A planned Grab system upgrade knocked out rides and food in five countries for two days

Many Grab users in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia faced intermittent disruption for a second day in a row on 17 November 2021, in what the Straits Times called one of the company's worst service failures. Users could not call for a ride or order food, and drivers could not get bookings.

A Grab spokesperson said the disruption was caused when the company tried to run a planned upgrade to one of its systems, which affected some services. Core services had been running since late Tuesday morning, she said, but a small segment might still see minor issues while the upgrade was completed.

One driver told the Straits Times that his roughly S$270 of Tuesday earnings were missing from the app, and that after cashing out, the money did not reach his bank account. He was on hold for 20 minutes on the driver hotline. A customer waited two hours for food and awaited a S$50 refund. The disruption came weeks before Grab's planned merger with Altimeter Growth Corp.

Two days of intermittent disruption in five markets; drivers' earnings missing in the app; weeks before the Altimeter SPAC merger.

Grab ran a planned upgrade on a live system used across several countries, and some services failed as a result.

The activity page and payment records stopped loading, so drivers' earnings and cash-outs appeared wrong.

Support lines were overloaded, leaving drivers on hold and without information.

Grab gave no cause beyond the planned upgrade and did not say how many users were affected.

Run big system upgrades with a rollback ready and drivers' payouts protected. For a gig platform, an outage is a wage problem, not only a service problem.

Grab said it was in touch with affected partners to provide support while the upgrade was completed. The Straits Times report does not give the number of users affected or any compensation.