[avdhesh15]

Originally Posted by rohanjt96

How does this work from a cab driver's point of view?
Let's say the cab got involved in an accident or had a mechanical failure on the way to the pick-up point meaning the cab driver had no choice but to cancel.
Does the cab driver still have to pay the fine?

Also, doesn't this open up the situations where the users can just call up cabs from one of these apps and make them wait for an infinite amount of time at the pick up point?

Wouldn't Uber/Ola drivers be losing a lot of their protection with this?

1. How often would the accident happen? Once a year? Or lesser? They can inform the app of the exigency and get it waived off.

2. Surely you are aware that the apps charge waiting charge these days.

[am1m]

Why do these jokers accept if they don't want to ply?! They should just log out of the app if they want to take a break. The issue is that they want to act like Bangalore auto drivers, they just want to go where they want to, for double meter!

I do feel sorry for cabbies, their lives are hard, driving all day in our cities and traffic is a terrible job. But once they have signed up for the platform, they need to abide with the rules. If their cabs are taking up road infrastructure, parking space, they need to at least ferry passengers.

[kiku007]

Originally Posted by Thermodynamics

A bitter recent experience, I landed at Bengaluru airport at 9:30 pm, ola app shows no taxi available, i was trying for half an hour still no success.I walked to ola parking lot, man, loads of taxis there. They all are bypassing ola and fixing their own rates. They know It is gonna be 10 pm and passengers are desperate.

That's interesting. At the Chennai International Airport, I observed that the Ola counter was closed. I suppose that's non-operational for a while but I don't know. A person claimed that he takes Ola bookings and quoted a fixed Rs.500 as the fare. I eventually booked an Uber which was a below-average experience anyway.


The black-and-yellow Auto/Cab driver haggling days are back now. Declining service based on the location is another customer un-friendly activity similar to fare haggling.

[sagarpadaki]

Is there a explicit indication in the booking status which says who cancelled? 'Driver Cancelled' or 'Rider Cancelled' . If not, then just by looking at the screenshot one cannot decide who cancelled and it can lead to false allegations.

[nosfreak]

its a good initiative by the traffic police and is very much needed. Although i use them 3-4 times in a month, ola has been the culprit, rarely faced any issue with uber.
I read in the newspaper that a ola bike has been issued a Rs 500/- fine already.

[DrCar]

I don't actually have any sympathy for these drivers.

They have signed up in Ola/Uber willingly by themselves to be a driver partner. No one forced them to join.
If they don't want to work honestly, then they should just leave it. All this excuses of traffic, online payment, etc. are just pathetic. If they don't want to ply, then just stay logged off from the app. Atleast, they won't be visible in our app thereafter.
Leave the job and allow some hardworking guy to take your place.

Imagine how much mental agony one would face if one has a flight early morning and had pre-booked a cab a day before, which never shows up. I have experienced the same in a city like Chennai which I visited for the first time. I couldn't even book any other cab SOS as none was available during that hour. I had to shell almost three times of the normal charges for an autorickshaw to take me to my destination. I was alone, so could manage.
Just imagine a girl stuck in the same situation as me in the middle of the night. Who will care for her safety? When safety now a days for a female is at its lowest point.

In Mumbai, black and white cabs use to be arrogant. Ola /Uber showed them the door. Now if Ola/Uber themselves behave similarly, some other competitors will show them the door. Remember, competition is fierce and waits for no one. Improve or Perish.

[neil.jericho]

It is certainly a positive move by the Hyderabad police to crackdown on these arbitrary cancellations by app based cabbies. This behaviour by cab drivers is not confined to big cities, nor is it a new found phenomenon. Ive unfortunately experienced it in several cities.

The trick that we use when cab drivers call us to find out the destination is that we say we are new to the city so we dont know the destination but it is correctly set in the app. Feigning ignorance usually works as this forces the drivers hand. If they are not keen on going to an unknown destination, they cancel immediately and it saves us time. Those who want to work and earn money will take the chance and promptly turn up at our pickup point.

If you are in a rush, you can always cancel the ride and update the reason as driver refused duty.

[NiInJa]

Originally Posted by sagarpadaki

Is there a explicit indication in the booking status which says who cancelled? 'Driver Cancelled' or 'Rider Cancelled' . If not, then just by looking at the screenshot one cannot decide who cancelled and it can lead to false allegations.

Yes, on OLA app, you do get a notification if driver cancelled the ride, but there is a catch, that notification is not stored anywhere, its better to take a screenshot of it. Also, the vehicle number is available only till the cab is booked and if ride is taken, till the end of the ride. Once cancelled, you will be able to see only the driver's name and not his vehicle details. I make a point to take a screenshot of the booking so that I have a quick reference of the cab number. In your rides section, if you have cancelled the ride, it will show you cancellation charges along with CRN number, but nothing else.

These cabs have started acting up in Pune too, I had booked an ola cab when I gave my car to service, and the cab, despite knowing my location, stopped at other side of the highway and he asked me to cross the Mumbai-BLR highway to get across, I flatly refused and he asked me to cancel it, I refused to that as well. So after 5 minutes, he cancelled the ride !

Another instance where I booked the cab and the cab went in another lane which was separated by a wall, so he rudely asked me to come to his cab when it was just not possible with my kid in my hand and the gate was a good 5 minutes walk, gave him a mouthful and cancelled it, gave the details in the app and got me 50 rupees of cancellation back.

Good to read this, I will let these guys know that they can be penalised for unreasonable cancellation.

[Vegitocat]

Having experienced cancellations over the payment mode and destination several times on OLA, I do the following:
1. Tell the driver to follow the map and come to the pick up point and politely cut the call before he can ask more questions
2. Book an additional cab as back up because in 90% cases the first guy always cancels

My question is why doesn't OLA just show the destination to the driver before the trip starts to avoid all this hassle?

[B103]

In Bangalore, if I have to go to the airport at mid night to catch an international flight then I will book Meru taxi. Booking can be done in advance. Cab will arrive half an hour in advance and wait. It costs a little extra then Uber/Ola but the service is reliable. One cannot trust advance Ola/Uber bookings.

Once, an Ola cab which I have hired in the airport wanted me to cancel the trip. He told me that he will drop me at the destination at same fare so that he will not have to pay the commission to the cab company. Further, he was pressing me to give him Rs 200 as advance to fill the fuel. I flatly refused saying that I am on a company travel and so wanted the receipt. Then, he started forcing me to cancel the ride. I told him that I wont do so because it will incur a cost for me. Finally, he cancelled the ride and I booked another cab to reach home.

I have not seen Uber/Ola educating their customers that cancelling a ride will incur a cost. Many people figure it out later.

[J4J]

This is a very good move. Because of this attitude of the auto drivers, app based cabs were accepted by the public. Now they have also become the same.

Originally Posted by GTO

Luckily, I rarely have cabs cancel on me. Am primarily an Uber user. If ever a driver calls and asks where I want to go, I tell them I work for Uber and will file a disciplinary report for asking that question .

This is very good Idea.

Last month, when the odd-even was applicable in Delhi, I had to take my parents out for a function. I couldn't take my car out.
I booked 3 cabs via the Uber app. All three refused to come saying that they were 10 min away and that they didn't want to come in my direction. This reminded me of the auto drivers.

The most irritating part is that the drivers don't cancel the ride themselves and want us to cancel.
One of my friends didn't cancel the ride once and asked the driver to cancel. The driver came to the location and my friend couldn't spot him. In the end he had to cancel his ride.

On the other hand, the cab drivers say that since they cannot see the destination, they are also helpless. But if they signed up for a business, they must follow the rules else they will be rejected for the same reason they became popular.

[gururajrv]

While this initiative is easing the pain on those who hire the cabs, the other side of the grass is ignored. I have seen people looking down on cabbies and I’ve had few conversations with such drivers during my travel. I am usually a person who connects & talks to anyone and everyone. While doing so, one of the cabbies told me, how badly we as customers treat them when we hire them. It depends on how we connect to them. They might be cabbies, but they have their own respect for doing things independently managing their lives on cabs. They deserve the same kind of respect like any other high status individual is given importance here.

I’m sure this is a good move, but imagine customers taking it for granted & raising complaints unnecessarily with the police? These guys will have to pay 500 unnecessarily out of their hard earned pockets.

Well, this is purely from my own personal standpoint. All I’m trying to say is, we need to pay them not only money, but the respect they deserve. When you get time, please do talk to cabbies you’ll know the pain they also go through. Likewise, Police should also make it easy for cabbies by giving them privilege to raise complaints against customers who treat them and foul mouth them.

It’s all give & take in life So why not pay them the respect alongside the money we pay? I am not intending on raising any controversies or arguments but ya, I haven’t seen anyone coming up in favor of such hard working guys too. Their efforts are all going unnoticed.

[sharc_biker]

An extreme consequence of cab cancellation:

https://nypost.com/2019/12/20/gangst...ride-official/

A Brazilian gang leader had four rideshare drivers killed because he was angry that his sick mother’s Uber ride was canceled, according to a report.

The drivers — who worked for Uber and the local transit firm 99 — were tortured and slain behind a shack in the northeastern city of Salvador on Dec. 13, according to the UK Guardian. A fifth driver made a daring escape into a nearby swamp and called police.

“The gangster ordered these people killed because his mother called Uber, but the car never arrived,” said Rui Costa, governor of Bahia, according to the outlet.

[JBIBS]

Originally Posted by Ithaca

One good initiative of Ola - credit where it is due - with regard to Mumbai International airport is that all the passenger has to do is book the vehicle he desires - Micro / Sedan / SUV - and he will be given an OTP.
Then he goes to the Ola bay where the cab type he has opted for are stationed and tell the first available cab the OTP and they will take him to destination.
This was the difference I experienced between trips into Mumbai in June & Oct 2019. Was a chaos in June but sorted in Oct.
Uber does not have this - guessing because they do not use OTP for starting their rides.

I have noticed that at Bangalore, the airport taxis are the best ones to use and at Hyderabad you have option for their own version of Airport taxi & Meru.

Guess you misread the post buddy. He was trying to highlight the manipulation done by OLA drivers even when there were loads of them available. Instead of showing up in the OLA App, they were fixing their own rates. This is something OLA needs to look in to as a serious problem. Ad such OLA drivers in the city are commonly known to not honouring a booking if destination isn't up to their liking.

I was speaking on this to an OLA driver once during a trip to Airport. The issue is with the incentive framework. Amount of incentive depends largely on how many trips a driver does, along with target number of trips during a day, and also the distance covered in a day. It suits the drivers income if they make more trips, and that leads to they avoiding traffic prone trips and long ones too.

BTW, Hyderabad Airport has been well equipped with dedicated stands for Uber, OLA, Meru etc for quite some time now, and operations are excellent. 99 times out of 100 i take Uber and faced no problem whatsoever to date from the Airport.

[ramnaresh_2000]

This happened to me and my family so many times. I live in a remote location in Hyderabad and zero access to public transportation, even to get to an auto stand we have to walk 2-3 kms from our house. My Mahindra service center is approximately 6 kms from my home. Whenever I drop my vehicle for service I end up booking cab 5-6 times, as every time my booking gets unattended.

I book the cab, driver accepts it. Then I keep waiting for 20 minutes and no cab turns up. Some cab drivers call me and tell me to cancel the booking which I ignore and argue with them. They then start traveling in opposite direction of my booking and they then are out of my service location and Uber cancels it.

Few cabbies call me and ask if I am paying by cash or card. They openly say pay by cash or cancel the booking. Again due to constant re-booking the price trippled so many times. Instead of 100 for initial booking, I ended up paying 300.

Finally Uber and Ola started Bike taxi services in my area and I never booked a cab again Great initiative by Hyderabad police

This initiative is really helpful to female employees during late night bookings. There are many instances where women ended up going in unsafe and un-registered cabs. Many cases were registered of misbehaving with women.