Ridesharing services have undoubtedly made life easier for the citizens of Dhaka where traffic and inadequate transport is still a huge problem. Among the many ridesharing firms that have popped up, international organisation Uber gained the most popularity.
Despite its popularity, passengers are now complaining of myriads of problems including harassment, being dropped off mid-trip, drivers cancelling rides after hearing the destination, and picking up the wrong passengers. In fact, female passengers have complained of sexual harassment during the rides.
The users, however, don’t have an avenue for lodging complaints as Uber does not have offices here in Bangladesh. If a passenger does want to complain they will have to do so with its India offices from where the entire operations here are managed.
Moreover, Uber is continuously changing its terms and policies, which are confusing both for the drivers and the passengers.
There is no way to immediately lodge a complaint as the only way to do it is through the app. In addition to that, many users have no idea how to register their grievances this way, leading to more dissatisfaction and authorities not receiving the feedback.
“There’s no longer any difference between a CNG [auto-rickshaw] and Uber driver. Every time you call a ride, they want to know the destination,” Sujit Motafiz, an Uber user wrote in a Facebook post on May 2.
He added that drivers have often hung up when he refused to declare his location or cancelled trips if the destination was not to their liking.
Later on May 6, in another post, he said he had called the Uber helpline and was told that it was only for the drivers and not for the passengers.
“Passengers have to complain in the help section in the app where there a few limited options. There isn’t any scope of lodging complaints outside of those options,” he wrote.
Abul Hayat, who works for an insurance company, lamented that he was forced to get off mid-trip when he was on his way to the airport to pick up a relative.
“I got off because it’s his car and I didn’t want any trouble. But I haven’t been able to make any complaints against the driver. Where and how do I do it?” he asked.
Bangla Tribune reached out to Uber’s public relations agency in Bangladesh regarding the complaints which seem to be growing.
“There are no Uber representatives in Bangladesh. If they have any complaints they can email us which we will forward to the authorities and they should get a reply within two days,” said a spokesperson for the agency.
He reiterated that all the complaints must be made through apps and authorities take steps accordingly which includes a driver’s registration being scrapped in case of repeated mistakes.
According to the ride sharing policy, in order to operate a ride sharing organisation they have to take a clearance from Bangladesh Road Transport Association (BRTA) which will enable the passengers to lodge complaints against the organisation.
“There isn’t much that can be done about drivers misbehaving with passengers in these app-based services,” BRTA Road Safety Division Director Mahbub-e-Rabbani told Bangla Tribune.
He added that in case of extreme cases they can cancel the licence of the driver at fault.