Below is the email I wrote to Ola Cabs complaining about my experience and explaining why the billing was unfair. Till now, Ola customer support has not bothered to look into the matter. When they started demanding payment, I wrote an email to Ola Money requesting them to split the bill so that we could pay the undisputed remainder of the bill amount, so as to avoid defaulting, however, they directed me to approach them through the app, so I called them from the app, but they refused to split the bill, saying they have no provision to do so.
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Hi,
I had called your customer care through the Ola app in order to complain about the billing of the rental I had booked on Saturday, April 23rd. As the issue was not resolved, I asked your executive to escalate it to the grievance officer. He promised to arrange for his senior to email/call me, but that did not happen. Hence, I am writing to you here.
For your reference, the CRN number is [withheld]. The driver's name is [withheld]. The ticket number for the call I made to customer care was [withheld]. Although it has been marked as solved on the app, the issue is NOT RESOLVED.
Please take note of the issues I faced during the ride in order to understand why the billing is unfair:
1. We had to attend an event in Vasanthnagar. Your driver took us through non-standard routing and narrow lanes so that we arrived late at the event.
2. After the event, we wanted to extend our ride so that we could have dinner at MG Road. Now, this is the whole point of taking a rental as against a point-to-point booking. It gives us the flexibility to change plans, and of course, we were willing to pay the extra fare for extension based on the tariff per minute and per kilometer.
However, your stubborn driver insisted that he had other bookings to take and called customer care from his phone. The customer care took sides with him and insisted we end this ride and book another ride, further insisting that Ola taxis are available at all times. However, we know from experience that in the night, it is very difficult to get a cab from MG Road to Yelahanka. We hence had no option but to cancel our dinner plan and ask him to drop us back at Yelahanka itself.
As a result, the extra kilometers and time spent going to MG Road from Vasanthnagar was a waste.
3. On reaching our drop location in Yelahanka, we were horrified that we were charged Rs 1400 for a ride that should have cost at most half that amount with extra time and kilometers included. Keeping in mind that your driver tried to forcibly stop the trip mid-way, and that we did not benefit at all from taking a rental, we felt cheated and ripped-off.
4. The amount you charged for fare increase is not mentioned anywhere in the rate card. How can you just add an amount we were never informed about at the time of booking? I am attaching a screenshot of the rate card in order to prove my point.
5. The overall rude behaviour of your driver, poor quality of service (he refused to turn on the AC, took lengthy and slow routes, and tried to ditch us mid-way, was unwilling to listen when we explained to him that we would be paying him for the extra time and kilometers by the tariff), and inconvenience caused and the disappointment we felt has left us outraged and fuming at the ridiculous bill amount of Rs 1400.
We hence reject the invoice of Rs 1400 you have raised for this ride. Please revise the bill amount down to something more reasonable considering the atrocious service.
Hoping to hear back from you very soon,
Sriram