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“Please consider this as our sincere apology and allow us to serve you better next time,” reads an email I received from a leading domestic mobile application-based taxi service provider five days ago. I wish I could tell them that there would be no next time from my side. Ever!
I am among the one million citizens of India who regularly use taxis booked through mobile applications. I have apps of Ola Cabs and TaxiForSure on my phone, and I ‘try to’ use them at least thrice a week.
Greedy for some convenience, I have allowed a ‘next time’ to these new-age taxi aggregators when their drivers insisted on jumping red traffic lights even as I repeatedly requested them to stop. I have also given them another chance when their drivers continued lengthy conversations on their mobile phones while driving, while I sat petrified at the prospects of all that could go wrong! I have given them the benefit of doubt even when their drivers turned up shabbily dressed in stinking cars and I had to survive the ride with minimal breathing.
I have ‘understood’ and ‘accommodated’ every single incident of drivers refusing to come for pickups and rudely telling me to cancel the booking without giving any further reasons.
Most commonly, I have let go of the innumerable times when I dealt with their glitch-infested mobile apps, or when the driver’s app stopped working and I had to wait for over 30 minutes outside my destination just to know my bill amount so I could make a payment.
I also gave them another chance despite the rape incident in Delhi by an Uber driver.
But well, it now seems that it is just going to go downhill from here.
Only a week ago, on December 9, I booked a cab at 10 a.m. for a ride at 6:30 p.m. I made a reminder call at around 4:30 p.m. and was assured that the cab would reach in time. I waited until 7 p.m. for an update, after which I was told that a taxi could not be provided until 8 p.m. I had to take my husband to a hospital for a checkup, and we missed the doctor’s appointment.
This was around the same time that reports of the rape by the driver of an Uber taxi in Delhi were all over the internet. I was quite surprised at the reactions my friends had to that incident. It was almost as if everyone believed that these taxis were the safest and most comfortable means of commuting. ‘How could such a thing ever happen?’ wondered several posts on my social media feed.
Some of the surprise was justifiable, I suppose, because how could one imagine such an act by a cab driver whose mobile number and vehicle number are registered in the commuter’s mobile phone and his company’s records. But calling these taxis ‘safest’ and ‘most comfortable’? Well, that’s a bit much.
I am reminded of a taxi ride I took around four months back from the airport. I had booked this one too from a mobile application. Halfway through the ride, I realised that my half-full glass of lemonade that I had placed in the taxi’s glass holder had ants all over it! I have been driving for almost a decade now, and I never ever knew until that moment that there could be an insect infestation inside a private car!
All of this is an irony for me because I have been reporting on the huge sums of money raised by these online taxi aggregators to ostensibly provide quality services to people like us. Unfortunately, with each funding round closing, all I have seen is a fall in quality.
