S’pore Man Booked Grab Ride Only to Find Driver Eating in Coffeeshop Instead

Last Updated on 2023-06-08 , 10:10 am

In this day and age, can anyone live without ride-hailing services such as Grab?

While passengers find such services essential, it appears that some drivers may take a different view by treating customers as dispensable.

One irresponsible Grab driver accepted a Grab Premium ride when he did not appear to have any intention to fulfil the ride.

He ended up being suspended by Grab for such undesirable behaviour.

Here is what happened.

Man Calls Grab Premium Car for Mother but Car Is Nowhere in Sight

Earlier this month, a Facebook user going by the moniker DJ KC posted a lengthy rant on the social media platform about his poor experience with a Grab driver.

DJ KC is a content creator and podcaster. He is also known to some as Abdul Karim Sadali.

In his post, DJ KC says that he booked a “Grab Premium for my mother to go home” as he was “tired” and did not have the energy to drive his mother home.

The ride request was accepted by the Grab Premium driver, and the duo waited for the car to arrive.

So far, so good.

After waiting for about six to seven minutes, DJ KC saw that the app showed that the vehicle was “still at the same place” and was “not moving”.

He then pondered about what could have happened to the driver to cause the delay. Some of his speculations included the driver running to the washroom to relieve himself because of a “bad stomachache”.

Other theories included the wheels of his vehicle being “punctured” and poor traffic conditions leading to “traffic jam”.

DJ KC even entertained the far-fetched idea that the vehicle “got ghost” and hence the vehicle was not moving.

Grab Driver Was Seen Eating Dinner at a Coffee Shop

Being dissatisfied with the driver not moving, DJ KC decided to do some sleuthing to find out the root cause. He shared that he “decided to drive my mother to the driver instead and to find out what happened”.

Lo and behold, DJ KC “caught” the driver red-handed in the act. Eating dinner.

According to DJ KC, the driver was “wasting time enjoying his dinner” and “waiting for [him] to cancel [the] booking” so that DJ KC would be the one bearing the penalty fine rather than the driver.

This would allow the driver to “profit” from such undesirable behaviour.

DJ KC recounts that the driver was “caught eating at a coffee shop beside the road where he parked his vehicle”.

In relation to the Grab Premium driver’s flaky behaviour, DJ KC questions why the driver even accepted his booking in the first place.

The content creator, true to his nature, recorded the whole “grab hunt” from the moment he left the car park to the moment he caught the driver “red handed leaving the coffee shop and entering his vehicle”.

According to DJ KC, his sleuthing involved him leaving his driver seat and confronting the driver once he witnessed the driver entering his vehicle with a full stomach. DJ KC even showed the driver the “active Grab booking”.

And it seems that the driver was allegedly fluster at being caught in the act. DJ KC recounts that the driver was “stunned” and could only say, “Sir I don’t know”.

The driver then quickly cancelled DJ KC’s Grab Premium booking and left.

From start to end, the entire saga was over 20 minutes and ended with the driver cancelling the booking.

DJ KC laments that there are “many times consumers have to cancel booking because of the waiting time” and the Grab driver not showing up.

He says that the “booking system is flawed when it comes to us the consumers”, and unfortunately, such an unpleasant experience was not the first for him.

Finally, DJ KC calls on his followers to “tag Grab” and get their attention so that they can “thoroughly review their booking procedures”.

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Grab Driver Was Suspended After the Incident

It seems that DJ KC did manage to rally enough concern about this to bring the matter to Grab’s attention. According to MS News, a Grab spokesperson said that the driver “deliberately did not head to the pick-up point”.

As a result, the driver had been “temporarily suspended”.

The ride-hailing app also did not forget to stand up for the rights of drivers. It added that “driver-partners have the option of going offline when they need to take a break”, so consumers should not expect the drivers to be ever-contactable.

They also have measures in place to protect passengers and prevent their driver-partners from abusing the system.

For example, Grab has a “cancellation policy [which] ensures that passengers will not be charged when our app detects that the driver-partner is not headed towards the pick-up point or does not arrive within the three minutes of the estimated time of arrival”.

Reviews of suspected stalling behaviour among driver-partners are also conducted by Grab, and necessary action is taken if needed.

Grab also emphasised that such errant behaviour was rare and that the “vast majority of our driver-partners do not engage in such practices”.

As a closing note, Grab shares that there may be “legitimate reasons for late pick-ups, and we encourage driver-partners and passengers to be understanding and check in with each other via a call or GrabChat before cancelling”.