They will be taking action on the problem ASAP
Grab is in hot water these days: From LTFRB’s order to suspend its Php 2 per minute fare charge that it implemented without telling its riders to various horror stories about unruly Grab drivers, the ride-hailing app isn’t exactly earning praises from its riders. It was only a matter of time before Brian Cu, the CEO of Grab, made a statement addressing the complaints of the community against his company.
https://www.facebook.com/brian.cu/posts/10155683214613925
In a public Facebook post, Cu says that they’re taking a harder stance to crack down on drivers canceling bookings of passengers after a viral post of a driver asking a passenger to cancel a booking went viral. Grab’s system is setup in a way that drivers are able to see where a passenger’s destination is before fully committing to a ride. While drivers can cancel a trip themselves, they’re meted with penalties if it happens often enough. Asking passengers to cancel the booking instead of them circumvents this problem.
Cu is aware of the problem and as a deterrent, they plan to start mining conversations between driver and passengers and will start suspending drivers that don’t meet their standards. As for the driver that was featured in the viral post, he has been suspended, and according to Cu is “won’t likely be able to drive on Grab again.”
“I’d also like to ask my friends and the others reading this to not generalize as majority of our ka-Grab partners are professional and of superb quality,” Cu added.
While Grab’s initiative to try and solve the problem is laudable, there are potential privacy issues in Cu’s solution to the widespread cancellation problem. Mining conversations between driver and passenger might be a breach of privacy if Grab does not update their terms of service (TOS) to permit them to do so.
Despite the challenges, Grab will have to do something to crack down on the problems as soon as possible. Public sentiment is rapidly turning against them since Uber decided to pack up and leave, selling their stake in the lucrative ride-hailing app to them which essentially makes them a monopoly. While the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) has recently accredited other ride-hailing apps and TNVs, it’ll be awhile until they get their operations up and running.
LTFRB Wants To Cut Down Number Of TNVs From 125,000 To 45,000
