On 31st January 2020, I was at Changi Airport Terminal 1 awaiting my Grab ride. The app’s pretty amazing in that it allows me to indicate exactly which Arrivals door I’m at, and in this case it was ’13’. We had to wait for a few minutes for the driver to arrive, and so did everyone else. Then, all of a sudden, the app indicates that my driver had ‘arrived’ but I was standing at Door 13, and there wasn’t a vehicle there. So where had he gone?! Then the driver calls and tells me he is not at Terminal 1. Instead, he’s at Terminal 3 (and I wonder why the hell he’s there, but I don’t ask). I ask him how much longer I’ll have to wait. And he says he might take another 5 minutes, but that I can cancel if I wish to. Somehow, I had this nagging feeling that he just wants me to cancel the ride, instead of him canceling it on his end even though he doesn’t want to come fetch me. So I cancel, and re-book, and wait a couple more minutes for another driver (who showed up, thankfully).
On the way home, of course, I send in feedback to Grab about this terrible driver who was irresponsible enough to (1) indicate via the app that he had arrived to pick me up, but actually was far away, (2) ask me to cancel instead of him canceling right at the start so I could have quickly made another booking, and (3) make me wait when all I wanted was to quickly get home to a hot shower!
And today, NINE days after sending feedback to Grab (not as a blogger, mind you, but as a Grab passenger), I get an email from Grab which states, among other things…
“After looking into your experience, we’ve found that your driver should have picked you up. As a corrective action, the driver has received a strike on record. We’ll continue to monitor and train your driver to ensure that this doesn’t happen to you or someone else again.
In view of this, we have credited SGD 3 into your GrabPay Credit Wallet as a gesture of apology.
We’re sorry about your frustrating experience and have taken your feedback seriously as an opportunity for Grab’s improvement.”
This is truly AWESOME.
I loved that the driver has gotten “a strike on record” so he’ll certainly think twice before doing the same to some other unsuspecting Grab passenger.
And, as an unexpected bonus, I get $3 credited into my GrabPay wallet – I’ve checked, and yes, it’s in.
So folks, the only reason I’m sharing this is so that YOU know you should do the right thing and report to Grab whenever a driver pulls a stunt like this. If he/she doesn’t want to fetch you after accepting the booking (whether the app does this automatically or not, I don’t care), then the driver should be the one canceling the ride. So we don’t have to wait and wait and wait for someone who doesn’t appear, and who then even has the cheek to indicate via the app that he has arrived when actually he’s far away.
I used to think that having private hire vehicles compete with taxis was such a great thing for us passengers. I no longer have to be chided by taxi drivers who have queued for many hours only to pick me up and find that I don’t stay far enough from the airport so they cannot earn a higher fare to warrant the time they’d spent in the taxi queue.
Unfortunately, nothing’s perfect though.
Even with Grab, which is a fabulous app as it is, there will still be drivers who will do unexpected things like what I experienced on 31st Jan. So, folks, please report them. Then treat yourself to a cup of bubble tea or something with the S$3 credit. 