US basketball

Grab: Micab’s phantom booking allegations ‘appear to have malicious intent’

Kyle Chua

This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

Grab: Micab’s phantom booking allegations ‘appear to have malicious intent’

Darren Langit

Grab says they will consider legal action if the allegations continue

MANILA, Philippines – Grab responded to “phantom booking” allegations made by Micab CEO Eddie Ybañez, calling them “untrue,” with Grab considering a libel suit if false allegations continue being spread.

Ybañez earlier alleged Grab created fake accounts on Micab to hit them with a “firestorm of phantom bookings,” sabotaging their operations and attempting to poach their drivers.

In a statement, Grab country head Brian Cu said based on their investigation, the allegations made by Ybañez “appear to have malicious intent.”

“Grab did the responsible thing in taking the time to investigate, and we encourage Eddie Ybañez to be similarly responsible in his speech and actions,” Cu said. He added, “If he continues to make further false allegations, we will have to consider taking libel action.”

While Grab has yet to share details about their investigation due to legal issues, they said they could not have possibly booked 15,000 rides, let alone the 29,000 Ybañez later stated.

“We did less than 15 completed bookings a day to benchmark industry allocation rates and service levels.”

They also denied making any phone calls inviting drivers from Micab over to Grab.

“Creating this distraction is not the solution to MiCab’s significant allocation problems nor the industry’s overall challenge of registering drivers, and we hope all taxi and ride-hailing players will focus on improving public transport in the Philippines,” Cu emphasized.

Grab promised to be transparent in their investigation and will share details concerning the matter at an undisclosed time.

The full statement from Grab follows:

“In his contributed piece originally published unverified on the e27 site on 18 July, Micab Systems Corporation CEO, Eddie Ybanez made allegations about 15,000 “phantom bookings” on MiCab’s platform. We took the last week to investigate internally and can confirm that Eddie Ybanez’s allegations are untrue and appears to have malicious intent. Grab did the responsible thing in taking the time to investigate, and we encourage Eddie Ybanez to be similarly responsible in his speech and actions. If he continues to make further false allegations, we will have to consider taking libel action.

We will transparently share the results of our investigation that confirms that the allegations are false. Grab did not do 15,000, or per Eddie Ybanez’s revised comments on 24 July, 29,000 “phantom bookings” on the MiCab platform. We did less than 15 completed bookings a day to benchmark industry allocation rates and service levels. Further to this, we categorically did not make any follow-up phone calls to the drivers. 

Creating this distraction is not the solution to MiCab’s significant allocation problems nor the industry’s overall challenge of registering drivers, and we hope all taxi and ride-hailing players will focus on improving public transport in the Philippines.” – Rappler.com

Add a comment

Sort by

There are no comments yet. Add your comment to start the conversation.

Summarize this article with AI

How does this make you feel?

Loading
Download the Rappler App!