Ola Promises to Reverse “Wrong Charges”

Ola Promises to Reverse "Wrong Charges"Ride-sharing service Ola has promised to reverse “any wrong charges” that resulted in customers affected by a technical issue with the Ola App being chased down by debt collectors. But this won’t happen automatically, with affected customers being asked to contact Ola’s support team so the company can investigate each case individually.

Last week, Australian Frequent Flyer revealed that many Ola customers affected by a widespread technical glitch have had their accounts suspended and are being contacted by a debt collection agency over unpaid charges. These customers had used the ride-share App in good faith, but their credit card payments did not process correctly due to a problem with the Ola App.

The payment problem appears to have affected some Ola App users between December 2019 and March 2020, but was resolved by an App update in March of this year.

Australian Frequent Flyer contacted Ola to request their side of the story five days before publishing last week’s article. We finally received a response from the company three days after our article was published.

Ola said that they take customers’ complaints seriously and launched an investigation when this matter was brought to their attention. Ola has now promised to reverse any incorrect charges and apologised for the inconvenience caused by their App’s error.

The company provided the following statement:

An update to our app resulted in an unintended technical issue, which has now been resolved by our engineers.  We would like to apologize for the inconvenience and reassure all our customers that any wrong charges will be reversed. We have set up a dedicated team in our customer-support function to resolve all queries around this issue.

Customers can reach out to our support team either via their Ola app or by visiting https://help.ola.com.au/support/home and clicking on “Other issues”.

We asked Ola to clarify what they meant by “wrong charges”, and were told this refers to charges levied incorrectly due to the technical error.

Numerous Australian Frequent Flyer members say they have already tried to contact Ola’s support team and did not receive a response. But if you were affected by this issue, we would recommend contacting Ola Support again using the method described above. Hopefully they are serious this time about resolving this issue!

Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Ola – app payment problems in December (debt collector involved)

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 70 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.
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