Grab users to be charged $3 waiting fee after 3-minute grace period from Jul 18

Ride-hailing platform Grab will shorten the grace waiting time for rides booked on its application from five minutes to three minutes from Jul 18.

The shortening of grace waiting time will apply to JustGrab, GrabPet, GrabFamily, GrabCar, GrabCar Plus and GrabCar Premium.

Users will be charged a waiting fee of $3 for every five-minute waiting block when the grace period of three minutes has passed and the passenger has not boarded the vehicle. 

However, for customers who have booked rides on GrabCar Premium, a fee of $5 will be charged for every five-minute waiting block.

The grace period and waiting fees for GrabShare and GrabCoach remain unchanged, at $3 per five-minute waiting block and $10 per 10-minute waiting block respectively. 

As of current, fees are being manually added by Grab drivers when a passenger exceeds the grace waiting period. This makes it a “tedious” process for them as the amount of time they have waited needs to be tracked closely, said Grab. 

With the revised grace period, the company hopes to reduce the amount of effort that drivers need to go through and allow them to focus on getting passengers to their destinations safely. 

The automated addition of the waiting fee will also ensure that the tracking of waiting time is more accurate for passengers. 

In an in-app information panel, Grab also urged passengers to book rides when they are ready, in order to prevent any delays and give them enough time to travel to the pick-up point.