Life After no Uber (forced to use Grab)
When I read the news about Uber sells Southeast Asia business to Grab, I was kind of surprised.
I’m one of the people who prefer to use Uber in so many ways because, to be honest, Uber never let me down with their services. Even when I have an issue with my trip, Uber customer service is really helpful and resolved my problem (including refund) within minutes.
My experience with Grab is totally the opposite, most of the time when I choose to use Grab, it always ends up with living me a bad impression either because of their services or even their drivers.
Let me share you my experience:
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Responses Even though in Kuala Lumpur the amount of Grab drivers is more than Uber drivers, but it is more difficult to get a Grab when you need it, compare to get an Uber. One of the reason is that Grab drivers are pickier! The Grab drivers know where you want to go when you ordered, so if the distance is short, they tend to skip it. Where Uber drivers “always” came to the rescue and they don’t care whether your trip is short or long distance.
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Reliability When I ordered Uber, I feel that I have guaranteed that my drivers will arrive. There are two ways commitment, if their available driver is too far from me and it’s the only one available, they will charge my credit card directly and that makes a guarantee for the drivers as well that I won’t cancel my booking (even if I do, it’s totally on me). I have experience that my Grab driver canceled my booking in front of me. I saw him dropping the passenger (because the drop off point is similar to my pickup point) and then he just cancels my booking just like that. WTH?! Why doesn’t he cancel in the beginning and make me wait for 8 minutes?
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Pricing I’m not the person who cares about few cents to a dollar difference. If I took Uber from Kuala Lumpur City Center to the airport, Uber give me total price including the toll fees. Where Grab seems like cheaper, but it’s exclusive toll fees. So in the end, the price difference is not significant. Again, if they’re not so much difference in the price, I would go with the one that served me better …
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Drivers Uber drivers in Kuala Lumpur is more polite and professional (in my experience). When I’m with my family for buying groceries, they never complain or even asking about what’s in my basket. But one of the Grab drivers that we get, she’s (yes it’s she) kind of rude and yelling to us asking about what’s inside our basket, she asked if there are any bottles in our basket? Oh dear, we are educated customer! We know that we’re borrowing your car or renting your service and we know our limit. Even if there’s a bottle inside it’s definitely safe because the packaging is safe.
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Honesty This experience happened with Grab, I honestly forgot to switch my payment method when I ordered Grab. I thought I was using cash that time but it’s actually it was using the credit card. I was traveling from the airport in Jakarta to my hotel during my business trip and I’m paying cash! (OMG). I realize the setting was using the credit card after I get out from the car and the things that upset me is the (Grab) drivers, he didn’t remind me and just took the money! Thanks!
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Features Well I lost my words on this one, coming from Uber there’s a lot of things on the Grab app that it does not exist (don’t mention the app is “still” buggy). The family member feature in Uber is really helpful because I share my credit card information with my wife’s Uber account. I’ll know when she took the ride and I can monitor her trip. In Grab, even to monitor your drivers sometimes the screen close itself and back to the map view (booking) and I’m confuse whether my booking is canceled or not until I check the history that I’m still having an active booking.
When finally Uber send me an email mentioning that by April 8, 2018, I won’t be able to use Uber app to make booking anymore, so finally I decided to install back Grab app for Android before my trip to Singapore (it was April 3, 2018, at night) and guess what? I need to create a new account because I cannot change my already registered Indonesian mobile phone number on my existing Grab account, so I need to create a new one with my Malaysian mobile phone number.
And after the registration successful, the only think I get is a blank white screen. I’m trying to refresh multiple times and nothing happened. I tried with my other mobile phone, it gives me the same result. So in the end, I give up relying on their service during my trip to Singapore. Then, when I came back to Kuala Lumpur, I just read the post from my friends on Facebook that actually Grab’s services is down for two days because of in the process of merging with Uber.
Hopefully in the future Grab will be improving both from their services and the app itself. I think I need to survive without using Uber and make Grab as my last decision until that time came.
Do you guys have similar experience or it’s just me? Leave your response below, I’d love to hear from you …
