Grab explains how a driver near Botanic Gardens got booked to pick up a passenger in Sembawang

A Grab driver was recently tasked with picking up a passenger in Sembawang, which would have been business as usual if not for the fact that he was somewhere in the vicinity of Dempsey Hill when he got the alert. 

Meaning he would've had to travel from the southern district of the country all the way to the northern tip to pick his next passenger, potentially wasting petrol and the customer’s time in waiting for the ride. 

Fortunately, the customer was fully aware of how ridiculous the situation was and cancelled the booking so the driver wouldn’t have to travel 23 kilometres just to give her a $6 ride. 

In a post made on the Complaint Singapore Facebook group page, the woman chided Grab and demanded that the ride-hailing service fix its system so drivers wouldn’t have to undergo such trouble. According to her, the driver had tried to reach out to Grab support hotline to get the issue fixed after repeatedly facing the same problem of receiving far-off passenger pickups. 

Netizens were in disbelief. 

Other Grab drivers who’ve faced the same issue before noted that it could be due to a syncing issue in the app’s GPS.

Following an investigation, Grab confirmed to AsiaOne that it was indeed a GPS issue.

“The driver-partner was assigned to the ride request as his vehicle location was not updated in a timely manner due to an issue with his device’s GPS," a Grab spokesperson stated. 
 
"To avoid such incidents, Grab sends our driver-partners regular communications to ensure that their phone device operating systems and their Grab driver app are of the most updated versions. Driver-partners are also encouraged to clear their GPS cache on their phone if they notice any discrepancies.”

In such cases, it would probably be best for either party to just cancel the rides and take up the matter with Grab via its help centre. 

ilyas@asiaone.com