My 1 Week Review of Driving for Ola in London

This is my 1 week review of what it’s been like driving for Ola in London. 

If you are a private hire driver who has jumped on board with Ola, I would love to hear what your experience has been like and if you have yet to register, you still have time to qualify for the Ola the driver bonuses.

On Monday 10th February 2020, Ola officially opened their books and started taking rides following a strong advertising campaign.

Ola definitely didn’t enter the market quietly with a strong internet marketing presence, billboards and full front and back page spreads in local London newspapers. 

I started driving for Ola on Tuesday 11th, a day after the official launch and have to say that it’s been a great experience so far. Well, kind off!

Ola App

The app is the heart of any rideshare company and it can’t function without it. Having a badly designed, unresponsive app is the equivalent of a craftsman trying to work with dodgy tools. 

Thankfully the Ola app has been faultless, which is rare for a newly launched app. The good news for us London drivers is that Ola has already had millions of  rides under their belt so we get to experience the finished product with all the faults and glitches ironed out.

The Ola app is pretty basic without too many bells and whistles which makes it streamline and easy to navigate.

With regards to the satellite navigation, it’s by far the best out of all the rideshare apps out there, and is good enough to use, thus eliminating the need to load up an external navigation like google maps or waze.

At the top you have an ONLINE button to go online and a GO TO button if you want to use a destination filter of which you get two.

At the Bottom there is an ACCOUNTS tab which shows your day to day earnings. A REWARDS tab which shows all your rewards and bonus earnings and a REFER & EARN tab which shows a break down of all your referrals. Unlike the bolt app which doesn’t show any information on referrals, the Ola app gives you a complete breakdown of each referral and shows the progress which is very transparent.

Finally, in the more section you have a few basic settings and an ola care button if you need to contact Customer service.

Ola Customer service

Ola’s customer service or Ola care as they call it is again the best I have experienced amongst all the apps. They have a huge team based in India which is available 24/7, who answer your call immediately and couldn’t be more helpful in dealing with your query. The problem is that they do have limitations, so if the issue is a bit more technical, they will advise you to send an email to support who are more equipped in dealing with the matter.

Ola Customer base

The Ola customer base has been exclusively young adults in their late teens and early twenties. The exclusive discounts it seems have been very attractive to the younger generation along with word of mouth among the youth.

Ola Demand 

The good news is that it has been very busy, partly because of the strong advertising campaign and partly for the reasons mentioned above. Customers have been benefiting from discounts and the exchange of referral codes which has meant free rides or very cheap rides. Customers who may have taken public transport have been taking rides with Ola as they take advantage of the current discounts, but it remains to be seen if these same customers continue to use the service when they have to pay full price.

Hopefully the functionality of the app and the conduct of the drivers has done enough to convince them to stay onboard.

Ola Earnings

Earnings on the ola platform have been great. 

Firstly it has been very busy with constant back to back rides which coupled with the 0% commission has meant you can earn really good money.

They have also had great incentives such as £50 after your first ride, £50 for every successful driver referral, £10 for every passenger referral and for some drivers £400 for being online for 15 hours in the first week. All bonuses are also paid promptly with no chasing up needed, which has been good see.

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All of this combined was trending for me to have my best week as a private hire driver, but unfortunately I had the catalytic convertor stolen from the Prius which put me out of action for 3 days. It’s been a stressful few days trying to get everything sorted with everything that could go wrong, going wrong.

Thanks to Drover and a lot of chasing from me, I was able to get a new car within 2 days but uploading the new car documents onto the Uber, Bolt and Ola app has taken longer that it should have and has led to further problems.

Changing the car on the Ola app has led to all my earnings history disappearing along with all the incentives I had earned. They are in the process of trying to fix the issue so If you are also going to be changing your car, I would advise contact Ola first so hopefully you don’t experience the same problems.

That aside, It has been a great start for Ola and every driver I have spoken to is happy with the app and the amount of well paid jobs they are getting.

Let’s hope that this continues because if it does, Uber might have a strong contender on their hands with the potential of Ola breaking their dominance in London and knocking them of the top stop.

>> How to Sign Up to Drive For Ola in London