Grab is tightening the Driver Partner cancellation policy from 1 October 2018.
Grab Driver Partners who has a weekly cancellation rating (CR) of between 30% to 59.9% will be issued an SMS reminder to improve. Those who persist in maintaining a high cancellation rating will be required to attend a refresher class to improve service standards.
Drivers who have a cancellation rating of 60% and higher will be automatically suspended from the platform. It is not clear what is the length of the suspension that will be imposed.
Time-Out Not Enough
Grab is dead serious on clamping down on cherry-pickers. They have been introducing changes that are aimed at eradicating drivers who cherry-pick.
- Grab first introduced the minimum 30 percent weekly acceptance rate in November 2017. Drivers who do not meet the requirement faced suspension
- They introduced a tougher measure within 2 months implementation of the minimum 30 percent weekly acceptance rate. Driver faced higher service fee of up to 40 percent if they repeatedly fail to achieve the minimum service standards.
- The Emerald Circle driver rewards program also required drivers to maintain high acceptance and low cancellation rating to qualify for the rewards.
The most impactful change to address the issue of cherry-picking was introduced in September 2018. The introduction of the Time-Out feature caused drivers to be wary of missing jobs assigned to them. Drivers faced up to 15 minutes of system inactivity for repeatedly ignoring jobs.
Why Do Drivers Cherry-Pick
While some drivers pursue the weekly incentives religiously, many others have given up on them due to the strict qualifying criteria. The decrease in the number of weekly rewards also makes it less desirable to drive for incentives.
Drivers make use of the ability to see the upfront fare and destination to adopt a cherry-picking driving strategy, choosing only high fare trips to make up for giving up incentives.
