Uber drops the ball with free ride promotion in Singapore – again

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. An apt choice of words for Singaporeans who decided to give Uber’s free ride promotion a second try two days ago, many of whom came away unhappy again. This time, it was because Uber had seemingly reneged on its offer and charged those who had taken it up anyway, triggering a flood of angry comments on its Facebook page:

The offer was live on Thursday, and promised up to two free UberTaxi trips per rider, with each ride being capped at S$35 (US$28). Despite the price cap being clearly stated on the taxi app’s blog, many reported that their credit cards were being charged for trips that were within the limit.

Much like the previous promotion that Uber ran, several netizens also complained that they were not able to secure a ride due to overwhelming demand. Some said that they hopped over to competing apps, and managed to get a taxi right away:

To be fair, there were also some fortunate users who came away with rides within a five to ten minute wait. However, the sentiment towards this promotion seems to be generally negative.

To their credit, Uber has been responding to user complaints very promptly, despite it being a weekend. My colleague got a reply within two hours stating that the team is “already working to refund these wrong charges”.

But of course, the question remains: why is Uber still insisting on pushing through with such offers when backlash seems inevitable? It might be a case of “any publicity is good publicity”, but with other strong competitors such as GrabTaxi coming up hard and fast, another incident like this might just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

See: I’m feeling sour about Uber Singapore’s free ride promo. Here’s why