KUALA LUMPUR: Grab Malaysia should offer compensation to drivers and riders who were unable to take up bookings and food delivery orders due to the service disruption today.
Grab Drivers Malaysia Association president Arif Asyraf Ali said the major outage that took down the company's platforms in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines bit into the income of these daily wage earners.
"The service disruption started around 8.55am in the morning and lasted throughout the peak hours in the morning.
"Since then, I've been receiving hundreds of complaints from Grabcar drivers.
"Disruptions during peak hours will surely affect the income of drivers and riders who were forced to search for other alternatives to make up for the income lost.
"Therefore, I feel Grab Malaysia should compensate the drivers and riders as they suffered income loss due to the technical glitch," he told the New Straits Times.
Meanwhile, Grabfood rider Shamsul Azizi Jamaluddin, 39, from Putrajaya, endured an exhausting wait for the Grab application to display his customers' address.
Despite the disruption, the determined Shamsul found an alternative way to deliver the food orders to his customers.
"The application went down suddenly after I picked up two food delivery orders this morning.
"So, I was unable to get the recipients' address. I couldn't contact the Grab helpdesk since I had to access the app in order to do so.
"After waiting for about 20 minutes, I managed to access the application again. Luckily, I took a screenshot of my customers' address because the app went down again after that.
"Eventually, I resorted to using Waze to deliver the food to the address in the screenshots I took earlier.
"Now, I'm back home and I'm still patiently waiting for the app to be restored again," he said.
Besides drivers and delivery partners, the outage resulted in a frustrating morning for Grab customers.
Sharan Raj, 26, who wanted to run errands at the bank found himself stranded with no drivers near his location.
"This morning, I took a half day off from work to go to the bank. Despite numerous attempts to book a ride via Grab, I did not get any drivers.
"Surprisingly, the app charged me RM9 for the ride even without getting me a driver.
"Usually, Grab holds the charge until the driver accepts the booking and the payment will only be deducted after the ride.
"Today, the payment was deducted instantly without any drivers accepting my booking first.
"I ended up spending my half day off from work in frustration as I was unable to go to the bank.
"I relied on Grab because it was difficult for me to walk to the main road from my place to get a cab," he said.
Khairatul Madiha, 25, endured similar disappointment as she waited over an hour for her food only to be told that her order was cancelled at the eleventh hour.
"I ordered my breakfast via Grabfood at 9.30am today and until 10.30am, the order was still pending.
"Suddenly, the app notified me that the order has been cancelled without any reasons for the cancellation.
"When I came to Twitter to air my grouses, I found many others facing the same problem.
"Luckily, Grab refunded my money about an hour later," she said.
Grab Malaysia, via a tweet, apologised for the service disruption and said its team was working to resolve the issue.
The company has not offered any explanation on the causes of the outage so far.
However, a Grab spokesperson told the NST earlier today that consumers will be refunded if they did not receive their food orders.
Meanwhile, a New Straits Times staff attempted to make an order via Grabfood at about 12.49pm. The app appeared to be functioning well. Although it took longer than usual for the order status to change to 'In the Kitchen' and for a rider to accept the order, it eventually showed movement and was delivered about an hour later.