Grab system glitch pushes some fares past S$1,000; company says full refunds made on ‘misconfigured fee’

[SINGAPORE] Prices on ride-hailing giant Grab jumped about a hundred times from the usual rates, with short trips within Singapore costing S$1,000 or more, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday (Aug 20).

The Grab app displayed ride fares that were in the hundreds or thousands of dollars for a short while in Singapore, and Grab users in Malaysia also reported similar increases, said Bloomberg.

A Grab spokesperson attributed the elevated rates to a “misconfigured fee”. The ride hailing firm said the issue was corrected within 20 minutes.

“While Grab’s safeguards automatically prevented most bookings with incorrect charges from going through, we did find some users who were affected by today’s errors,” Grab said.

Affected users were refunded in full as at 9 pm on Wednesday, it added.

Grab is the leading ride provider in Singapore and in countries such as Malaysia and Thailand. Uber left the region in 2018 in exchange for a stake in Grab.