Grab defends computation after users question ‘measly’ refund

MANILA, Philippines — Ride-hailing company Grab Philippines explained the computation behind its refund after receiving online criticism from its users who believed the rebate was a lot less than they were expecting.

“It’s based on the amount spent that they had during the period mentioned, February to August,” Grab Philippines president Brian Cu said in an interview Thursday with ANC.

With the P19 million refund divided to three million active users, Cu said each user could receive an average of P20 pesos considering if they use the service equally.

“Now, if you take P19 million against the monthly active users of the platform which is around 3 million, on average it’s P20 per user if they all use it equally,” Cu said.

“Then you have some users who use it once a week, some users maybe use it once a month. Those users may have gotten the one-peso, two-peso refund,” he added.

Grab Philippines on Tuesday started distributing refund worth P19.2 million to its users, following an order by the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC).

Seeing the amount received through the application’s GrabWallet, however, prompted some netizens to air their dismay, with some poking fun on the refund.

“Thing that drives me crazy about grab is that they reward you w/ so little points yet charge a thousand points for a measly Php 50 discount and then there’s this generous refund,” one netizen wrote on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/tushbear_/status/1211882565012840449

“The small amounts that Grab refunds are really the real-life example of “it’s the thought that counts,’” another netizen said.

https://twitter.com/ApostolGabe/status/1211907966477094912

Cu said he, himself, is a “heavy” user of Grab’s services and received a P50-refund.

“I honestly do not know what they were expecting but if you do the math, on the average wouldn’t go beyond 20 pesos. I, for one, am a pretty heavy user of the service and I got P50. There would be users that would use it heavily more than I do so it could go up to P70, P80, P90,” he said.

PCC earlier imposed fines to Grab for breaching its pricing commitment violation and cancellation of users’ rides.

Edited by JE