GrabCar driver responds to woman's allegations: She refused to pay full fare

Update:

The GrabCar driver who allegedly bullied a female passenger in the early hours of Wednesday (July 29) morning has been suspended by GrabTaxi, pending the company's investigations, reported The Straits Times.

GrabCar is an alternative service provided by GrabTaxi which offers private cars, instead of cabs.

SINGAPORE - The GrabCar driver who allegedly dropped a female passenger off in the middle of Geylang at 4am has responded with his side of the story.

In a Facebook post that has now gone viral, the passenger, Adeline A. Lok, said the driver had shouted insults and vulgarities at her after demanding that she get off his car.

This was allegedly over a dispute about an SG50 promotion that reportedly entitles passengers to a $5 fare discount if a booking was made via the Grab Taxi app. Passengers had to key in a promotional code while making their booking.

The cabby, Mr Tong, clarified that while he knows of the ongoing promotion, he was advised to only give the $5 discount to passengers who had received a notification saying that the promotional code keyed in is valid. The cabby said if the code was valid, he would also have been notified of it via SMS.

However, Mr Tong said that even though the female passenger alleged that she had keyed in a code, she could not show proof that she was entitled to the $5 discount.

Also, he did not receive any SMS notification about this.

He explained he had four cases in the last week where he could not claim the $5 discount back. Hence, he had to bear the $20 discount he had given out and was more careful about the promotion this week.

In a phone conversation with citizen journalism site Stomp, he said:

"The passenger kept demanding she get the discount and said she will only pay me $7, instead of the usual fee of about $12.

"I then gave her an alternative. I told her I will drop her off at the next exit if she still refuses to pay me the full fare and I will not take a single cent from her.

"She then shouted vulgarities at me. I was naturally provoked and I scolded her out of anger.

"I know I shouldn't have done that on hindsight, but she was being very rude.

"The next exit, as I was travelling on the Ubi KPE, was Sims Avenue and that is where I stopped her so that she could get another vehicle.

"It is not at the red light district area but it is the stretch where there is a row of durian stalls and coffee shops. Now, these shops were not closed and the place was brightly lit up.

"I told her to get off my cab and said I will not charge her, but she instead kept saying that she will call the police.

"She also said she will sit in my cab until the police arrived.

"At this juncture, I also called the police and they arrive within 15 minutes.

"When I explained the situation to them, the passenger realised she could not do anything because she did not have proof that she was entitled to the discount in the first place.

"Now, she is trying to 'shame' me on the Internet. I did not even realise that she had taken my picture.

"I feel the situation is unfair as I was merely being cautious about the discount as I did not want to bear the cost of it again. I also told her I will not charge her for the journey and dropped her off at a place where she could have easily gotten on another cab."

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