A nightmarish festival for Uber as clients cry foul over pricing
Taxi-hailing entity to refund clients
Attendees of the Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100 were met with a logistical nightmare when it was time to leave the FNB Stadium. While it was all systems go when people arrived, everything fell apart at the end of the festival.
Festival goers took to Twitter to firstly complain about the high prices from taxi company Uber, who together with the organisers of the festival had promised that standard rates would apply. Uber has since apologised and said the company will reimburse those who travelled from the stadium on Sunday night.
“We are aware that some riders were overcharged for rides taken from the Global Citizen concert last night, and we apologise for this. Due to a variety of complexities, such as network coverage issues and mismanaged traffic flow at the venue last night, we switched on dynamic pricing,” said Uber in a statement. This was done in a bid to get more drivers to the venue to cater for the high demand, according to Uber. Another issue that festival goers raised was that there was no place to go to call their Uber, despite there being a designated Uber zone. This was located at Nasrec 5 Road, which is east of Joburg Expo Centre, off Nasrec Road. Kevin, an Uber driver who was working on Sunday, said he could not get to the Uber zone which they had been informed about by the company.
“I think the JMPD didn’t do their job well. Uber had a special place but they closed almost all the roads,” he said. He said it took him two hours to get to one client after he had five cancellations. There were also issues with the park and ride bus system and traffic jams.