Ofo S’pore Fired Its Employees Suddenly & Even Told Them Not to Reply to Customers

In case you’re not aware, Ofo has been ghosting everyone since November 2018, but there’s still a group of people whom they’ve not neglected:

Their current employees.

Or to be more specific, their current employees between November 2018 to January 2019.

Late last year, it was reported that Ofo Singapore hasn’t just ghosted their users—they also owed over $700K to other firms.

By end of November, the Ofo office has been cleared, but 10 to 15 employees are still under the company payroll. The company couldn’t confirm if the December salary could still be given.

Turns out that the company paid not just the December 2018 salary, but the January 2019 salary, too.

But that would be the last salary those remaining employees would get, for all employees were sacked with effect on 1 February 2019; 31 January would be their last day.

No Notice, No Compensation

I don’t have the privilege of being sacked, but even a dog in Yishun would know that if someone is sacked, there would be a compensation.

You’d have heard of this in TV before: “You’re fired! Get the hell out of here with one month’s salary!”

According to employees who spoken to TODAYonline, there was no notice nor compensation: the general manger, who was based in China, merely called them and told them that their last day would be on 31 January 2019.

MOM Laws

According to MOM’s website, it’s compulsory for any company with” at least 10 employees who have retrenched 5 or more employees within any 6-month period to notify MOM of the retrenchment exercise.”

Of course, we’re pretty sure with the number of yellow bikes lying around, you can bet they’ve more than 10 employees and have retrenched more than 5 people.

Now, speaking of the bikes, what’s going to happen to the bikes?

Ofo Ghosting Level = 99

Sometimes, people ghost others because they’re doing it purposely to convey a message. Like how you ghost your insurance agent friend to tell him that you’re not interested to buy any policy.

Sometimes, we accidentally ghost others because we changed our number.

We might never know why Ofo decided to ghost users, but one thing’s for sure: the ghosting is on purpose.

It’s not that no one has read your message for refunds. According to an ex-employee, he told Channel NewsAsia that Ofo told him to stop responding to queries on the app and social media accounts during his final days in the firm.

He said, “We had a lot of complaints from customers about malfunctioning bicycles and some requesting a refund for their subscription fees. We felt bad but we were specifically instructed to ignore these.”

The employees were also told to stop recovering any bikes that were parked indiscriminately in the last three days of their employment.

Well, at least you now know your cries were heard.

Creased Operations in Singapore Irresponsibility

In the CNA report, a senior member of Ofo’s operations team even said this: “Moving forward, any requests from the government to move the bicycles will not be attended to. There are no more Ofo officials in Singapore. They are all in China. The company has practically ceased its operations in Singapore.”

Wah, fierce. But this is Singapore leh, Bruh. Cannot anyhowly one leh.

LTA has not received any notice from Ofo about their intention to surrender their operating licence. However, Ofo has been warned repeatedly to reduce their fleet to 10,000 by 13 February 2019, or their licence would be suspended.

One thing’s for sure: years later, we’re going to tell our grandkids that once upon a time, there was bike-sharing, and they were nothing but a fad.