A WhatsApp thread went viral this week after a man posted screenshots of his text exchanges with a wheelchair transport service that gave him an unnecessarily sarcastic answer.
His 87-year-old grandmother is wheelchair-bound and oxygen-dependent and has regular appointments at Ng Teng Fong Hospital.
This has required him to book the services of wheelchair transport companies that provide oxygen, a man named David told crowdsourced news site Stomp in a piece published on Tuesday (Sept 20).
He reached out to Vimo Services, which is a social enterprise.
“I simply asked if they provide any oxygen along with their wheelchair service and was given a rude reply that ‘oxygen is free from the air’. I told the person not to joke about matters like this and they replied with, ‘You started first’,” he told Stomp.
However, the rudeness did not stop there, as the company later accused David of being “too lazy to find out what is wheelchair transport before asking that question.”
Later, they told him, “Just go away. Thanks.”
And when the Stomper said he would make the conversation public to warn others about the company, Vimo texted, “Do whatever u want”.
The company told Stomp that customers are expected to visit their site in order to determine what Vimo offers and that David “should not even consider to get wheelchair transport services if the patient requires any form of medical attention during the journey”.
Backlash toward Vimo on social media platforms such as Reddit has been swift and severe.
Vimo, it seems, has not been cancelled quite yet.
The company told Coconuts Singapore that business has picked up, not dropped off since the WhatsApp messages were made public.
“To our surprise, we are experiencing an increase of new member registrations and bookings despite the ‘backlashes’,” Vimo said.“Not all negative publicity are bad, we are glad that we are able to reach out to more people in need.” /TISG