Ride-hailing Crisis: Low Fares Drive Drivers to Selectively Accept Orders During Peak Hours

Jakarta — The recent phenomenon of difficulty obtaining ride-hailing drivers during peak hours has been linked to decisions by some drivers to disable their applications or ignore orders when travel fares are deemed insufficient to cover their operational costs.

Fajar, 39, a ride-hailing driver, stated that the fares received by drivers are often considered too low. This situation has led several drivers to skip orders or disable their applications during certain periods.

Fajar explained that ride-hailing applications have a feature allowing drivers to automatically accept orders or manually select them. Some drivers choose to disable the automatic feature so they can filter incoming requests without immediately accepting them.

“There’s the autobid option, which means you receive an order and must accept it directly. There’s also the option to disable autobid. So when an order comes in, it’s up to us whether we want to take it or ignore it,” he said.

According to Fajar, fares currently received by drivers are often below what drivers consider acceptable. Traffic congestion also influences drivers’ decisions on whether to accept orders.

“Sometimes it’s far below that, sometimes down to IDR 1,000 per kilometre,” he said.

Fajar admitted he sometimes disables his application during peak hours, typically in the morning between 6:00 and 8:00 WIB and in the evening between 4:00 and 8:00 PM WIB.

Fajar added that ride-hailing driver earnings today are significantly different compared to when the service first emerged several years ago.

“It’s completely different. In those early days, you could earn IDR 300,000 to IDR 400,000 for seven to eight hours of work. Now, even earning IDR 100,000 in net income, you might work 12 hours and still not make it sometimes,” he added.