The Last Ride

It's been a while since I wrote a blog post here. I remember writing one called GRAB: My Life. I once believed the online ride hailing services could lead to a properous life and increase my daily income, haha. But come to think of it again, it was awful. I'd been a Grabber for a year and a half, then I suddenly got fired from Grab because of my carelessness.

Needless to say, in the beginning of my career, I was a diligent Grabber. After a few months at Grab, I made a decent earning that was enough to pay the daily expenses. I was happy I could continue earning. It was like a tiny little goal in life came true. That year end, I got a substantial amount of cash deposited into my Grab account. I was happy when I withdrew it. Really happy, indeed. But that didn't last long.

Taking a break and hanging out with a friend.

In early 2019, I received a SMS that IDR 300K would be rewarded to me as a bonus from Grab. I thought it was real. Then I had a call and was told that in order to obtain the reward, I had to go to the ATM to transfer money. Silly me, I did what the caller said even though everything was so weird. Somehow the caller managed to convince me.

It was horrible, man. I lost IDR 800K instead of earning IDR 300K. I was so dumb and greedy. The worse part was, after I transferred the money, he still called and asked if anybody I knew had any ATM cards. I said I had no such knowledge, but he relentlessly asked me to get another ATM cards. Feeling helpless, I went to my wife's friend to borrow the ATM card and punched in the PIN number. Then the caller, I don't know how, said the ATM card didn't have money. From that moment onwards, I realised that I had been fooled. If I transferred the money successfully, let's say around IDR 30 millions, the con man would have gotten it and the money would disappear. What was I going to do? I was going to die, that was for sure!

A happier time with Grab.

I was damned. I'll never forget that day, but I now slowly repent by going to church and praying for my mental and spiritual health. I say only what's good for positive mindset. Good thing I'm an easy going guy with an ability to forget things easily. I hope you guys also have this attitude, haha. Then life went on and I returned to the Grab routines. But bad people were still out there to hurt me. I really bit the dust this time.

One night in September 2019, I suited up as a Grab rider and waited for orders. It was a quiet night and it had been quite late when an odd delivery order with the same pick up and destination address appeared. I thought, "finally," then I took the order, but when I arrived at the pick up address, there was no one. I contacted the customer but got no response. Much to my surprise, I received a call from someone who knew my personal data and my motorcycle's plate number. The caller did some verification and I believed he was somebody from Grab, so when he said my Grab account was locked and asked me for my login credentials, I just let him know. Then he said I didn't have to work for the rest of that night. I was advised to get some rest while my account would be unlocked in the morning.

When a friend managed to get Parno!

I went home afterwards. The next morning, I saw my face on the Facebook Page of Grab community in Pontianak! Darn! What the hell, my account was never locked, but it had been used by another bad user. After finding out, I went to the local office to explain what had happened. The officer there had warned and sent notifications to my account many, many times. The officer then gave me the final chance and tried creating a new account for me. It was too late.

By the way, before I was terminated by Grab, I had another call from this bad guy. This time I was really mad and told him that he was a fake client services guy, but he convinced me that he was a staff, then started asking me my number again. I was so gullible that I gave him what he asked for. Ohh, I was so stupid! How could I be so dumb? That night, I could see around IDR 50K. I thought it was all good, but my account was actually under the control of the bad person, because every time I got an order, the cashless payment vanished as it was withdrawn by him.

People who read this experience of Parno as Grabber, please beware and be cautious. Anyway, after I was fired, I was feeling down. But I didn't stop finding new hopes and finally I joined another online ride hailing services. A new job, something with yellow colour, haha!

Proudly posing in front of Grab Singapore office.