So the Philippine Competition Commission recently fined rideshare provider Grab P23M for overcharging their customers. Apparently only P5M of that is meant to go back to the affected riders, which seems like a piddly amount considering the number of riders in the Philippines. We’ll see how of that I actually get credited back, if any.
Grab pricing has been steadily increasing since Uber exited the market early last year. The other day Grab wanted to charge me a bit over P400 for a 13km ride to a commercial area, which seemed insane. I ended up just going out and taking a taxi back and forth, and that cost me a total of P500 both ways. So Grab was pricing the ride at around 60% higher than the equivalent taxi ride. This was on a Sunday afternoon (typically the lightest traffic day of the week), and the ride took only around 30 mins.
The pricing was never this bad with Uber; looking at my records, my most expensive Uber ride was for P412 pesos to Taguig, and that was a 21km ride that took an hour and a half!
One can’t help but feel that Grab’s really pushing the pricing due to their monopoly. We were promised that there would be new entrants coming in to compete with Grab, but other than motorcycle service Angkas, none have actually come out. And so for now, we suffer their predatory pricing. Hopefully the PCC is more able to keep them in check in the days to come.
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