Dear Uber and OLA Execs in the wild, your drivers are cancelling rides and taking money offline. Please read to know why.
I am sure every blogging and social media platform on the web has spoken about this. So it is about time, the actual folks noticed what is going wrong with your Apps.
OLA and Uber taxi drivers in India are taking orders, then speaking to clients and then cancelling rides. Once the rides are cancelled, they are dropping clients at their respective destinations and taking money offline. Why you wonder?
The simple answer is high commissions from Ola and Uber. Previously it was bad drivers looking to make high numbers with each ride. Right now its only Ola/Uber who’s fueling this problem.
I’ve heard it from all drivers I took in the last 3 months. Most of them requested I cancel and pay them directly. While I refused one, I couldn’t refuse the 2 more due to urgency. But its a telling sign of things if all drivers can feel the pinch.
Funnily enough Ola even has an option to report this saying ‘Driver asked me to cancel the ride and pay offline’. Which shows that Ola is more than aware of this issue. I am not willing to believe that they don’t know why this happens.
Drivers are not angels, I get that. But they do not have to constantly do this if Ola charges them reasonably. A lot of drivers are decent folks looking to make a living. So the ball is right now in OLA/Uber ‘s court. They can solve this permanently if they take reasonable commissions or offer other perks or transfer some of these costs to their customer as subscription fees or something. If they take care of drivers and drivers wont take shortcuts like these.
Till then these ride sharing services are fighting a losing battle. Drivers will constantly find way to circumvent their tech. The app is literally built for the driver, so monitoring the driver’s every action would be next to impossible. Customers can only help them report mishaps to some degree. My last driver even told me that.
