Ride Hailing App Govt directs ride hailing platforms to join National Consumer Helpline for better redressal of consumer complaints
New Delhi: The government has asked all ride-hailing companies to become a convergence partner in the National Consumer Helpline, to enable better grievance redressal for consumers and also compliance with Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and E-commerce Rules, 2020.
Furthermore, all online ride-hailing platforms were advised to respond to the concerns of commuters with utmost priority and take remedial steps to ensure adequate protection of consumer rights.
The meeting was attended by major ride hailing platforms including Ola, Uber, Rapido, Meru Cabs and Jugnoo.
Additional Secretary Nidhi Khare, Joint Secretary Anupam Mishra and Mr. Vineet Mathur, Joint Secretary, also attended the meeting.
As per the data received from NCH, deficiency in services occupied 56 percent of the overall grievances during the period 01.04.2021 to 01.05.2022.
- Deficiency in service
- Lack of proper response from customer support
- Pre-ticked boxes including add-on services such as insurance with the ride charges, without obtaining consent by explicit and affirmative action
- Driver refusing to take payment by online mode and insisting for cash only
- Higher amount charged despite going on the same route previously at a lesser charge
- Unprofessional driver behaviour
- Driver refusing to switch on AC when the consumer is promised AC ride on the app
- Inaccessible customer support
- No customer care number is provided on the platform
- No details of a grievance officer are mentioned on the platform to which consumers can address their grievance.
- Automated pre-written support messages are given to consumers without redressing the grievance.
- Unreasonable levy of cancellation charges
- User is not shown the amount of time within which cancelling a ride is permitted.
- Cancellation Charges are variable and inconsistent
- Amount of cancellation charge is not displayed prominently on the platform before booking the ride
- Drivers, not willing to take the ride and forcing users to cancel the ride, which entails undue cancellation charges to be borne by the consumer
- Fairness of the algorithms that calculates the charges for the user
- If it is learnt that in case someone is using the OTA services consistently for going from point A to point B, the charges for him may be higher than somebody who is using it between the same two locations for the first time.
- Users are not shown the algorithm or method used by the company to charge different fares for the same route from two individuals.
- Due to this, users are forced to take rides at arbitrary fares which are much higher than what is charged ordinarily for the same route
It may be mentioned that grievances registered on NCH are at a nascent stage as not all consumers register their grievances on NCH, the consumer welfare ministry said.
During the interactions, the companies claimed to have a robust mechanism of redressal of consumer grievances.
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