Users of Singaporean car rental company BlueSG have been left frustrated after the BlueSG app did not end their rentals when they wanted to.

Two customers of said platform reached out to Mothership on Dec. 21, detailing their rental experiences, while a third customer was shown a bill of S$381.60 for a rental that lasted nearly 18 hours, even though he had apparently used the car for less than 30 minutes.

In response to Mothership's queries on Dec.22, the Chief Executive Officer of BlueSG, Kelvin Tay, "sincerely apologise(s) to those affected" by the glitches and said that the BlueSG's technical is working to resolve the matter.

Tay explained that the service disruptions encountered by the users is the "result of unforeseen technical complexities that have occurred during the new system migration interface process".

A rental that went on for four days, customer service unresponsive

Han (not his real name), 39, said that he learned of the malfunction when he drove to work from 7am to 7:30am on Dec. 19.

Han added that he is on the basic version of BlueSG's membership plan.

He said he informed a chat agent about his issue, and they told him that they ended his rental at 7:27am.

However, when he ended his shift at 10pm on the same day, he opened the application and saw that his initial rental was still ongoing.

Han contacted customer service again. However, they were unresponsive and did not follow up with him. 

His rental eventually ended on Dec. 22, at 4pm.

Han added that he has yet to receive the bill from BlueSG and is waiting to see how he will be charged.

Han, who uses the app at least twice a week, said this was the first time he could not end his rental journey and that customer service has been so unresponsive.

"It should not take this long to resolve," he said.

Unable to end rental, customer service was supposedly rude

The second user, Sylves (not his real name), 29, said that he is currently subscribed to BlueSG's premium package of S$18 per month due to the 40 minutes of monthly free rental.

On Dec. 19, he decided to use BlueSG to return home from a friend's place as public transport would have taken thrice the duration.

According to Sylves, he left his friend's home at 10pm and reached home at 10.30pm.

However, he was unable to end his rental and and it purportedly took him about an hour to finally connect with BlueSG's customer service, only to be told that they would call him back.

However, they apparently did not do so after half an hour, which prompted Sylves to call them again.

Sylves then alleged that this time, a staff told him repeatedly that a colleague will return his call due to "high call volume".

According to Sylves, when he asked why the staff kept repeating the line, the staff supposedly replied, "because you can't seem to understand simple language, so I have to repeat it for you to understand."

Sylves further alleged that when he asked to speak to a manager about the issue, the staff ended the call.

Sylves added that his rental appeared to have ended at about midnight, and that his bill was supposedly around S$40.

However, the bill has not been reflected in his bank account as of Dec. 22.

Unable to end rental, initially told by customer service matter would be referred to finance department

A third BlueSG customer, called KZ, was shown a bill of S$381.60 for a rental that lasted nearly 18 hours, even though he had apparently used the car for less than 30 minutes.

In response to Mothership's queries, he said he initially used BlueSG on Dec. 19 to travel to his dinner appointment.

KZ added that he only realised the platform had continued to charge him for the rental after dinner.

He also attributed the inability to end the rental to how BlueSG appeared to be unable to recognise the card that he had paired with the app.

In addition, when he contacted customer service after his dinner appointment, he was allegedly informed that they were unable to end the rental and they would refer the matter to their finance department.

His rental finally ended the following afternoon on Dec. 20.

KZ added that he immediately "changed out" his card after he received the notification of the billing details on Dec. 20, and estimated that he should be charged about S$10 for the actual duration of usage.

KZ said when he contacted customer service again on Dec. 20, following the notification of his bill, the staff replied that he will be charged according to the duration he used.

The charges were not reflected in the BlueSG application's billing section nor KZ's bank account.

BlueSG released an update at 5:30pm, Dec. 21

At 5:30pm on Dec. 21, BlueSG sent out a message to their customers which stated that they are encountering technical issues on ending rental and that their team is working to resolve them, according to screenshots of the app shared in the BlueSG Telegram group.

At around 5:55pm on the same day, the application gave further updates to the issue, assuring users that they will only charge users based on their actual usage.

CEO apologises

Tay explained that service disruptions for users of the new BlueSG app was the result of "unforeseen technical complexities" that occurred during the new system migration interface process.

He also said that customer service lapses is "unacceptable", noting that "addressing the complaints is a top priority".

Tay added that BlueSG is "actively reviewing our internal processes to rectify the situation."

BlueSG also put up a Facebook post on Dec. 22, in which it said that glitches was due to a systems migration update which occurred on Dec. 19.

The platform added, "To address the issue, immediate action has been taken to identify the affected trips that have exceeded 48 hours, and will be waiving the entire rental fee for those trips, as part of our service recovery process."

Top screenshots courtesy of Han and KZ, Photo by Joshua Lee