'I'm doing you a favour by giving you a lift': Private-hire driver says before kicking passenger off his car

One woman has complained about her private-hire driver stopping his vehicle in the middle of a trip, before asking her to "get out".

In a TikTok video shared on Thursday (Oct 12), Oh.bellyflebby claimed that the Ryde driver did not want her in his car after being told to "speak a little nicer".

"He just stopped in the middle of nowhere and cars were piling up," the woman said. "Then he just asked me to get out of the car."

Describing this incident as the worst experience she had as a Ryde passenger, Oh.bellyflebby shared that she booked an RydePool ride along Tanjong Katong Road at Paya Lebar Quarter (PLQ) 3.

RydePool is the ride-hailing application’s carpooling service, where passengers can opt to share rides with others travelling in the same direction. 

She said: "Due to the number of pick-up and drop-off points in PLQ, I've made enough bookings there to know it's quite common for drivers to get lost and confused on where to stop.

"With that thought in mind, I dropped a message to the driver to clarify that I'm at PLQ 3."

In the two-minute clip, the driver responded by telling her to "follow the GPS".

"I am driving so I can't text you. Otherwise, I will be sent to jail," he added.

[embed]https://www.tiktok.com/@oh.bellyflebby/video/7288787842258488594?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7252157227077830162[/embed]

When the application notified Oh.bellyflebby that the driver had arrived, she dropped him a message after noticing that he had turned in the wrong direction.

The passenger later said that she was also confused after the application showed that he was five minutes away from the pick-up point.

Oh.bellyflebby added that her 20-minute wait for the driver got "progressive worse".

"He said that I was treating him like my family's personal driver."

In a message to Oh.bellyflebby, the Ryde driver said "he's doing [her] a personal favour by giving her a lift" since it was a hitch ride.

"Excuse me, it wasn't like I was asking him for a favour. He willingly accepted a ride that I was paying for," the exasperated woman said.

'He was about to throw me a punch'

Oh.bellyflebby claimed that after the private-hire vehicle arrived at the pick-up point, the driver rudely shouted at her to put on a seatbelt. 

She added that he did the same to the second passenger who boarded the hitch ride.

"The lady got a shock. She looked at me confused," Oh.bellyflebby said. "I told the driver, 'Hey uncle, you can speak to us a little bit nicer. That would be nice'.

"He then pulled up the gear stick, and looked like he was about to throw me a punch.

"He turned around and said, 'What do you mean, who's being the rude one?' I told him he could be less rude and I think he could speak a bit nicer."

Oh.bellyflebby shared that the driver abruptly cancelled the ride, before telling her to "please" get out of his car.

"The next driver who picked me up was shocked. He told me it's illegal for drivers to chase their passengers out of the car after they accepted the ride," she wrote in the captions.

The video has since garnered over 23,000 views.

In the comments, several netizens criticised the driver's attitude towards his passenger.

"What's with all these rude drivers nowadays, seriously?" a netizen asked.

"This is why I pay $4,000 a month for my Lamborghini to avoid this issue," another joked.

Other netizens pointed out that Oh.bellyflebby could be behind the dispute between her private-hire driver.

"Based on your screenshot you put the pickup point as PLQ mall and not PLQ 3, which is an entirely separate building," he said.

"Private-hire drivers are our frontline heroes. Should treat them with more respect," another added.

AsiaOne has contacted Oh.bellyflebby and Ryde for comment.

ALSO READ: 'You are Indian, I am Chinese, you are the very worst': Private-hire driver caught in racist tirade against passenger

chingshijie@asiaone.com

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