal counsel across jurisdictions. Is that something you still maintain?

Alexander Sapov: Yes. Operating in over 100 countries means legal exposure is always present. The question is whether you manage it proactively or reactively. We were reactive in 2020. Now we are proactive. We review our terms regularly against changes in consumer protection law across our key markets. It is not glamorous work, but it protects both our customers and our drivers.

Q: The driver side of your marketplace also took serious damage during COVID. How bad was the attrition?

Alexander Sapov: Very significant. Many professional drivers who had built their livelihoods around transfer bookings simply left the industry when demand collapsed. They moved into logistics, delivery, other sectors. When travel started to recover in 2021 and 2022, we did not have the driver supply to meet the returning demand. That was a real problem.

Q: How did you win those drivers back — or find new ones?

Alexander Sapov: We revised the onboarding process to reduce friction. Cut down the time between application and first booking. Improved commission structures for new drivers in high-demand corridors. And we were transparent with drivers about what had happened and what had changed. Drivers are professionals. They respond to clear terms and fair treatment, not just incentives.

Q: You introduced a driver performance index. What is the thinking behind that?

Alexander Sapov: We wanted to stop rewarding low price alone and start rewarding reliability. The index combines customer ratings, booking completion rate, and response time. Better-performing drivers get higher visibility in search results. It sounds simple, but the signal it sends matters: we value the driver who shows up on time and communicates well over the driver who undercuts on price and disappears.

Q: Ride-hailing apps have moved into the pre-booked transfer space. How do you see the competitive landscape now?

Alexander Sapov: The competition is real. But I think ride-hailing apps and professional transfer platforms serve fundamentally different needs. When you book with us, you are choosing a specific driver for a specific journey at a fixed price. That relationship is different from hailing a cab. Our drivers have a genuine professional identity on the platform. That is something a gig driver on a ride-hailing app typically does not have.

Q: Where is GetTransfer.com focused for the next few years?

Alexander Sapov: Three areas: corporate travel, Latin America and Africa, and mobile experience. Corporate travel is underserved in the private transfer space — most business travel booking tools still rely on taxi accounts or rental cars. We think there is a real opportunity there. Latin America and Africa are growth markets with strong local driver communities and rising travel demand. And our mobile product needs to be faster and simpler for both drivers and passengers. That work is already underway.

Q: Final question. What is the single biggest lesson from the COVID period that shapes how you run the company today?

Alexander Sapov: That a platform business is only as strong as what it does when things go wrong. The easy test is a smooth transfer on a sunny day. The real test is what happens when a driver cancels at short notice, or a flight is delayed, or a customer wants to recover funds they feel they are owed. We were not ready enough for that test in 2020. We are significantly better prepared now. And that preparation is built into everything — the legal terms, the communication protocols, the driver relationships. It has to be, because the trust of every passenger and every driver depends on it.