Uber is my go-to service provider whenever I am back in town from anywhere. Like I’ve discussed in the past, it is was just much more easier and cheaper to use an Uber ride from the airport than the tonnes of prepaid cabs.
However, the management of Mumbai’s airport just decided they had to make money off this as well. Till my last trip, the modus operandi at the domestic terminal (1A and 1B) used to be that if you exited the pickup area within 5 minutes, you got out without paying anything.
As per Uber’s new communication just announced, it seems that MIAL (airport operator), just set out a new pickup area in the parking lot for all commercial vehicles, and this means all of Uber affiliated yellow-number plate cars will have to compulsorily enter this area to pick up passengers. At Terminal 2, there anyways is no free pickup area, and hence, the drivers end up paying INR 110 in case they need to pick up a passenger from the terminal parking. On the Mumbai Airport website, there is however no mention of this compulsory pickup area.
Here is what came in:
The usual way around this is a short walk outside the airport. We’ll see what jugaad people come up with to beat this surcharge. Otherwise Uber will work out as expensive as the regular prepaid cabs sometimes.
Has anyone of my readers had any experience with this INR 110 surcharge today?
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still Uber is very convenient and cheap compared to others, we should support UBER
I experienced this last week but was told by Uber driver that since they couldn’t add it to the Uber app, Uber was going to reimburse the drivers the 110 rupees for short time so i did not pay the 110 but the driver had a receipt that he needed to submit to Uber.
Additionally as a reader earlier pointed out, if you don’t have too much luggage or can manage a short walk w/ the luggage, you may want to walk across from the arrival’s area and request your uber to come there near the bus stop.
This post comes at a great time. I’m on my way to Bombay and I was planning to book an Uber there to head home.
Uber has also become significantly more expensive in Bangalore. I just got here a short while ago and it cost me near 700 bucks, up from the usual 400 bucks it would cost. They recently introduced long distance fares here that are quite expensive.
I know, its very disappointing.
Took an uber from 1b on Aug 25. The driver was charged Rs.110. He told me next time come out of the pick up area to take the car to avoid the charges. But i doubt whether traffic police will allow this. Maybe one might need to walk all the way to Sahara Star to avoid any traffic police hassle!