The much celebrated CEO and founder of Ola is perhaps blissfully ignorant and unaware that his cab drivers are permitted to blatantly cancel a customer’s ride after the booking has been confirmed and the customer is waiting for his/ her cab to arrive. What is worse, the customer cannot call the driver or anyone else in Ola and is left completely helpless and stranded.
Welcome to the ‘Horrendous Experience Economy’ operated by a much touted ‘Sharing Economy’ aggregator!
I pre-booked ( yes pre-booked) an Ola cab 6 hours in advance ( for 4.30 pm) and received a confirmation stating that I would receive the cab details 15 minutes before the scheduled pick up time.I received nothing but the driver did call me at 4.15 pm reconfirming that I had made a booking for 4.30 pm which I affirmed.He called from a landline number (Bangalore).Not suspecting anything amiss, I waited for the cab at my residence to pick me up at 4.30pm. However the driver did not turn up and when I tried calling the number he had called from earlier, all I got was a recorded message.. ‘ Ola, you are not calling from a registered number, please call from your number registered with Ola !! ‘ The driver had just cancelled the booking on his own and there was absolutely nothing I could do at that juncture except to frantically look for an alternative.Fortunately Uber came to my rescue and I was able to get to my destination albeit half an hour late.The same experience unfolded itself for a latter advance booking I had made on the same day at 10.45 pm.The driver again left me in the lurch and all I got in return was the same silly recorded message on the phone.
The errant drivers names, by the way ( which I looked up in my ‘rides booked’ trail in my account) are P.Gowtham and C.Rajasekhariah.
I did call the ‘Support Team’ and got a call back from a supervisor who listened to my tale quite patiently and empathetically but could not quite assure me if and what specific actions would to be taken against the drivers and, more importantly, to prevent drivers from being able to cancel a ride without the customers consent or knowledge.If Ola has defined its core business as ‘Customer Service’, its leadership should quickly investigate and resolve these grave ‘culture’ issues failing which more customers like me will simply defect to their competition. Never an Ola for me again for sure.