On Oct. 8, San Francisco startup success story Uber, gave away two free rides via both their affordable car and taxi services, to Singaporean users.
In a nutshell, if you’d downloaded the (super sleek) Uber booking app on your phone, you could’ve gotten two free rides to anywhere in a Toyota Corolla or Camry, or an actual taxi cab working with Uber, up till midnight.
Pretty awesome stuff, right? Here’s what happened:
1. A bunch of people including one of our editors, got a free ride
2. Safe to say, no one actually got to claim their second
3. Even safer to say, most couldn’t get a car or cab even after several tries
4. And some that eventually did, got charged for their ride
5. Some didn’t even hear about the promo until it was over
6. Uber’s drivers suddenly gained a louder voice
Our editor, who “got lucky with (her) Uber booking because the driver lived in (her) neighbourhood”, heard another side of the Uber Singapore story when she was travelling to Orchard Road. According to the driver, who was new to Uber and claimed all his bookings were coming from their app instead of GrabTaxi because of the day’s promo, the payment system was discomforting. “They said they’d bank in the money within two or three days, but it’s been a week and we still haven’t gotten paid, so a bit worried, lah,” he complained.
While trawling the comments on Uber’s Facebook, we found a user who’d had the same experience:
Our driver also said that the system only allows him to respond to new bookings after he’s dropped off a current passenger, which leaves a lot of time wasted waiting around in between customers. Well every system has its glitches, but does a ‘while stocks last’ marketing style ala Xiaomi amplify things? Possibly.
So how did Uber do, overall?
While the company might have achieved its goal of accumulating users to rationalise its billion-dollar backing (“Wow, we thought demand would be sky-high but demand was off the charts!”), the promo made many question its future cred.
Tech in Asia‘s Terence Lee thinks Uber is sending out the wrong emotions — negative ones — by not being able to supply to demand, not just to new customers, but also the existing ones, who didn’t care for the free rides.
He’s not alone.
By making it so difficult to get an Uber during the promotion period, the company also proved they couldn’t meet the public’s high expectations of local transport. “We expect shit to work. Period,” Lee wrote.
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