A young Melbourne woman has revealed her terrifying experience with a DiDi driver over the weekend, claiming she was nearly abducted by the person.
The young woman in question, @puddingjulie, shared her traumatic story on Instagram Story on Sunday, October 24th. She was taking a DiDi around 6pm to a venue in Richmond from Brunswick when she started to notice that the route seemed different.
Her driver took a series of “wrong turns” and Julie soon realised that they were on the motorway heading in the direction of Balwyn North. What should have been a simple 15 minute trip ended up lasting for 40 minutes.
“We’re taking some route through Fitzroy, and he takes few wrong turns and he was like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s happened I’ve made a few mistakes today’, and I’m like, ‘it’s alright, it happens’,” she explained in a series of posts. “And then we end up on the motorway and half an hour had gone by and we were still in Fitzroy.”
Julie tried to repeatedly warn the driver they were travelling in the wrong direction, and he allegedly offered her to cancel the trip so that she wouldn’t get charged.
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She continued: “I’m looking at his phone and his maps keep telling him to exit the motorway and he’s in the rightmost lane as well and he stayed in the rightmost lane the whole time. I feel like there was no intention on his side to ever exit.”
After being in the car for 40 minutes, Julie decided to call her sister. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know what the fuck is happening’,” she recalled. “I start freaking out because anything I say to him, he can’t give me a clear answer back as to where we’re going… He realises (I’m on the phone with her) and tries to calm me down.”
Julie’s sister warned her that she had to get out of the car immediately. She believes that the driver only decided to back off once she phoned her sister. He thankfully pulled over to the side of the motorway but Julie still couldn’t get out as the car door was locked.
‘I eventually went over to the other side, got out and he was like trying to get me back into the car,” she said. “It was so weird, he was saying, ‘here’s my phone, talk to my friends they’ll tell you that you can come with me.’
It was just terrifying like why the fuck are we on the motorway, what am I doing. I feel like if I didn’t say anything, he would’ve kept driving. He just took advantage of the fact that I didn’t know Melbourne that well and didn’t say anything when he didn’t take all those random turns.”
After the incident, Julie and her sister went to a nearby police station to file a report. They also contacted DiDi but were informed they couldn’t help “because the driver was not explicitly aggressive towards (her),” which is very damning.
A spokesperson DiDi did shared a statement to Pedestrian TV afterwards, explaining that the company had temporarily suspended the driver upon an investigation into the matter.
“For this particular incident, DiDi has temporarily suspended the driver’s account and is conducting a thorough investigation, which could result in a temporary or permanent suspension of the driver from the DiDi platform, while we will also cooperate with law enforcement in its investigations.”
Victoria Police haven’t commented on the incident yet although @puddingjulie posted an update on her Instagram Story, calling out Didi for their mishandling of the situation.
“I find it pretty appalling that Didi reached out to me Sunday morning telling me to file a written report but did not inform me that the driver had been suspended or any action had been taken. I found out the driver was suspended through the pedestriantv article – so it makes me wonder if they only suspended him because pededtriantv contacted them,” she wrote.
“I have now been asked by didi to recount the story on 4 separate occasions. This is not appropriate and didi should have measures in place so I do not have to recount this traumatic experience.”
“I have asked to speak to a manager given I thought didi was not taking this seriously and they said someone would contact me soon about the matter (but couldn’t tell me when),” she added.
“Didi are yet to refund me and when I brought this to their attention they told me they will look into refunding me after our call (like wtf).”
Victoria Police have yet to comment on the incident.
