The last few months I have had a mix of somewhat good, bad and horrible experiences with Uber Ghana. It’s certainly not like the experience I had with Uber in Canada or the U.S. Normally I had experienced good service and courteous drivers.

I’m going to start off with the bad, before I wrap up with the good.

The Negative

Drivers refuse to take passengers to destinations.

My friend and I were leaving an event at night and she requested an Uber on her account. We both were headed towards Tema. We were both happy about the fact we could use Uber to go to our destination because it’s common practice for taxi drivers to refuse taking customers from Accra to Tema and vice versa. So with Uber, we could rest assured that we would get to our destination with no issues. That’s what we thought.

When we sat down and the driver began thw trip, we got the surprise we didn’t expect. He refused to take us. He said he was not going to take us and would drop us off at the Accra Mall and we could find our own way from there.

In my amazement I took my phone out and made a live video for Twitter.

Click here to see video –>> Twitter

Drivers call passengers so they can decline.

I can’t count how many times I have had drivers contact me simply to ask, “Where are you going?”. The first time this happened I didn’t think anything of it. He asked where I was going and I told him. He immediately refused to pick me up. He said he won’t go there because he doesn’t want to go to that area. Not for any valid reason. He just doesn’t want to go.

Drivers ask customer to cancel.

Sometimes a driver feels he is being inconvenienced and decides he doesn’t want to pick you up after he already accepted the ride. I remember being at Labadi Beach Hotel for an event. When I requested an Uber it was only a 8 minutes away. It was late night so traffic was nonexistent. It shouldn’t take too long to arrive. To my amazement when I looked at the app more than 10 minutes later, the driver had not moved from his location.

I made contact only to have the driver say he was relaxing at home and didn’t mean to accept the fare. He wanted me to cancel.

They Don’t Carry Change.

I’ve decided to do payment by card only because drivers often don’t have enough change to give passengers. I gave a driver 10 cedis once for and 8 cedi ride and he told me he didn’t have change to give me. Another trip the driver didn’t have change for a 20 cedi note. There are countless times when they have no change.

They Refuse Passengers Who Pay with Cards

Yep. Many drivers will cancel a ride because they notice it’s a card payment. I have had drivers tell me they don’t want card payments.

This is frustrating.

he Positive

Some drivers are very friendly. Like Raymond, pictured above. I was so impressed when I stepped into the car to find it clean and nicely decorated with the African printed seat covers and colorful cushions.

It instantly brought a feeling of comfort. I felt like he was welcoming me into his space just from the way his car was kept.

He also offered great conversation, had no complaints about the trip and was an overall friendly person.

If I could have requested him again, I would have.

So far I like using Uber in Ghana because it provides the convenience of not having to give directions to the driver and you don’t have to spend time negotiating your fare like with the standard taxis.

I would highly recommend using Uber in Ghana. For now it’s only in selected places. Hopefully they will expand to more areas as they grow.