[Jeeper1941]

Wow great thread. I will be coming to Bangalore in October and was seriously considering Uber, but after reading all these experiences, I'm not so sure now!

Just read an interesting article on Reuters about Uber; which plans to invest $1billion over the next nine months!
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0Q504H20150731

[Eddy]

Uber and Ola seem to be running into trouble in Delhi for running on diesel. Ban awaits !

[jaibir]

An interesting read about why its hard to find an Uber/Ola to the airport in Bangalore: http://noenthuda.com/blog/2015/06/02/cabs-to-airports/

[gpa]

Originally Posted by landcruiser123

Ola's "low cost" mini turns out to be more expensive now. Their days of low cost ride is over. They seem to have introduced this "ride time charge" to start making more money.

I was caught unawares a few weeks ago with this one as well especially since a few days prior to that ride, I had paid about INR 50 lesser. Checked the bill and saw this new ride time charge. A few years ago, I would have vouched for Ola since I have been using their services since early 2013 and they didn't disappoint me but now, I will think twice. Recently switched to Uber and it has been an 'at par' experience.

Ironically, I was reading an article this morning on my way to work on why it makes more sense to sell your car and use Ola and Uber but I reckon this uptopia is not going to become a reality anytime soon.

[poloman]

Originally Posted by audioholic

Is it so? Last week I had to go from Elements Mall, Nagwara to the Airport. I came out of the mall and saw in the app that there was an UberX diagonally opposite to the mall with ETA 2min and I requested for it. He turned away and started moving away from the mall, yet was in my sight..

Is this becoming a norm with Uber? The same thing happened to me today. The guy who accepted the ride was standing around 100m from the pick up point. Did not move for 5 minutes. Called him up and he is telling caught up in traffic and will need 10 minutes to reach and asked me to cancel the ride. Fed up I told nothing doing,just put the phone in the pocket and flagged in the next available auto. I had opted the CC payment option. So I was sure they cannot charge me anything with out double verification from my side.
The thing which I don't understand, why these morons are accepting the ride if they are not interested? Will they be charged, if you are nearest to the pick up point and refuse the ride?
I felt bemused some members in another thread was proposing to sell their personal cars and rely on Ola, Uber etc. I can only say "God save them"

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by poloman

The thing which I don't understand, why these morons are accepting the ride if they are not interested? Will they be charged, if you are nearest to the pick up point and refuse the ride?

Not picking up a ride dents driver's ratings. So they would pick it up and get customer to cancel it.

[msdivy]

Originally Posted by poloman

The thing which I don't understand, why these morons are accepting the ride if they are not interested?

I think it is the DNA - they want to know where you are going and then refuse .

Originally Posted by balajisv

Almost frustrated now, she waits for couple more minutes and to her horror, finds that the app shows she is 'en route'!
...
I called the driver to check why he is moving away from our pickup location and how he started the trip without we boarding the cab. He said he started the trip by mistake.

I had noted this during my 1st ride in Uber. But I don't think any taxi app will fix this.

Originally Posted by msdivy

1) I felt there is chance of mis-use. I didn't get any notification when the ride started or when the ride ended. I had to check the report later to find the details. What if the cab driver switched on ride before I got in or switches off ride few Km after I got down? Instant notification would help in these cases.

[amansanc]

Originally Posted by poloman

The thing which I don't understand, why these morons are accepting the ride if they are not interested? Will they be charged, if you are nearest to the pick up point and refuse the ride?

The thing is that these drivers are getting incentives from Uber for every trip in almost all cities they are operating in. But, in order to get the incentive, they need to accept more than 90% of the bookings that come on their device. So usually they wouldn't decline a trip since 90% hit rate means they can't cancel more than one odd booking in a day.

However, few drivers act smart. They ask you your drop location (which you are not needed to disclose) and then decline it if it's a long trip or one which will take time by giving stupid reasons and try to make the customer cancel the ride. This way they aren't penalized (Incentive is saved) plus they don't have to go for the longer journey

Whosoever faces such an issue, please do not cancel and book another cab unless its really urgent. The driver has to come or else he loses a lot. Also, please give a strong feedback from the app itself. Uber takes it VERY seriously and even bans drivers for such acts. It is our feedback which will improvise their services.

In case of driver starting the trip before arriving or taking a longer route or not stopping the trip when your trip ended, make sure to write it in the feedback or mail to support@uber.com They reply back very promptly and refund happens within a couple of hours.

All the details taken from a friend who is running cars with Uber.

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by poloman

Is this becoming a norm with Uber? The same thing happened to me today. The guy who accepted the ride was standing around 100m from the pick up point. Did not move for 5 minutes. Called him up and he is telling caught up in traffic and will need 10 minutes to reach and asked me to cancel the ride. Fed up I told nothing doing,just put the phone in the pocket and flagged in the next available auto. "

I guess thats the best thing to do. I have decided that unless I am in a hurry, I will not cancel a ride from my end. Lets see what happens next.

Again today an Uber guy pulled the trick on me. He called me to ask for landmark and in the end of the call he asked "The drop is to the airport right?" I told nope ITPL. He started coming towards my house after that.

Originally Posted by Jeeper1941

Wow great thread. I will be coming to Bangalore in October and was seriously considering Uber, but after reading all these experiences, I'm not so sure now!

I guess you should use Uber. Except for some people refusing airport rides, I find them to be pretty flawless. I have started using them frequently these days and have completely stopped Ola. Even my car goes out less frequently. There will be some bad drivers everywhere be it Ola, TFS or Uber. And I have never faced an issue with availablity of Uber for early morning airport drops too. Last time I took it to the airport, I guess he was sleepy(3AM) and took some time to reach us. After that all went well(we missed the flight due to some other reason though nothing to do with the taxi).

I usually spend time conversing with the Drivers. Especially if they are willing to talk we will go on talking stuff. To add to that I had to visit ITPL today and it was 1.5hrs in the morning and 3hrs in the evening sitting with them. Both were not happy with going to the airport since there are multiple issues:
1. Too less a payment for the journey.
2. Sometimes time consuming which will not give them enough rides for the day.
3. Lack of return journeys most of the times. Either they should go in the peak hours, or spend their own money to park the vehicle and wait for a customer.

While coming back I saw a surge of 2x in ITPL area. Took a volvo and reached marathahalli where there was no surge. Got down and took an uber.

And these days the drivers are unhappy since a lot of new cabs are being signed up by Uber, and the result is that drivers arent getting enough rides.

Both drivers were very friendly, and prompt. During the return leg the driver took a 3km deviation to reach me since he couldnt take a direct turn towards Old airport road from ORR. Got a brand new Etios for the morning ride and a fairly old Manza on the way back.

[Jeeper1941]

Originally Posted by audioholic

I guess thats the best thing to do. I have decided that unless I am in a hurry, I will not cancel a ride from my end. Lets see what happens next.

Again today an Uber guy pulled the trick on me. He called me to ask for landmark and in the end of the call he asked "The drop is to the airport right?" I told nope ITPL. He started coming towards my house after that.



I guess you should use Uber. Except for some people refusing airport rides, I find them to be pretty flawless. I have started using them frequently these days and have completely stopped Ola. Even my car goes out less frequently. There will be some bad drivers everywhere be it Ola, TFS or Uber. And I have never faced an issue with availablity of Uber for early morning airport drops too. Last time I took it to the airport, I guess he was sleepy(3AM) and took some time to reach us. After that all went well(we missed the flight due to some other reason though nothing to do with the taxi).

I usually spend time conversing with the Drivers. Especially if they are willing to talk we will go on talking stuff. To add to that I had to visit ITPL today and it was 1.5hrs in the morning and 3hrs in the evening sitting with them. Both were not happy with going to the airport since there are multiple issues:
1. Too less a payment for the journey.
2. Sometimes time consuming which will not give them enough rides for the day.
3. Lack of return journeys most of the times. Either they should go in the peak hours, or spend their own money to park the vehicle and wait for a customer.

While coming back I saw a surge of 2x in ITPL area. Took a volvo and reached marathahalli where there was no surge. Got down and took an uber.

And these days the drivers are unhappy since a lot of new cabs are being signed up by Uber, and the result is that drivers arent getting enough rides.

Both drivers were very friendly, and prompt. During the return leg the driver took a 3km deviation to reach me since he couldnt take a direct turn towards Old airport road from ORR. Got a brand new Etios for the morning ride and a fairly old Manza on the way back.

Good to know that. However, I was going to use it mostly to and from the airport, as I will be flying quite a bit domestically (BLR-BOM, BLR-DEL and BLR-IXZ).

I will try it once and see how it goes. I've used Uber quite a bit here (in Adelaide) and the service has always been top notch, haven't had any issues with them. Hoping to have a similar experience in Bangalore.

[TheInterceptor]

Been using Uber in Kochi for the past few weeks that I've been here. The service is pretty good. I've seen only UberX cabs here. All the cabs I rode in were well maintained and had well mannered and polite drivers.

Decent number of cabs available (although no where near the number of cabs available in the bigger cities). But once I had to pay a surge price of 2.3x late at night due to unavailability of cabs.

Cabs are mostly available in prominent locations in the city like Vytilla, Panampilly Nagar, Edapally, Airport etc.

Ola on the other hand has very few cabs available in the place I live which is near Vytilla.

Took an Uber from airport to my house this week and it costed me just 360 whereas a regular/airport taxi would charge me 900 bucks.

Uber has introduced Cash payment option in Kochi. I haven't used it yet since I had balance in my PayTM, will use it once I run out of balance.

[reverse_gear]

Slightly different from the topic. Read about bus aggregators in today's ET. I guess Ola has tried to do this in Bangalore, but there now seem to be quite a few start-ups cropping up in metros for this service. Does anyone have any reviews and feedback?

Link to ET article.

[hserus]

Aggregates chartered bus operators. Right. If anything, there is even less oversight on those fellows than there is on the drivers of beat up indicas signing up with Ola etc.

Tempo traveler cabs and private buses - more than likely in a beat up state, with bald tires, heavily stickered and driven rashly (ask any bangalore BHPian in the suburbs what he / she feels when a white tempo traveler with "INFANT'S" painted on it comes up behind, honking loudly and trying to squeeze past a tiny gap).

And most likely without the correct permits for operating - so liable to seizure / fines by RTOs (in which case the driver will mostly decamp, leaving the passengers stranded). Sample - http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/...cle7300043.ece and assuming delhi - gurgaon trips crossing a state line, even more complex permits - http://www.newindianexpress.com/citi...cle2000597.ece

I am not sure how they plan to vet staff any better than Ola etc have done. Well before the publicized Uber rape case, the nirbhaya rapists were the staff on a private stage carriage bus that the victim boarded.

Besides - such aggregators are not competing with politician run taxi unions in what should be but is not a free market. They are going up against a state govt monopoly - the local transport corporation bus services Those have been historically very sensitive about allowing competitors to operate on the same routes that they ply, and if those competitors have anything at all dodgy in their licensing, you can surely expect that their fellow state govt employees, the RTO and the police, will be very glad to enforce the law to its full letter against such licensing violations.

[mail4ajo]

Any way to get around the 1.6x extra for Ola? They seems to be charging extra in spite of having so many cabs ready. Or it for a particular location?

[hserus]

Ola cabs strange data leak. Posted by a friend of a friend on facebook after this happened to her

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...3521910&type=1

Ola Cabs Leaked Over 100 Customers' Personal Data To Me and They Don't Care

Please share if you live in Bangalore!

In the wake of the Ashley Madison nightmare, I've been having one of my own. Bear with me as I detail the happenings. I have worked in customer support myself and empathise with the company's side of the story more often than the customer's. So my taking to publicly communicate this is a last ditch effort to get them to take notice.

About three weeks ago, I booked an Ola cab for a long distance drive. After the ride I received a few garbled texts from "VM-OLACAB" that I didn't think much of and ignored.

These messages were alpha-numeric with hashes and made no sense to me whatsoever. I assumed there was some system error and did not anticipate the sleep deprivation that followed.

When I went to bed that night, my phone beeped once, twice, thrice. For someone who doesn't use her phone for more than the absolutely necessary call and catching up on the latest Time article, this was beyond strange. Nobody texts me at 11 pm, not even the pregnancy insurance spammer.

Feeling a tiny bit excited that my popularity might actually have the potential to go on the rise, I squinted into the bright screen only to find myself attempting to decipher more coded messages from Ola. This annoyed me, obviously, but whatever, I ignored it.

My phone beeped throughout the night. 1:06, 2:34, 2:37, 2:38, 4:05, 5:17. I couldn't get my head around why these were coming at these times. I then called their call centre the next day to explain that there was probably some sort of bug and my number had somehow gotten into their highly cryptic message transmission systems, whatever secrets they were trying to transmit.

They assured me they would stop them right away. But my faith in their customer support was short lived. I received no further communication from them, no update, no email, just more garbled messages.

What followed were days of thorough frustration as my poor phone beeped nonstop to receive text after text after text after text of utter nonsense from Ola. I estimate a total of between 300 and 400 texts from them so far.

I reached out to them through every channel possible. I called their call centre at least 5 times, demanded to speak to the senior managers, and had to explain my problem each time in great detail, answering the same annoying questions.

No, I did not make any bookings. No, I did not give my number to anybody else. No, nobody stole my phone to make a booking. No, I did not share my contact number with the 100 odd people whose bookings you are sending me! Yes, please get your senior manager to call me back. Nobody did.

It was all assurance and no action. They did not even explain to me what the problem was despite repeated requests. If they had, I would possibly have been more understanding.

Their questions made me look at the texts more carefully. It turned out, Ola was sending me confirmation messages when other customers made a booking, in BANGALORE! How on EARTH did my number get into their message delivery systems for Bangalore? Hidden within the hashes I found mobile numbers, names and addresses.

Ola was sharing with me, personal details of their customers throughout the day and throughout the night. It's lucky I'm not a psychopath roaming the streets of Bangalore, waiting to get my hands on people's personal information and knowing when they are home and when they are not, isn't it!

I wrote them several emails, only to receive lousy generic responses which made it evident that they haven't even tried to understand this problem. I sent them several screenshots and my emails got angrier by the day. It had NO effect whatsoever. I was losing sleep and peace of my mind, with a steadily rising desire to flush my phone down the toilet.

Why didn't I put my phone on silent or turn it off? Because I shouldn't have to do that. Because it's on in the night for emergencies, not to be victim to Ola Cabs' inefficient and callous security.

I tweeted them, I wrote to them on Facebook, I sent more emails, I tried to reason with more people at their call centre. In the end, I began calling the customers themselves to tell them I was receiving their booking and all of their private details. They were all shocked and promised to complain to Ola. I will never know if they really did.

What scares me the most, is that THIS should be their number one priority. I questioned their lack of concern for privacy and data protection. I threatened to report them to the authorities and TRAI. Nothing seemed to work which makes you think - do they even care about protecting customer information?

If they are sending all this to me, who are they sending MY booking details to? Whose number is receiving all of my data? Which creepy criminal knows my full name, my mobile number, my door number, my account details, when I'm home and when I'm out?

I am outraged for the people whose privacy has been disrespected. I know exactly where these people live and when they come home! I am outraged for all the sleep I have lost and for all the apathy I received from their staff.

In the interest of protecting their information, I will not reveal addresses or complete numbers, but here's only a snapshot of the data I have. Unfortunately I deleted a large number of texts, so this is only half of them!

Are you/your friends on this list? If yes, please alert Ola. Maybe, just maybe, they will care.

[big list of phone # snipped]