SINGAPORE: More than 40,000 Grab passengers were overcharged due to the mobile application using outdated Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) rates, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and the Public Transport Council (PTC) said on Friday (Dec 22).
The authorities had received feedback that some Grab passengers were overcharged for trips.
LTA established that this was due to inaccurate ERP charges being applied to fares, and directed Grab to go through its data to identify other trips where passengers might have been similarly overcharged and to take corrective measures.
Grab found that the outdated ERP rates were applied to the final fares for 60,787 trips from Nov 20 to Dec 4.
"This error affected 40,431 passengers, with excess ERP charges generally ranging from S$1 (US$0.76) to S$3 collected for the large majority of affected passengers," said LTA and PTC.
"We understand from Grab that the ERP charges have been updated in their backend system and it has since taken action to reimburse all affected passengers."
Last month, ERP rates were reduced by S$1 for a few gantries during the school holiday period.
"While Grab had earlier scheduled a revision to the ERP rates for these gantries, a temporary backend syncing issue prevented the Automated ERP feature from populating the updated rates," the company said in response to CNA's queries.
As a result, trips that passed through the affected gantries were overcharged.
The company said it impacted "a very small percentage" of rides between Nov 20 and Dec 4.
A notification to Grab customers about the error.
It added that the error has been fixed and it has notified impacted consumers and issued them a refund.
The Automated ERP feature within the Grab Driver App automatically populates the prevailing ERP rates based on the actual route taken during the trip.
Grab told CNA that it has double-checked the ERP pricing for all gantries in its system to ensure accuracy, and "implemented additional internal testing on top of existing processes to prevent similar incidents from happening again".
"We sincerely apologise to consumers for the inconvenience caused," Grab said.
LTA and PTC said they would investigate the incident. The authorities added that operators of ride-hailing services are responsible for ensuring that accurate fares are charged to passengers.
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The authorities had received feedback that some Grab passengers were overcharged for trips.
LTA established that this was due to inaccurate ERP charges being applied to fares, and directed Grab to go through its data to identify other trips where passengers might have been similarly overcharged and to take corrective measures.
Grab found that the outdated ERP rates were applied to the final fares for 60,787 trips from Nov 20 to Dec 4.
"This error affected 40,431 passengers, with excess ERP charges generally ranging from S$1 (US$0.76) to S$3 collected for the large majority of affected passengers," said LTA and PTC.
"We understand from Grab that the ERP charges have been updated in their backend system and it has since taken action to reimburse all affected passengers."
Last month, ERP rates were reduced by S$1 for a few gantries during the school holiday period.
"While Grab had earlier scheduled a revision to the ERP rates for these gantries, a temporary backend syncing issue prevented the Automated ERP feature from populating the updated rates," the company said in response to CNA's queries.
As a result, trips that passed through the affected gantries were overcharged.
The company said it impacted "a very small percentage" of rides between Nov 20 and Dec 4.
A notification to Grab customers about the error.
It added that the error has been fixed and it has notified impacted consumers and issued them a refund.
The Automated ERP feature within the Grab Driver App automatically populates the prevailing ERP rates based on the actual route taken during the trip.
Grab told CNA that it has double-checked the ERP pricing for all gantries in its system to ensure accuracy, and "implemented additional internal testing on top of existing processes to prevent similar incidents from happening again".
"We sincerely apologise to consumers for the inconvenience caused," Grab said.
LTA and PTC said they would investigate the incident. The authorities added that operators of ride-hailing services are responsible for ensuring that accurate fares are charged to passengers.
Continue reading...