金融时报:Uber：遭遇卑鄙的对手？

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2021年10月06日

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Uber：遭遇卑鄙的对手？

Uber将印度同行业的竞争对手Ola告上法庭，称后者卑鄙地建立虚假账户，约车后再取消，而Uber不得不为此向司机支付近8000美元高额的取消费用。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

allege宣称，断言[ə'ledʒ]

summon召集；鼓起['sʌmən]

petition[法] 诉状；请愿书[pɪ'tɪʃ(ə)n]

deliberately故意地；谨慎地[dɪ'lɪbərətli]

deep-pocketed有钱的

frivolous无聊的；轻佻的['frɪv(ə)ləs]

malicious恶意的[mə'lɪʃəs]

Uber and OlaCab clash in India court over fake account claims（500words）

By Amy Kazmin in New Delhi

The race to dominate India's taxi market has taken a bitter turn with US group Uber accusing local rival, OlaCab, of using dirty tricks to disrupt its business.

In a lawsuit filed in the Delhi High Court, the San Francisco-based ride hailing app, has lodged a complaint alleging that Ola employees created some 93,000 fake rider accounts, through which they made more than 400,000 false bookings, summoning Uber drivers to fetch passengers, who never materialised.

Uber, which has invested $1bn in India over the past nine months, claims that these fake bookings cost it nearly $8,000 in cancellation fees to drivers, and severely frustrated Uber employees, who wasted their time waiting.

It also alleges that such fake bookings are “intended to block the availability of taxis” through the US company's platform, and divert business to rival Ola, resulting in lost revenues both to the company and Uber drivers, thus “frustrating…and scaring” them, the petition claims.

Uber has sought $7.4m in damages from OlaCabs for what it says was “deliberately, unlawfully, wrongfully, maliciously, falsely …interfering” in its business.

Bangalore-based OlaCabs rejects using dirty tricks to undermine its deep-pocketed foreign rival. “We are categorically denying it,” an Ola spokesman said. In a statement, it called the charges “false and frivolous”.

But on Wednesday, Jugnoo, a Chandigarh-based company operating an Uber-style tech platform to match autorickshaws with passengers, levelled similar allegations against Ola for the first time.

Samar Singla, Jugnoo's co-founder and chief executive officer, said his company had seen a surge of 20,000 bookings from 800 fake accounts on its platform, leading to a waste of time, and lost earnings to rickshaw drivers. Tracing bookings from which the riders never showed up, the company found nearly all came from close proximity to existing Ola offices — two in the greater Delhi area, and one in south India.

“We are planning to take suitable action against Ola for the same, but will refrain from doing so if they cease to do this,” Mr Singla explained in a statement.

Allegations of dirty tricks highlights the rising stakes for Uber, Ola and other transportation service providers in India, a crucial market where just 6 per cent of all households own a car, leaving a vast potential growth opportunity for ride hailing services, and other transport aggregators.

Uber and Ola are competing fiercely both for potential customers and drivers, many of whom are enrolled on both platforms, and simply use that which promises a ride — or a passenger — faster or closer.

In its court petition, Uber said some of the fake bookings through its platform appeared intended to obtain the contact details of its ‘driver-partners,' who then received “malicious” phone calls and text messages to discourage them from remaining affiliated with Uber.

But Anand Subramanian, a spokesman for Ola, has suggested Uber's lawsuit against it simply stems from pique, as Ola had filed a petition last month accusing Uber of violating a Delhi High Court order banning the use of diesel-fuelled taxis in India's highly-polluted capital city.

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1.Who got the cancellation fees from Uber?

A.drivers

B.employees

C.passengers

D.policemen

答案(1)

2.What is Ola's purpose by fake bookings on Uber's petition?

A.attack the confidence of drivers

B.let passengers down

C.take up the street

D.block the availability of taxis