Careem: rides, food, grocery

I’ve been taking Careem for over 6 years in Casablanca, Morocco. Recently, Careem started to accept nearly any driver from the region without pre-screenings for personnel and vehicles set in place. It has created volatility within my business operations and jeopardized the safety and sanctity of the service they offered. It is getting to the point where there is almost no difference between Careem and a low-grade red taxi in Casablanca. Newer, less literate and linguistically incompetent drivers (referring to fluent English, French and Arabic) have been allow to register on the application. It’s a human disaster and the tariffs are TOO HIGH for such non-sense. I didn’t mind paying the highest price in Morocco’s taxi market before the floodgates of driver-mediocrity opened. Now, it’s like playing Russian roulette with higher customer risk and prices. Equally, many female patrons both local and expat have expressed newly-founded concerns over their safety. Drivers with a poor value system, corrupt practices and careless attitude have been thrusted upon decent paying people that are exhausted with the shenanigans. We DON’T have energy nor exist to file weekly complaints about your poor careless choice of recruits!!! It wasn’t like this before. Shape up or ship out - I will round up the regions best clients and we will arrange our own new methods of getting around with drivers that deserve the money.

The app works and I’m grateful to use it many days of the week. But lately it doesn’t notify me when a car arrives; I only know if I’m checking or if the driver sends a message through the app - I still get those notifications. Lately it also crashes a lot just by the screen going to sleep and then being opened again, or if I change apps and then come back to check on the car. And most frustratingly, the app used to tell how many minutes away the driver is, but has for over a year now given an estimated arrival time instead, which means doing math while getting ready and trying to figure out when to begin the process of abaya, mask, hijab, shoes, purse, backpack, and walking out of the house. To make it more annoying, the notification that a driver is on the way covers the clock, so you have to swipe it up to see the time so you can start doing the math. These little UX things make a big difference in customer satisfaction.

I am a regular customer of Careem, yet lately I have experienced aggressive and rude behaviors of the drivers. Some drivers refused to listen to the customers and just follow what they wish to do, which makes me feel so unsafe during the trip. I have reported these kinds of incidents, but still I have encountered bad behaviors of the drivers from my other trips. I don’t think Careem is doing actions for these kinds of reports regarding their captains’ bad behaviors. One incident is a driver, named Belhassen A., dropped me in the middle of the road near a roundabout, and aggressively wants to push me out from the car, showing his anger issues. I was worried for my safety. Would that captain and Careem take the responsibility if anything happens to me when i am left in the middle of the road with a lot of cars passing by? Are the passengers not allowed to ask requests to the captains during the trip? If this kind of behaviors of a captain happened to me, pretty sure it could be done to other passengers as well. I don’t think Careem is doing much training professionally for their Captain’s behavior, because it didn’t only happened once but a couple of times. Other drivers are not strictly compliant with the Covid protocols as well, and some drivers gets mad if you will remind them to wear a mask.