Grab Riders Will Be Charged $4 When They Cancel Their Ride After 5 Mins

A life of a Grab driver is not an easy one. Sitting in the same vehicle for hours on end, and having to deal with different attitudes and personalities, it is a job that’s bound to drive you crazy.

But things might start to look up for our Grab drivers.

New Cancellation Policy

From 11 March 2019 onwards, Grab will implement a new policy where riders who cancel their bookings after 5 minutes will get charged a penalty fee of $4.

This new policy will override the existing one, where a passenger receives a $5 penalty after his third cancellation in seven days regardless of when the cancellation was made.

This means that cancelling one’s booking will incur a higher amount of costs than before since it’ll be charged even on your first cancellation in seven years (Grab’s been with us for seventy years, right?).

The policy also states that the driver will be able to pocket the full sum of each cancellation fee.

The private-hire company also added that the policy change is an improvement that will “allow more flexibility for passengers while ensuring that we stay fair to our driver-partners”.

So, yeah: Grab’s decision is not for more profits since they’re not earning any extra from this new policy.

GrabShare

Life is fair, even for Grabshare.

For its ride-sharing service, the cancellation policy is even stricter, as passengers will be charged S$4 if they cancel after three minutes.

Lest you’re not aware, GrabShare is just like a normal Grab ride, just that the driver would pick up more than one passenger from different locations so the car would be “full”.

It’ll, of course, cost slightly lower, but you’d have to wait longer and share the ride with other passengers.

Additional Surcharges for Waiting Time

In addition, a S$4 will also be charged if the passenger fails to show up and the driver cancels the ride after waiting for five minutes (three minutes for GrabShare) or more.

If the driver decides to wait for the passenger beyond the estimated time of arrival, standard additional waiting time surcharges of S$3 for every five minutes will apply.

Exceptions

If the driver appears to be not moving or is taking too long to arrive, passengers will not be charged if they feel the driver is taking much longer than the estimated time of arrival.

“Just as we are able to show you your driver’s current location, we have safeguards in place to detect if the driver’s not moving towards you,” Grab said.

Cancellation fees will also be waived if the driver does not arrive within five minutes after the first-shown estimated time of arrival, it added.

So if a passenger was allocated a driver who is three minutes away, but he or she needed to wait for more than eight minutes, the cancellation will be free.

But…why?

In an interview with Today, a Grab spokesman explained their rationale for revising the policy.

“For passengers, we have put in place both incentives and penalties to discourage drivers from making unnecessary cancellations. But it is only fair we take care of our driver-partners too.” 

You know that feeling when you get ghosted by someone you reaaalllly like?

Yep, Grab drivers have feelings too.

The revision of the policy thus aims to ease the frustration drivers face when getting cancelled on after they have already made the effort to get a passenger.

And in case you didn’t know, that takes a lot of time and fuel, both of which crucial to every driver.

“For many of them, Grab serves as a source of income, and when passengers cancel at the last minute or don’t show up for their ride, drivers waste fuel and miss out on earnings they could have gotten from taking another job.”

Grab Drivers’ Response

Since the policy is in their favour, most drivers welcomed the policy change.

Some even added that it was ‘long overdue’.

Having countless experiences with being cancelled on, or having their customers drive away in another vehicle, many deem it fair that a penalty was given so that such actions can possibly be reduced.

Grab Riders’ Response

A new question was brought in by a Grab user, who was concerned about the fairness of the policy.

While the policy aims to favour the Grab drivers who often get their booking cancelled, she questions on the outcome of Grab users who get their booking cancelled.

“Both sides need to have some form of similar ‘treatment’ to be fair,” she added.

Truly a case of both customer and driver is king indeed. (and maybe a bit more of the driver).

Anyways, here’s a lesson for everyone: just don’t abuse the system and everyone can Grab happily (sounds weird but anyways).