A private consultant in Hyderabad was in for a shock when he received a bill of Rs 9,15,887 from Ola for a 450 km round trip to Telangana's Nizamabad district. Rathish Sekhar works as a private consultant on government projects in Hyderabad.
Rathish had taken the cab while leaving his house at Jubilee Hills, a posh suburban neighbourhood in west Hyderabad, at 7.57 a.m. on Aug 24. He returned at 5.16 pm after a two-hour break at Nizamabad. The round trip should have cost him Rs. 5,000. But, the distance travelled was shown as 85,427 km on the Ola app and the bill amounted to over Rs. 9 lakh.
"When I booked the cab, the estimate shown on my phone was about Rs 5,000. When I returned, the bill showed Rs 9.15 lakh," Rathish told Deccan Chronicle. He added that the bill amount could be Rs. 9,000, but "there were no dots between the numericals. For example, sometimes the bill amount is displayed as '9158.87' which would mean Rs 9,158. But even Rs 9,000 would be almost double the estimate."
Sunil Kumar, the cab driver, also expressed shock over the bill amount and told Rathish that two Tata Indica cars could easily be bought with that amount. Sunil informed Ola support staff when Rathish refused to pay the bill following which the amount was checked to Rs 4,812.
Rathish said that the process of recalculating the bill amount took around half an hour, while the invoice was sent to him three days later. According to Ola, the mistake took place due to a technical issue. The cab service later apologised for the mistake.
Ola Cabs spokesperson Soumitra Chand told Deccan Chronicle that they are looking into the matter.
