Commuters cab woes continue

We all have come across days when we have had issues with the cab services in the city. Irrespective of which cab you take i.e. Ola, Uber or Meru, you would sometimes either be charged extra for no reason or not have the cab show up on time. We recently came across an incident where a customer got charged twice the amount for his fare ride. And he’s not the only one...

A post that went viral written by a Facebook user, JP Muduli states “On  November 24, I had booked a cab to Bengaluru airport with payment method via Paytm. On the way to the toll gate, the driver stopped car on the side of the road saying he need cash as a payment method to pay the toll and when I disagreed, he said he can’t go further. I was really hopeless that time as I had to catch the flight in next 20 minutes.”  A heated argument ensued, post which JP Muduli had to oblige. “I finally agreed to pay by cash and he said he will cancel the Paytm payment, which will be transferred back to my account after 15 minutes of trip completion. After completion of the trip, I paid Rs 871 by cash and the same amount also got deducted from my Paytm.” 

 A business analyst at Infosys, Shivam Sarin shares that his friends had encountered the exact  issue. “My friend paid with Paytm but the driver wanted payment in cash. In the end, he paid for the trip with Paytm and also to the driver who started fighting with him at the airport. When he contacted the Uber support, they just stated that he  should not have paid the driver. What is one supposed to do in such situations? Should we fight and create a scene because Uber support sucks or keep waiting for their reply and miss the flight,” he questions.

There have been other instances of people being overcharged in the city for their cab fares. Nadine Sheetal, who frequently uses cabs, tell us that she has been overcharged a couple of times by Uber. She says, “Even though the driver took the right route, the fare price was overcharged than the ride estimate shown while I got on.”

She says further, “I got refunded once for that, but the second one was recent. When I checked the price estimate it showed Rs 240 after I reached the point showed Rs 340. The driver charged Rs 100 extra and I don’t even know why.” An Uber India spokesperson opines, “Unfortunately every week we have different kinds of complaints that come in. But, we do our best on our end and refund  the amount that is overcharged by the driver. Most of the times, unfortunately, the driver is at fault. During the training period we ensure that they are aware of such incidents.” *We tried reaching out to other popular cab services in question, but the spokespersons were unavailable to comment.