Sigh. As I mentioned in my previous stories about Grab Singapore, now it seems the policy is being adopted here in Malaysia. The fee won’t be as exorbitant as the one in Singapore, but a RM 3 fee is still nothing to scoff at. In an announcement by Grab on March 17th, Grab stated that they will start charging ‘Cancelling Compensation Fees’.

The policy says that passengers that cancel 5 minutes after a booking, or if the passenger doesn’t show up. If you don’t turn up for the ride, Grab drivers are now able to state that reason for the cancellation was “Passenger no-show”.

The policy will take into effect on the 25th in Klang Valley, and 27th in other cities. But with this, Grab also mentions that the fee is to compensate drivers for their time on the road. However, they will not be eligible for compensation if they don’t move to pick up location, or they take too long to arrive.

As I’ve mentioned before, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Grab drivers should be able to make a living by driving Grab. I for one, use a tonne of Grab to get around, and don’t normally cancel cars. The only issue I have with this is Grab’s UI and how this will be implemented. Drivers just might find a way to skirt around this and might take advantage.

At the end of the day, someone taking a Grab has somewhere to go. And right now, there seems to be too much power at the hands of the driver. They will be the one who decides where and when you can go somewhere. The inconsistencies of the app and UI is what will cause issues with this. There are no features in place to subvert this. A timer or just small UI implementation of when the ride was booked, would help to solve this. Because otherwise, passengers will have to manually check the time of booking, and see when the car actually get’s there. Then and only then can you decide whether to cancel after checking it’s been more than the indicated time to arrive. This is just way too inconvenient.

How about something to compensate passengers who have to wait 10-20 minutes when the Grab app shows 8 minutes? The driver and Grab made you late to something you had to go to, yet, no compensation or mention of it anywhere. To that Grab mentions;

“Rest assured that we have processes in place to ensure that drivers do not cancel on you. All drivers are accountable for the cancellations that they do on their side. Drivers who cancel too often will be temporarily suspended for a certain amount of time.”

With the absence of Uber in Malaysia, this is what we’ve come to.