Bolt, a frontline Ride-hailing app, has blocked an undisclosed number of accounts requesting fake rides and canceling them after a driver accepted.
The company has also restricted inter-country ride requests to curb a trend which has mostly involved Bolt users in Nigeria and South Africa.
On Thursday, several accounts on the social platform X posted screenshots of the trend where a Bolt user in either Nigeria or South Africa would request a ride in one of the countries and then cancel it after the driver accepted.
Although, It is unclear what the motivations of the trend is beyond internet trolling.
“We understand the impact this situation has had on our driver-partners in Nigeria and South Africa.
We are committed to ensuring a safe, reliable, and secure experience for all members of our community,” said Yahaya Mohammed, Bolt’s country manager Nigeria at Bolt.
“I drove from Cape Town to Stellenbosch to pick up a customer only to realise it was a fake request,” one Cape Town-based driver narrated his ordeal “That’s almost 50km worth of fuel gone because of internet jokes.”
As Bolt does not reimburse drivers for the fuel spent on cancelled rides, some have resorted to refusing long-distance requests until the situation is addressed by Bolt.
Author
This is not entirely true.
I have had experiences where the bolt drivers in Abuja would cancel the trip after picking up the customer. According to them, they don’t want to share the money with bolt. This happens especially on long trips of more than 15 minutes. I have personally experienced that and I was going to report to bolt, but then I encountered this post.