Grab to charge S$4 penalty for bookings cancelled after five minutes
This new policy will override the existing one, where a passenger receives a S$5 penalty after his third cancellation in seven days regardless of when the cancellation was made, Grab announced on its website on Sunday.
SINGAPORE — From next Monday (March 11), Grab users will be subjected to a S$4 cancellation fee if they cancel a ride more than five minutes after securing a booking.
This new policy will override the existing one, where a passenger receives a S$5 penalty after his third cancellation in seven days regardless of when the cancellation was made, Grab announced on its website on Sunday.
The driver will pocket the full sum of each cancellation fee, the ride-hailing company said, adding that it sees the policy change as an improvement that will “allow more flexibility for passengers, while ensuring that we stay fair to our driver-partners”.
For its ride-sharing service, GrabShare, the cancellation policy is even stricter, as passengers will be charged S$4 if they cancel after three minutes.
A S$4 will also be charged if the passenger fails to show up and the driver cancels the ride after waiting for five minutes (three minutes for GrabShare) or more. If the driver decides to wait for the passenger beyond the estimated time of arrival, standard additional waiting time surcharges of S$3 for every five minutes will apply.
Grab said its rationale for revising the policy was to ease the frustration drivers face when getting cancelled on after they have already made the effort to get to a passenger. “For passengers, we have put in place both incentives and penalties to discourage drivers from making unnecessary cancellations. But it is only fair we take care of our driver-partners too,” it said.
“For many of them, Grab serves as a source of income, and when passengers cancel at the last minute, or don’t show up for their ride, drivers waste fuel and miss out on earnings they could have gotten from taking another job.”
When contacted, a Grab spokesperson added that while the move was to protect its drivers’ welfare, the new cancellation policy was also devised with “passenger feedback” in mind.
“We’ve updated the policy to account for the fact that there may be many reasons why passengers cancel a ride”, such as if the passenger keyed in the wrong pick-up point, or if the driver had to be delayed after getting stuck in traffic, she said.
The cancellation policy is expected to impact less than 1 per cent of Grab’s bookings, she added.
Asked if the policy change was related to the entrance of its rival Gojek, an Indonesian ride-hailing app that began operations here last November without charging cancellation penalties, the spokesperson said: “No. We are constantly listening to feedback from our users.”
In a question and answer segment of the new policy on its website, Grab further clarified that there will not be a double charging of S$4 for a late cancellation and another S$4 for not showing up on time for each booking.
It also stated that cancellation fees will be deducted directly from users’ GrabPay balance or credit/debit card if these are the modes of payment already in use. Those paying by cash will have the penalty added automatically to the fare of their next ride, and the driver of that trip will be informed to collect the fee on Grab’s behalf.
If the driver appears to be not moving, or is taking too long to arrive, passengers will not be charged if they feel the driver is taking much longer than indicated to arrive.
“Just as we are able to show you your driver’s current location, we have safeguards in place to detect if the driver’s not moving towards you,” Grab said.
Cancellation fees will also be waived if the driver does not arrive within five minutes after the first-shown estimated time of arrival, it added. So if a passenger was allocated a driver who is three minutes away, but he or she needed to wait for more than eight minutes, the cancellation will be free.
Grab drivers welcomed the new policy, saying that the change is long overdue.
Mr Peter Yeo, a 67-year-old Prime Taxi driver who is on the Grab platform, told TODAY the new policy will streamline his workflow as he seldom finds time to bring up cases of cancellations to Grab.
Premier Taxis cabbie Jason See said it will help reduce the number of passengers who put up bookings on different apps and fail to cancel the bookings they no longer need later on.
“Many times when we reach the pick-up point, the passenger had already left with another vehicle,” said the 39-year-old.
A 60-year-old former civil servant turned private hire driver who wanted to be known only as Daniel said the measure is not new since Uber used to charge a S$6 cancellation fee. Grab is only introducing the cancellation fee now “after a long period of resistance”, he said.
“All new app providers are reluctant to introduce this for fear of losing riders. They only implement this because they find that drivers are switching to other platforms,” he said.
A 26-year-old frequent Grab user who declined to be named said: "I think it’s fair. We still can cancel with no charge if we wait more than five minutes after the estimated time of arrival."
A 28-year-old Grab user who works as a teacher said she does not usually cancel her booking once she got it, but she had been cancelled on a few times, and sometimes after waiting for a while.
“If this is applied to Grab users, then what will be applied to Grab drivers when they cancel the ride booked?” she asked.
“Both sides need to have some form of similar ‘treatment’ to be fair.”
