Amidst a string of negative reviews and comments by Ola Cab users, a consumer court in the city of Hyderabad has ordered Ola Cabs to compensate a customer by paying 95000 Indian rupees for discomfort and mental agony caused by the actions of one of the cab drivers of Ola Cabs.
According to the petition filed by a person named Jabez Samuel in front of Hyderabad district consumer disputes redressal commission – III, the complainant was forced to pay more than 860 rupees for a trip that he and his family was not able to complete in October 2021 due to bad behaviour of the cab driver.
On 19th October 2021, Jabes Samuel, his wife and an assistant decided to call an Ola Cab for travelling.
After waiting for nearly 4 hours the family along with their assistant was able to get into the cab and start their journey. Once they entered the cab, Samuel noticed that the insides of the vehicle were untidy.
The driver of the Ola Cab reportedly behaved in a rude and bad manner to Samuel and the riders when they asked the driver to switch on the air-conditioning in the vehicle.
After showing very rude and unprofessional behaviour, the cab driver asked Jabes Samuel and his companions to get down from the vehicle. They had at that time only rode for half the distance which was booked.
Following the horrible experience, a bill of ₹861 was generated for the incomplete journey. Upon noticing the issue with billing, Samuel tried to contact the support team of ola cabs through email which ended up being unfruitful.
Various calls with customer service executives also ended up futile and none of them was able to either help Samuel with the billing issue or transfer the call to a higher authority in the company.
At last out of repeated requests and calls from the Ola cab, Samuel paid the amount in January this year following which he filed a complaint under Section 35 of The Consumer Protection Act.
In the complaint, Samuel asked the court to order the company to compensate him with ₹499000 for the unprofessional behaviour of the Ola Cab driver and the mental agony caused by the cab company.
The court which found the claim of 499000 rupees exorbitant ordered Ola Cabs to pay Samuel 88000 as compensation for mental agony and 7000 rupees for costs incurred for the legal proceedings.
Court also noted in its order that Ola Cabs did not make any representations on the complaint and also did not appear before the consumer redressal commission.