  We aim to perform a theoretical evaluation of the impact of the mass loss
indetermination on asteroseismic grid based estimates of masses, radii, and
ages of stars in the red giant branch phase (RGB). We adopted the SCEPtER
pipeline on a grid spanning the mass range [0.8; 1.8] Msun. As observational
constraints, we adopted the star effective temperatures, the metallicity
[Fe/H], the average large frequency spacing $\Delta \nu,$ and the frequency of
maximum oscillation power $\nu_{\rm max}$. The mass loss was modelled following
a Reimers parametrization with the two different efficiencies $\eta = 0.4$ and
$\eta = 0.8$. In the RGB phase, the average error owing only to observational
uncertainty on mass and age estimates is about 8% and 30% respectively. The
bias in mass and age estimates caused by the adoption of a wrong mass loss
parameter in the recovery is minor for the vast majority of the RGB evolution.
The biases get larger only after the RGB bump. In the last 2.5% of the RGB
lifetime the error on the mass determination reaches 6.5% becoming larger than
the random error component in this evolutionary phase. The error on the age
estimate amounts to 9%, that is, equal to the random error uncertainty. These
results are independent of the stellar metallicity [Fe/H] in the explored
range. Asteroseismic-based estimates of stellar mass, radius, and age in the
RGB phase can be considered mass loss independent within the range ($\eta \in
[0.0, 0.8]$) as long as the target is in an evolutionary phase preceding the
RGB bump.
