As Ola is now in Sydney and quickly covering major cities, Ozbargain fam needs to know what's good and bad about it. How is the experience and the costs as compared to other taxi services like Uber & Taxify
Ola in Australia: Ride Reviews and comparisons
ProBoDoBo on 26/02/2018 - 08:58
Last edited 26/02/2018 - 09:19 by 1 other user
Last edited 26/02/2018 - 09:19 by 1 other user
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Price compared to uber, check.
Availability compared to uber, ehh.
It's new though so it might change.
To add to this thread over a year on, I thought I would add to this in hope that it helps my OB friends make an informed decision prior to downloading the app or using their services.
Unfortunately most journeys had a negative within.
1st ride I had my $20 discount, a little extra traffic on the road but all in all the ride came in less than my discount ($17.59 with BF and taxes), so it was a $0 fare (yeah baby)
2nd ride was on the way home, again with another $20 discount in hand, it shows an estimated fare of $12-14 (similar to my ride in estimate) i get on the app, there is roughly 20 cars available, so i proceed with the booking and within a couple of minutes am on my way.
When the ride ends I am copped with a $7.28 bill which made no sense as the ride was shorter and there was literally no traffic on the road.
I find that they charged a fare increase of $10.37, later finding out that it was 5.2% increase due to high demand, which is rotten in itself because if there were no cars I would have waited no problem, but 20+ cars available and being told high demand and having to pay for the privilege of being able to order an OLA, yeah right// and to top it off this was not shown anywhere in the initial booking stages. the other charges (time and KM were also higher even though the distance and time was shorter than my drive in.3rd ride, was to the airport, and although they offered a $25 flat fee I ended up using a coupon which made it around $4 cheaper for me in the end.. no problem there at all
4th ride, back from the airport, this time I was hit by an airport pick up charge of $3.55 which I had no issue with as most companies charge some kind of pick up charge.
However when we started the ride I was asked if I wanted to use the toll road, it was as quick not too at that time, so I said no, and we did not.. however I was charged $5.05 for the toll anyway.5th (and my last ride with this dishonest company.)
I was quoted $9-12 for my ride, a little better than uber and with a 30% discount was my choice.
On arrival I was greeted by the Chinese driver who started the journey on the app and displayed the google maps on his phone with a Chinese voice giving him directions, he then asked me if we go straight ahead (into a dead end road) I suggested he follow his app which i can see it showing the right direction to travel, every intersection he would slow right down and many time ask if i waned to turn here, every time I said to follow his app directions (i knew where I was going and it was showing the best route).
During the jounrey, most of the time he would be travelling 5-10km/h under the speed limit, at every turn he would slow down well before it and go at walking pace, but what made it obvious that this guy was doing all he could to increase the fare by ride time, was when at EVERY traffic light he would slow down on the approach, and go walking pace just as he got close to it and until he passed the line where he would speed up again, once we stopped at a red that would have been red either way so that was fine, the other, as he crept up we were cm form the line and it tuned orange, he stopped and we waited.
Finally we are getting close to my destination, I am texting a friend to tell him I am nearly there, when the driver says (again) do we turn here, i looked at the street name and said this is not the street, as he kept driving I realised he had driven past the street which was my destination, so gave him directions to go back to that street.. I got dropped off and off he goes.
10 minutes later I was prepared to giving a less than 5 star rating to find that my journey is still ongoing, straight away i emailed ola customer support to advice of this so they could stop the journey and not charge me any extra, of course an auto reply to show they are looking into it but nada after that.. another 8 or so minutes later the journey is stopped and I am hit with a $20 fare.now for the customer service.
After getting no reply overnight from my email I send another on top of their automatic one, again a day later no reply.
I go to the app and selected "my driver too a long or incorrect route" straight away the app goes to a page that states "fare for this ride is correct.. explaining that heavy traffic, road works, diversions etc beyond their control could result in a higher fare and regret the inconvenience . at the bottom asking if the support i received was good or bad .. so their system is automatically set up to take any blame from them, they show no care for explanations or investigations, they are happy for their automated app to instantly tell you that you are wrong.To prove this point, when i went through the app on my return airport journey I selected "i was charged toll/parking fee incorrectly:
instantly it goes to the the page stating "toll charges applied correctly" and "as per route details shown for this ride by our system, toll charges have been applied correctly, we will be unable to review the fare for this ride, thank you for reaching out to us"
of course i said support was bad and told them if they manually look at the route map that I have on the screen and via email, it goes no where near a toll road and to correct the fare"
of course no reply on that either.both going to be disputed through paypal in hope they can sort it out.
Personally I am going to apologise to friends who I encouraged to use OLA, and will no longer use their dishonest set up, with Uber at least I have peace of mind that they have the customers back in most cases if something did go wrong, so am happy to pay a little extra an continue with them for now.
As for you, well 1st cheers for reading such a long post, I hope it can help you make an informed decision on if OLA is suited to your ride sharing needs.
That's awful, I've had similar poor experiences with the app and with unhelpful customer service. I'd recommend disputing the transaction with your bank, I've previously had success doing this when Ola's customer service were being obtuse.
Similar experience, won't go into all the details but I won't use them again. Tried a few times, they are dishonest and poor service. Last time I was at Sydney airport. App said driver was coming in 5 min, I watched all the uber people get picked up before me, took about 20 minutes. Then, the $25 flat fare I was promised became $32.45 with no notice or explanation.
Np problems in canberra used them about 10 times cheaper than uber. Use samr drivers.
I will NEVER use Ola again, and would advise others to follow suit.
First of all, it's not that much cheaper than Uber unless you have a discount code which usually only last for a couple of weeks or so. Also Uber has a Pool option which actually works out cheaper than Ola.
But that aside, it's the quality of service that is absolutely appalling. There are so many examples of what went wrong, but the worst was when a driver accepted my ride without actually picking me up, and charged me for a fare that never happened. The thing with Ola is they don't let you call them unless it's an emergency during a ride, so there was no way to get in touch with them to sort this out - I just watched the driver drive around the city and wondered how much it would cost me. Long story short, they refunded me a portion of the ride, and stole about $0.40. Not a big sum of money, but it's a dirty tactic and I assume quite a profitable one for them on a large scale.
The scarcity of drivers is another issue. I spoke to a driver who told me they actually don't get paid more than Uber, and that Uber provided a much better turnaround service time for things like car cleaning, which means the drivers are more likely to use Uber because it's faster and easier to deal with. So that means less available drivers for riders, as I witnessed first hand when during peak hour traffic, I waited on average 15-25min for a ride (near the CBD).
Now I'm trying to close my account but they keep saying I have a pending case so I can't close my account. I've tried emailing them to sort out this non-existant "pending case", but they don't respond to emails so I feel like I'm going around in circles.
Whatever you do - DON'T USE OLA!!!
Sorry can’t help
I own a car.