We’ve all cancelled a taxi/GrabCar/UberX booking at least once in our lives.
It’s inevitable, given the unpredictability of life in the few minutes you spend waiting for your ride. Perhaps another viable option arrives before your driver does, or perhaps you have a last minute change in plans or destination.
But if you have made a cancellation in the last few days, you’ll realise that there is something new. Grab sends an email to your registered email address with a counter on cancellations you’ve made. It looks something like this.
On 5 January, Grab Singapore’s blog released a announcement about a new cancellation fee for those who cancel bookings too often. According to the official release, the latest feature is part of their “ongoing effort to make driving and riding with [Grab] a better experience”.
Rest assured that the fee does not come with every cancellation, but will kick in if there are more than 10 within a week. After which, $2 will be charged to the passenger’s GrabPay account. As for Non-GrabPay passengers, they will need to enable GrabPay, otherwise they will not be able to make any further bookings.
Grab promises to give sufficient notice in the form of warning notifications before this fees are deducted.
And it’s not just passengers, Grab will also be measuring driver performance based on their cancellation rates, among others. Low ride cancellation rates will translate to incentives and perks for Grab drivers.
Underlying Motivations
The range of private car options available for Singaporeans, ranging from taxi apps to Uber and Grab certainly gives users a lot of flexibility in terms of making (and cancelling) bookings afterwards.
But what many of us do not fully realise is that each time we cancel a booking (as drivers and passengers), it creates inconvenience for the other party. This comes in the form of loss of earnings for drivers already en-route, and a loss of trust for passengers waiting for their ride to arrive.
