Ola Cabs — Almost missed flights due to pathetic customer service by OLA

Address:

Bangalore, Karnataka

My Wife booked a OLA cab 2 days back for travel to airport today. The flight (Jet Airways) was for 7:50 AM and she booked a cab from our house in Koramangala 4th Block for 5:30 AM. At 5:00 AM, we got a call from the driver asking about the address and informed he will be arriving shortly for the pick up. At 5:15 AM, the driver called and informed that he is not coming and did not provide any reason and asked me to get in touch with the call centre. When I called the call centre, they "Apologies for the Inconvenience" and arranged for another cab. At 5:20 AM we got a call from another driver asking us about the address. He informed he is coming from Jayanagar and when we told him about our address in Koramangala, he informed that he will not come. At this point we were really getting agitated and impatient as the time was now 5:35 AM. I again called the call centre and spend more than 10 minutes requesting/begging him to provide us a cab as were getting late. At this time, we got a call from another Ola cab driver and he asked us about our address and said he will be at our residence in 5 minutes. We went down with the luggage and the cab came. As my wife was about to board the cab, the driver informed us that her booking has been cancelled (I really would like to know how my booking was cancelled by OLA on their own when I did not cancel it) and he has been sent a new booking message so he can't take her to the airport. Flabbergasted at this, I again call the call centre and waste another 10 minutes where I am again requesting him to please talk to the driver of the can at our residence so that he can take my wife to the airport. The call centre representative spoke to the driver and asked him to cancel the new booking on the app and to take my wife to the airport but the driver refused saying that if he will cancel the booking, his incentive would be witheld (are you kidding me...this is your service...OMG). We are stranded on the road with luggage and time was almost 6:15 AM. We started frantically waving for any taxi to stop and finally we got a taxi at 6:30 AM who said he will charge Rs. 1, 000 (realising that we are in dire needs he extracted extra money from us). We agreed and left for the airport (we were out of all options thanks to OLA). We reached airport at 7:10 AM (with some reckless driving from the driver) and my wife made a run for the boarding counter and after a lot of haggling and begging was allowed to board the flight. Phewwww. The entire episode was so heart pumping full of anxiety and frustration and very painful. If she had missed her flight, we would have had to buy a spot ticket costing almost close to Rs. 15, 000 to Rs. 20, 000 as she was going for her sister's marriage. This is a horrible experience to go through and hence I would like a raise an official complaint against OLA. Worst customer service and on top of that their call centre is filled with who just speak scripted language and do not care at all about customers.