After Arvind Kejriwal warned taxi aggregator Uber against surge-pricing, the Delhi government has announced a helpline for people who want to complain against overcharging by their cab.
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Shortage of taxis continues in the Capital following the recent ban on diesel vehicles and odd and even vehicle scheme.
A report out this morning from the venerable NPR claiming that Uber intends to do away with surge pricing caught many users of the ride-hail app completely off guard. The Uber app, meanwhile, showed prices 1.4 to 3 times higher through the day; the rates went up to 2.9 times around 7pm.
The company had experimented with nixing Surge pricing in India, but it has since been returned.
The second phase of the scheme was followed between April 15 to April 30. “The app-based cabs are as it is unlicensed and we will be bringing a policy for them within a week”, the official added. Vaishali Sharma, a boutique owner in Defence Colony, also couldn’t find anything on the Ola app. “I wanted to take a cab twice on Monday but only Ola Share was available”.
Kejriwal had asserted that such demand-linked hikes would be banned permanently. “They r warned that strong action will be taken against them”, Mr Kejriwal tweeted.
While the Surge pricing does allow Uber to get drivers to bust areas faster, it does give ride seekers the opportunity to shop around using rival services like Lyft. The government had thus urged the cab-providers, Ola and Uber, to stop charging extra as it was against law and their cabs will be impounded if they did so. An NPR story Tuesday implied that Uber has “plans to kill surge pricing”, by improving machine learning, but Uber said it has no such plans.
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Ola displayed the disclaimer during the odd-even period as well although it did not invoke peak pricing till Saturday.
