Cancellation fee targets those who abuse service – Grab

PETALING JAYA: Grab Malaysia yesterday sought to clarify its newlyintroduced Passenger Cancellation Policy which begins on Monday, saying that the fee only applies to passengers who “intentionally abuse” the platform.

Its Malaysian head of operations Rashid Shukor told a press conference that those who abuse the platform only make up around 0.5 per cent of its users in the country daily and it is unlikely that responsible users will even encounter the problem.

“The policy that we have for passenger cancellation is really intended to curb intentional abuse of cancellation. We have observed through our data an increasing trend of late cancellation or noshows. To give context to this issue, it is affecting a very small number of our overall bookings.

“About 0.5 per cent of our bookings daily are cancelled late, or passengers don't show up. These are the ones we are targeting with this policy, not the vast majority of our users. We will be tough against any intentional abuse of our system, from any party, drivers or passengers,” said Rashid.

In this context, late cancellation means passengers who cancel after five minutes of receiving Grab's notification of matching them with a driver. Cancellation before the five-minute mark will not incur any penalty.

The penalty ranges from RM3 to RM5 depending on the service that the passenger has ordered. For GrabCar, GrabTaxi (metered or executive) and JustGrab for Airport the cancellation fee is RM3.

Services such as six-seater GrabCar or 10-seat JustGrab will incur RM4 cancellation fee while top end services such as GrabCar Premium or GrabCarLuxe is RM5.

However, Rashid explained that passengers can cancel without incurring any fee if the driver has not arrived within 10 minutes after the supposed estimated time of arrival (ETA) mark.

“Say you book a ride and we matched you with a driver at 12pm with your ETA at 12.03pm. You can still cancel your booking without incurring the penalty fee from 12pm to 12.05pm. That's a big window.

“If you continue waiting and your driver does not show up after 12.13pm, which is 10 minutes after your 12.03pm ETA, you can cancel without incurring any cancellation fee. In this scenario, you will only be charged if you cancel between 12.05pm and 12.13pm,” said Rashid. – Bernama