Daily Times

Ride-hailing service Careem and Uber both are the very popular applications in Pakistan. However, from last few months customers are complaining about their bad service and bad behavior of the drivers.

People are complaining , the Careem Captains were taking more money than charged from the customers. i.e if a customer’s fare was Rs. 130 but they were charged with Rs. 200 instead.

A customer also claims that fake accounts were set up using National Identification Cards of individuals to continue the fraud.

A female customer complained that she booked a ride after receiving estimated fare of 300 rupees but after getting traffic jam of three to five minutes on the way the fare automatically increased to 5000 rupees.

If driver finds the route is too long for them they suddenly dropped off the customer even the families with different type of excuses without providing any backup to the customer.

Some Careem captains used to book rides at their own to meet targets and to ultimately qualify for the bonuses that company offers after achieving daily, weekly and monthly goals.

Earlier in 2019 consumer court in Karachi  imposed a collective fine of Rs50,000 on Careem — a private ride-hailing service — for providing “faulty service” and causing “mental agony” to a customer.

Junaid Iqbal, the chief executive of Careem Pakistan, was found guilty of providing faulty services in contravention of Section 13 of the Sindh Consumer Protection Act, 2014.

these captains had found a way of manipulating the system by going into deserted areas such as city outskirts — where chances of other captains on service are usually less — and then booking a ride (from other than their primary smartphone). This way, the same captain used to get the same ride that they had booked themselves.

While captains don’t do this all the time — or they would never make money from the bogus rides — such fake bookings were done when few final rides were needed before targets are missed due to the deadlines.

Bogus rides are also booked at the end of shift when captains are far from home and then they are to ride back to their places anyway. In such circumstances captains used to book fake rides and then travel without any passenger but the ride would count towards their targets and hence the bonuses.

Customers also filed complaints on Careem’s fraud detection portal but got no response from them and demanding for safe and affordable rides