SO like most of those who don’t drive cars in Metro Manila, I was stuck last Friday waiting for a ride.
I had been booking a Grab Car for two hours from SM Megamall to Music Museum in Greenhills to no avail. I tried that, then a Grab Taxi, and after that a Grab Six-Seater. I also attempted booking a Grab Share ride and a Grab Premium, which is more expensive. But I still didn’t get a ride.
Finally, I went out of the mall via SM Megamall’s Mega Fashion Hall where I was lucky enough to hail a cab after an hour of waiting. I say “lucky” because people had been there waiting longer but since there was no line, it was a on a first-grab-first-served basis. There is something very wrong with the transport system when you have been conditioned to believe that you are lucky to get a ride after hours of waiting. In my case, I had to offer the driver a P200 tip just to accept me as a passenger.
To be fair to me, I had downloaded the Micab app, which I previously wrote about in this space, and also failed to get a ride that night.
In the weeks prior to last Friday’s disaster, booking Grab rides had been even more difficult than usual. Just to get a ride and not be late for appointments, I had to resort to booking rides an hour before I had to leave the house.
In its web site, Grab said, “The number of people who request for Grab cars in the Metro has almost doubled to 600,000 bookings every day.
“Unfortunately, the number of available drivers has decreased from 43,000 to just 35,000. This means that after the acquisition, there are 8,000 less cars every day to meet riders’ needs,” Grab said.
I don’t know about you but I along with most of my family and friends have had difficulty in booking Grab rides. On Tuesday night an Instagram friend had been trying to book a Grab Car for two hours and finally gave up. Her brother ended up picking her up from work.
According to Grab, it has been trying since March to transition all Uber drivers to the Grab platform via a variety of channels, such as an on-ground sign-up event, e-mail, SMS and social media.
“However, we’re unable to complete this transition with more than 6,000 cars missing from the Land Transportation Franchise and Regulatory Board [LTFRB] audited masterlist of transport network vehicle service [TNVS] drivers. As per regulation, we cannot onboard them unless they are on this list. The remaining 2,000 have decided not to move to our platform,” Grab said.
According to several Grab drivers I have talked to, there are so many of them who operate on the platform by using tricks. For instance, one driver will try to up his Acceptance Rating by accepting your booking but not arriving at the pick-up point for a long time so you’re forced to cancel the ride.
Why do they do this? To bring down their Cancellation Rate. The Grab drivers I have talked to said this is usually done by drivers who own their cars and, thus, technically, have nothing to lose.
Their goal, according to the other drivers, is to get booked on rides that are advantageous to them. For example, they like foreigners who may possibly give huge tips, or older people for the same reason. So they resort to whatever tricks to achieve their goals.
Aside from Micab, the LTFRB has accredited other TNVS to give commuters more choices. These include Hype, HirNa, OWTO and GoLag. I wish Lyft would come to the Philippines because as we have seen in the past few weeks, a monopoly is dangerous.
China has Didi Chuxing, which has established a dominant position in its home country with over 450 million registered users and 21 million drivers in more than 400 cities. That translates to over 30 million rides a day. It’s twice as many rides as all the other ride-hailing apps. It’s unlikely that Didi will ever come to the Philippines but as someone who is dependent on ride-sharing services, I can still hope.
In the Philippine setting, the ride sharing scenario seems bleak for commuters. It seems that those who don’t take the train, jeepneys, UV Express or buses are once again at the mercy of cab drivers.