Ex-Ola Driver Reveals How He Cheated System To Earn Big Money

Ex-Ola Driver Reveals How He Cheated System To Earn Big Money

If you ever get in a conversation with your Ola and Uber drivers, they’ll tell you that they have stopped earning profits like they used to a few months ago. The reason cited is the modified incentive model by the online cab aggregators. It reportedly happened because a number of Ola and Uber drivers manipulated the system and stole serious money.

In the latest development, a driver who worked with Ola before switching to Uber got into a conversation with a passenger, Neha Garg, that led to a confession by the driver that puts into light the scam he ran on Ola.

The conversation started because of ‘a nasty co-passenger’ in her Uber ride.

The driver then revealed the details of the scam.

The drivers used a software that manipulated their location. So, when a customer booked a cab, all they would see is that the driver is at the pickup point. In reality, they would be somewhere else. Then, the drivers would put their registered mobile number in flight mode, to prevent the customer from contacting them.

If you think that’s the worst, it wasn’t. The flight mode trick was for the actual, rare rides. Drivers then started using their own SIM cards to create fake Ola customers’ IDs. Apart from the driver, four people would sit in the cab and would repeatedly book the ride.

They kept circling around the same route but used that location manipulating software to avoid getting caught. In this way, they booked fake rides and earned up to INR 30K every day.

Ola and Uber drivers make more money from the ‘incentive’ they get from the companies than from what the actual cost of the ride comes out to be. Hence, by putting in place a system of fake rides, they achieve the target of a minimum number of rides that makes sure that they get their incentive, without spending huge amounts of fuel or time.

According to the thread, Ola managed to track all the culprits and further blacklisted 11,600 cabs.

An official spokesperson from Ola said, “We have zero tolerance to fraud on the Ola platform, both on the driver and customer side. While on one hand, we have instituted multiple checks and preventive technology interventions to eliminate any fraudulent activity on the platform since inception, we have also parallelly partnered with local authorities to take stringent action against those attempting to do so wilfully, in the interest of overall security. We suspect that this is an attempt to malign our brand image amongst customers and driver-partners.”

The spokesperson further added, “To prevent any kind of malpractice on our platform, we maintain trust scores for every entity and ensure appropriate action whenever we observe a dip in this score. We have also incorporated stronger mobile identity verification, unique OTP checks, before starting the ride, automated allotment and institution of machine learning to detect suspicious behaviour and arrest any kind of attempt of malpractices on the Ola platform over the years.”

This development was reported by Indiatoday.

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