The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) has ordered Grab Philippines to refund 5,05 million pesos to its customers for overcharging cases between February and May 2019. If you ever paid high fares for your Grab bookings during this time, you might get refunds from Grab soon.
Grab usually prices its fares based on demand with rates sometimes getting extremely high, especially during peak hours. This comes despite the PCC requiring Grab to restore its prices and service quality before merging with Uber. These requirements included keeping fares close to the way they were before the merger, providing transparency when it comes to their rates, and bringing the acceptance rates and cancellation rates to the level they were on before the merger. The PCC, however, has come to find that the merger has brought prices up and service quality down.
The upcoming refund is part of the government’s hopes to protect consumers. The PCC has also put Grab under monitoring for another year. A new system has also been imposed, where excess payments will be returned to customers if Grab “breaches the monthly average fare cap set by the PCC”. Fare surges have also been limited to about 1/5 of the base fare in case of high demand.
Grab has been given 60 days to pay the refunds, which will be awarded through individual GrabPay accounts. Grab says they will be announcing the process of payment at least five days before the refunds.
This isn’t the first time Grab has had to pay for overcharging. In July 2018, they paid a penalty of 10 million pesos, including a rebate for imposing a 2-pesos per minute fee of waiting time.
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