PCC tells Grab: You still owe your passengers P19.3 million

Grab Philippines paid just a quarter of the over P25 million it owed its passengers more than two years since the country’s antitrust body fined it for overpricing its services.

The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) on Monday ordered the ride-hailing firm to refund eligible passengers the remaining P19.3 million by April 22. Only P6.15 million, or 24.1 percent of the total refund, had been paid back as of June last year.

The PCC did not say if the delays would result in fresh penalties.

“The penalties are in the form of a refund to remind Grab that every pricing or booking violation committed against passengers shall be paid back to passengers. Grab should immediately release the refunds and continue to adhere to its commitments,” said PCC Chair Arsenio M. Balisacan.

The PCC said the amount should appear in passengers’ GrabPay wallets “without requiring any act from the users to claim the amount.” The watchdog noted Grab had imposed “additional steps to claim the refund,” which contributed to the low uptake.

In a statement, Grab said they could not just refund unless the passenger has completed the know-your-customer (KYC) requirements.

KYC process

Citing Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas regulations, Grab said passengers who have completed the basic KYC process can directly redeem the amount owed them. KYC is the process of verifying the account user’s identity as a way to mitigate fraud, money laundering and other cybersecurity risks for financial institutions.

Grab added it “has yet to receive the final decision of the PCC on the recommendations for those eligible passengers lacking the mandatory KYC, but we would like to reassure our kababayans that we will continue to work with the competition commission to ensure that the remaining administrative fee amount is fully redeemed—and focus our efforts in helping the Philippine economy recover.”

The penalties arose after Grab took over Uber in 2018. The PCC launched a probe that committed Grab to a set of standards “as if it had a rival” in the market.

But these commitments, however, were violated. The antitrust agency penalized Grab a total of P63.7 million since 2018 for not following through with these price and service quality commitments.

Need to open the market

It was in late 2019 when the PCC directed Grab to return portions of its commissions to passengers for violating, in particular, its price monitoring commitment. The PCC has ordered Grab to issue refunds in the amounts of P5.05 million in November 2019, P14.15 million in December 2019, and P6.25 million in October 2020.

In his statement Monday, Balisacan said the more permanent solution to making Grab shape up is to open the market to more transport network companies.

“Through the years, the commitment measures are meant to be temporary in disciplining Grab while waiting for the market to mature with new major players. A more permanent pro-competition solution here is to open the market to more Transport Network Companies that can truly rival Grab on the same level,” Balisacan said. INQ