RW
Ralph W

1 reviews | Active since Nov 2024

22 Jan 2026, 10:25

Bolt chaos at OR Tambo Airport and poor support.

I have used Bolt three times recently for trips from OR Tambo airport. There is a dedicated pickup and dropoff area on the second level of the airport parking. The E-hailing pickup area stretches across 27 parking bays and there are benches on which to sit while waiting. Both Uber and Bolt use this area. At times there can be more than a dozen E-hailing cabs circulating to pick up or drop off people. It helps to identify a cab if the cab is painted in Bolt colors but all of the three which I recently used were standard factory paint jobs. The only way to identify the vehicle is by its make and license plate, although there might be more than one of the same make. If the vehicle passes through the dedicated stretch, and the rider stands at the edge, the rider will be able to identify the vehicle fairly easily. My first ride, I was waiting by the benches and the driver came down the lane and I spotted him quite easily. However the two most recent rides, the drivers have proceeded to park in one of the 27 parking bays, they were not the only vehicles there, they did not pass through the lane but approached from the adjacent lane. They immediately activated the waiting time function. During this time I was trying to get their exact position from them via the message function as the GPS doesn't work inside the parking. I received vague replies in both cases as most of the parking bay numbers painted on the ground are no longer visible and I doubt if they were aware of them anyways. Remember that there were quite a few other vehicles circulating and many people waiting around. The 3 minutes waiting period was up while trying to determine where they were and the Bolt collect-extra-money function kicked in. Pressuring customers to hurry can also result in mishaps and indeed my cellphone, which I had left on the baggage cart while I was distracted trying to find the driver and identify him quickly, fell off the baggage cart and broke, which is going to cost a lot to fix. The worst part is that I can't find a contact on the Bolt website to address the issue. Their support page is an AI FAQ system which does not address unique issues, and I do not hold companies in high regard when you can't contact a human to address an issue.I did log the trip as one star, and got an automated message that Bolt takes these issues very seriously, but I have never had a reply. I would not recommend using Bolt because of this poor customer service, and if this issue is not addresses quickly and the wait time money returned to my account for both my previous trips, I will delete Bolt and not use them ever again.

A second issue is that Bolt must review their map, because on some previous trips, and the last one, the driver's app has got the route or destination wrong resulting in extra kilometers traveled.

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