Last evening, I travelled in an Ola cab from Mathikere to Townhall, covering a distance of 11.4km. I boarded the cab at 5:15 pm, although the pick-up time was 5.00 p.m. As per Ola’s policy, the waiting time is charged after the first 10 mins @ Rs.2 per min, so I thought that I would have to pay only for the 5 mins waiting time. When I arrived at my destination, the GPS device showed an amount of Rs.234/-.Since I did not have the time to argue with the driver, I just paid the said amount and left.

This morning, I called their customer care to seek clarification about my bill, the lady mentioned the following:

Total Distance: 11.4 kms

First 6 kms: Rs.100

Remaining 5.4kms @ Rs.10/km: Rs.54

Peaktime charges: Rs.50(Not justified)

Waiting Time: 15 mins: Rs.30( I was ok with the 5 mins waiting time, but she went on to say that the other 10 mins were spent waiting at various other signals due to the traffic)

In all this, what I fail to understand is that, why are customers being harassed to pay for waiting time at the signals, it’s not our fault that there is so much traffic or that some signals have a 3-min timer. Secondly, the peak-time charges are not informed to you at the time of booking, they just tell you the basic tariff. Had they told me at the time of booking about the peak time charges, I would have gone in for a different taxi service(BTW, there are many of them, who operate very successfully without such utterly ridiculous charges).

So, ultimately a taxi ride that should have cost me Rs.164/- ended up costing me Rs.234/-. Not that a difference of Rs.70 is much, what annoys me the most is that these people are out to con and rip-off the customers, who unknowingly fall into their marketing gimmicks, unaware of these absurd charges.

All I would like to say, any amount of advertising and ease of booking is not going to help these guys sustain, if the customers are unhappy with their service. A negative word-of-mouth is very powerful considering the impact and reach of social media these days.

I would definitely not use Ola Cabs ever again, and urge all my friends to do the same. Only when we speak-up against such atrocities, can we hope to get rid of such unreasonable charges and expect better service that is worth your penny.

Ola Cabs – ‘Takes you for a Ride’