Ryde app down for more than 10 hours after system upgrade

Local ride-hailing company Ryde experienced technical issues on 9 July 2018 that caused disruption to its service.

Ryde posted on their Facebook page as early as 8 am Monday morning to inform drivers and riders that they are tackling technical issues and it is taking longer than expected.

The technical issue for Android was resolved early but issues with the iOS were not fixed at the point of reporting. Ryde sent a notification to update the app in about an hour at 8.10pm.

Frustration

The system outage caused much frustration between drivers and riders. Both the driver and rider app were inaccessible. Drivers and riders were shown the following error message when they tried to turn on the app.

Ryde drivers and riders took to Ryde Facebook page and expressed their displeasure with the system outage. Most riders claimed that they have wasted time waiting for the system to be ready. Some riders complained that they were not able to contact the driver as the app was down.

What is the issue

Ryde had planned to introduce a “live PING” upgrade to the system where drivers will be notified when a trip request is in the system. Drivers who are near the trip request pick-up location will be prompted and can choose to accept the trip.

System outage nothing new

System outage is not something new in Singapore. Besides the usual suspect MRT, Grab had also experienced a major system outage on 16 August 2017. The system outage on 16 August happened during peak hour and left riders stranded. Riders had to pay surge pricing fare of 1.7X to 2.1X on the Uber platform.

Grab Drivers were also at the receiving end of a glitch on 3 April 2018 where rider’s destination was not shown upfront and notification messages in other languages showed up on their app. The system was also down later in the evening.

The Battle

Grab and Ryde has been in the news recently. Ryde had earlier reported that there were many phantom bookings received that sabotage driver and resulted in losses. They mentioned that they have gathered compelling evidence against the perpetrator, one of which IP address points to Grab.

Ryde also wrote an open letter to call for harsher financial penalties to be imposed on the Uber-Grab merger and for the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS) to remove exclusivity arrangements between Grab and partners.