[Balajiriyer]

Originally Posted by GTO

I use Uber a lot over late nights, and if I'm going to a crowded place during the day with zero parking. Of late though, it's become a menace with almost every booking being followed by a call from the driver asking "where do you want to go?" ("destination kya hai?"). I refuse to answer the question and tell them clearly that Uber / you are supposed to take me wherever I want to go in the city.

And if you are in Chennai expect driver to call you and ask - "cash or card" if you utter the word 'card' he will simply hang up! Uber seriously needs to train their driver partners better! At the airport I got 4th time 'lucky' in finding a cab back home

[iamahunter]

This has happened after Uber/Ola has significantly reduced the driver commission a couple of years ago.

Number of cabs reduced, quality of cabs has gone down, wait time has increased and so have the cancellations.

I had a conversation with a Uber driver once and he told me that earlier drivers had the option to set an area they prefer to go and they used to get fares heading to that direction, now they get fares arbitrarily.

Happened with me last week, a friend wanted to go south from suburbs and was looking for a cab, we had 2 cancellations after they called and asked for destination. Fortunately the 3rd driver wanted to go south and he requested to not cancel and we got the cab after almost 20 minutes of total wait.

I personally have sparingly used Ola/Uber in the last 3 years and prefer taking the auto/kali-peeli incase I should not be driving .

[bhavik.1991]

Originally Posted by Gannu_1

If its the day time, the drivers tend to the trip without any trouble but if its at night say around 11 PM - 12 AM:

First question - Saar, where drop?

/Cancellation chances are 90%. The next 10% moves to the next query.

I started a conversation with an uber driver in Ahmedabad who accepted my ride around 2am after multiple cancellations from other drivers.

When I started to discuss this topic, he said that there have been incidents where thieves book cab and set a deserted place as the destination during night. Once cab reaches there, they will steal driver's mobile and money. Police doesn't help much in such incidents.

This also might be one of the reasons why they ask destination during night hours

[Raghu M]

Originally Posted by Samurai

It is not a new trend, it is the SOP. You book, they call with questions...

Unless Uber disables the feature to call/message the customer, this is not going to go away.

I think that will lead to more problems. Let's say some elderly person books a cab and the driver wants some directions to his location, the driver will not be able to call and the elder people will just keep waiting (they mostly don't call the drivers). Not all locations are perfectly mapped on Google. That's a very important feature.

[tj123]

It seems that we are going back to the age where we used to hail/wave a taxi. The Ola/Uber models has not matured as intended at least India.
As the incentives dried up they have lost most of the control on their drivers. They cannot enforce any penalty and dare not to irritate the drivers. No wonder the service quality is deteriorating day by day, these tech companies are just trying to keep their driver flock together and keep their services afloat. The stock prices of Ubers says it all.

[vinu_h]

Originally Posted by Balajiriyer

And if you are in Chennai expect driver to call you and ask - "cash or card" if you utter the word 'card' he will simply hang up!

This affects Ola more than it does Uber. Ola allows drivers to cash out once in a week, whereas, Uber allows daily cashout. Most of the drivers don't own cars and lease cars from the open market on a daily basis and weekly cash out doesn't work for them. With cash/UPI, everybody wins.

[Raghu M]

Another irritating thing with Uber drivers is asking for cash payment only. The new hack they have is:

1. You book the cab and get a driver allotted
2. Driver calls you to find out destination details
3. If he is fine with the destination, he asks you how much is the fare estimate
4. Once you tell him the amount, he asks us to cancel the cab and that he will take us to the destination but we should pay him the same amount or 10/- to 20/- less
5. He switches off the Uber app as soon as we cancel the booking, comes and picks us up

While the driver's technique is a no brainer, this is a highly dangerous thing to do for the travelers. He could take a detour, behave rudely or even attempt to steal something. I have lost trust in Uber/Ola a few months back. I try my best to drive to the locations or use Metro when possible. Even auto makes more sense.

[shamanth]

Originally Posted by Raghu M

Even auto makes more sense.

Yes, Auto makes more sense these days. Since Uber/Ola cars dont switch on AC, its more airy in Autos than cars, and price is much lesser. And autos reach faster in congested roads and small roads.

We have electric Autos near our apartment, which picks up people around 2-3 kms and drop to metro station using app Metroride in south bangalore, charge around Rs 20-30, lot of them driven by women also, and all EV autos are company owned. While in uber/ola Rs 70-80 for auto and Rs 100-150 for car.

This is good time for new start-up to disrupt the ola/uber model.

[Raghu M]

Originally Posted by shamanth

Yes, Auto makes more sense these days. Since Uber/Ola cars dont switch on AC, its more airy in Autos than cars, and price is much lesser. And autos reach faster in congested roads and small roads.

We have electric Autos near our apartment, which picks up people around 2-3 kms and drop to metro station using app Metroride in south bangalore, charge around Rs 20-30, lot of them driven by women also, and all EV autos are company owned. While in uber/ola Rs 70-80 for auto and Rs 100-150 for car.

This is good time for new start-up to disrupt the ola/uber model.

That's good to know. I just boarded an electric auto last week. Felt really good, the ride was smooth and without any noise. Felt very comfortable. I wish there is a new aggregator that operates only EV autos and they are maintained well.

[BleueNinja]

I avoid availing cabs like plague. For the same reason I take my car everywhere as we have a big dog as well which cab folks aren’t a fan of but, what can be done in scenarios where I can’t take my car.

My priority is Rapido, as those guys are on time and it’s cheap as well. However, in Pune rapido has been facing a hostile attitude from auto walla hence they are low on number these days.

I book Ola/Uber and when they ask for cash or UPI, I simply ask them if they would be fine taking money by google pay or PhonePe on their number and I will change booking payment mode to Cash. This seems fine for them and 95% times they agree, the rest 5% times they say they don’t have UPI supported apps.

[Aj_Pod]

The ride cancellations are rampant in the evening peak hours in Mumbai, around 5-7 pm types. Usual question of where is the destination and then no revert post that. It gets very frustrating when one looks forward to go home after a tiring day at work. The typical wait time is around 30-45 mins to get a cab post all these cancellation sagas.

Maybe lucky, haven't got any ride cancelled for the mode of payment in Mumbai as yet. Bangalore takes the cake on this !

[asingh1977]

First time after the pandemic I booked an Uber. Was promptly allotted a cab. I could see the map, that he was near our society gate. So I called him via the app. He cut my call, and sent an in-app message "at gate".

I picked up my wallet and promptly went to the tower lobby (outside). I see I have been deducted INR 75.00 by PayTM. I open the Uber app. Two message. "give tower number". "Cancel kar raha hoon" [am cancelling].What the heck is this. When I was calling him first time round, why did he not ask the tower number. Moron.

I booked a second cab, and went stood outside the society. To hail it fast and head for the airport pickup. I rickety Wagon R came. Once boarded, I ask him to switch on the A/C. "Does not work". I regretted my decision not to take my car. On the way back I took a "black/yellow" government cab. WYSIWYG. Now I just use the local cab driver who is a shared contact. Bit more expensive. But reliable and not liars. God bless those that have to use Uber daily. I will never use them again.

[invidious]

Workaround that usually works for me -

Instead of booking UberGo where most cancellations and questions are asked, I book Premier. Just last week I was pleasantly surprised to see a well maintained and clean Ciaz sent to me via Premier. The Uber Go cabs are not only badly maintained, they literally stink.

If you are really unfortunate, you might even get that Datsun where the CNG crackles right behind you and the seat is akin to sitting on a camel.

[SoumenD]

This is a menace which was always there and now post pandemic has gone worse. This is why even with 2-3k per annum running having a personal car makes sense to me. You never know when these people leave you in a spot if you are totally dependent on them. In Bangalore they ask your destination and cancel it if it doesn’t suit their mood(I have no idea why they do it).

However I had a horrible time with both uber and ola in Raipur which I would like to highlight. I was used to CC payment and Gpay/phonepe. But there nobody was ready to pick me up without cash. Fair enough I was ready to pay in cash as not every town/city has digital payment acceptance like Bangalore. But the next part got my goat. You wait for them to reach and once there they ask you to cancel the ride. Only once you do that they will pick you up. I thought maybe its a problem with uber and then booked ola for another trip and voila!!! Deja-vu. Looks like that’s the way they operate now. This wasn’t this bad back in 2020 when I spent a month there but now it was a horrible experience. Raising grievances to service providers is useless as they just give you standard text book replies and refund the cancellation charges.

[rajk15]

It's best (cost-effective & time-saving) to use inDriver (not promoting the app). The way this works is that you offer a fare after putting the destination and all drivers around you get a ping; they can then bargain if they want a higher price (e.g. Just yesterday, I offered Rs.130 for around 10-11 km but since there were only two drivers I got offers of Rs.143 and Rs.150; chose the 150 one since he was closer and I didn't have Rs.3 change. Neither does the driver cancel the ride (if they do more than once, I believe they are banned for some time) nor the rider (same as the driver). Also, they don't do this since they know where they are going at a fare of their choice and since they are charged a very low commission (when they had started it was 2%, still it is less than 10) while Ola/Uber take close to 27-30% (these used to be around 17-20% before pandemic). The app has all the safety features of Ola/Uber as well. The only time I have now booked from uber is when I had massive discount coupons and the price was substantially less than inDriver's minimum limit (they have a minimum charge for a given number of kms, my hack has been entering Rs.10, then getting the minimum amount from the app and then using it). Also, since it's a mutually decided amount the drivers are often happier than the Ola/Uber ones. And you can't be a bad customer since you get a rating from the driver as well (I believe a lower rating would allow drivers to charge more).