Next time you take a ride with OLA cabs, you may find a peculiar addition to your bill. Ola has quietly added something called as ride time charges to you total fare. No, these are not the “wait time” charges – these are “ride time” charges, meaning, you will be paying money for every minute of your ride irrespective of whether you are waiting or moving in the cab, over and on top of your normal fare charges.
A regular Ola user from Nashik (Vinayak Manglurkar) , found this in his bill when he took Ola ride today! This change may have happened sometime in last couple of weeks because when he had earlier taken the ride on April 15th, these charges were not there.
Have a look at this invoice from the ride today!
The Ride time charges are billed at Re one per minute, so if your ride spans 60 minute, you will be charged 60 rupees.
Have a look at this invoice from April 14th, when these charges were not included in the total fare.
Interestingly Wait time charge was charged earlier, which has been removed now, and looks like it has been replaced with ride time charges.
It’s Arbitrary!
Another interesting aspect about wait time charges is that it is quite arbitrary, some cities like Pune, Nashik have it, while some don’t. What’s even more arbitrary is that while some category of rides have it, while some don’t.
For example, in Mumbai Economy Sedan and Mini don’t have it (and have wait time charges), while Prime does have ride time charges.
Even the rates are different. The economy and mini have waiting charges of Re 1 in some cities, while it is Re 2 in other places.
On the other hand, in Pune all 3 categories have ride time charges!
Bottom line is that ride time charge is not uniformly levied and is completely arbitrary.
Have a look at their fare chart for your city, before you hire an Ola cab. According to Ola website, “Ride time includes total time from the pickup time to drop time.”
We are not quite sure when OLA introduced these charges, but they have not made any formal announcement about the same, and have quietly bought about this change!
Were you aware of these charges earlier?