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My Uber driver robbed me, so I took Uber to court and won

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Re: My Uber driver robbed me, so I took Uber to court and won

#111

Post by saghm »

devoply wrote: post #21
baby wrote: post #18

Damn, one of my driver drove with my girlfriend's phone, we were waving to him but he didn't stop. We managed to call him via the app and he said he would send it back to us but never did. After that it was impossible to do anything/contact him via Uber :/

I wonder what recourse you have with a real taxi. I am sure the company contracting a taxi driver would consider firing a driver that steals your stuff. Especially after a few complaints. The main problem seems to be Uber's unresponsiveness to the whole issue. It would not be hard for them to set up some sort of system to prevent fraud and theft and to punish drivers accused of that sort of thing, and to kick them ou…

There was no stealing involved, but I had a somewhat relevant experience a few months back. My grandmother was visiting me (in New York City) and accidentally left her pocketbook in a taxi that we took. After a long time of googling to try to figure out how to contact the cab company, I found out from a concierge at her hotel that there was a specific number you could dial to reach some sort of help line for the city (I think it was "311", but I'm not positive). I called the number and after listening to a recording for several minutes, I reached a point where I could speak a term and have it give me info on it. After saying "New York City cab company" or something like that, it gave me the option to give them a tax number so and they'd give me the number of the company. Luckily, I had paid for the cab with my credit card, and my bank app had the cab number in the transaction, so I was able to get the number for the company. After calling them, I got the number of the garage, who then gave me the cell number of the driver. I called him, and it turned out that he had heard us try to call the phone earlier (but couldn't get to the phone in time and couldn't unlock the phone to find the number to call us back at), so he went back to the spot where he had dropped us off to try and find us. He came back to meet us at the hotel, and we got the pocketbook back (and gave him a nice tip for his trouble).

From what I understand, cab companies acknowledge liability for their drivers, so they'd be much more inclined to take action against unscrupulous drivers. It seems plausible that people who want to use the pretense of driving others around to steal things from their passengers would be much less likely to want to driver for such a company, so I wouldn't be surprised if my experience with a driver willing to go out of their way to return items is much more common with taxis than Uber.

Re: My Uber driver robbed me, so I took Uber to court and won

#112

Post by hsod »

EnFinlay wrote: post #39
hsod wrote: post #25

Interesting story, but I think it was a bit unfair to Uber. I'm glad this guy was made whole, but I'm not sure Uber's reluctance to paying you 4000 dollars because a driver stole your backpack qualifies as corruption. From what I can tell, the worst thing Uber did was not be sufficiently cooperative with the police investigation. This part of the narrative is extremely muddled and unclear, so it's hard to take a stro…

The narrative around that is crystal clear. He filed a police report, and when the police went to Uber they gave incorrect information. They cooperated exactly like an accomplice giving a false alibi, actually.

Is it?

"It was later asserted that they reached out to the police detective to clear this up. They found the information and tried to contact the detective with all the information."

"If you are curious as to when this happened, it was April 9th. Uber did everything in their power to make the investigation successful and cooperate with the detective, on April 9th, 2017, four months after the incident. They also only reached out to the detective with the correct information once they were caught obstructing the investigation."

How exactly did Uber obstruct the investigation? What incorrect information did they give? Maybe I'm thick, but it's not clear to me at all from the article.

Re: My Uber driver robbed me, so I took Uber to court and won

#113

Post by freeplatform »

I get that the court process is the main part of the story, but I still can't believe that you left $4k worth of equipment in the car with a stranger. I guess I'm just much more paranoid. Also, that's how I view taxi drivers as well as Uber/Lyft drivers. Sure there are some protections like background checks and tracking, but at the end of the day it is a stranger we don't know, and anything could happen, so we probably should at least be a bit hesitant.

Re: My Uber driver robbed me, so I took Uber to court and won

#114

Post by ivraatiems »

jessriedel wrote: post #99
ivraatiems wrote: post #82

I'm glad this worked out for the OP. However, I think he may have made a couple mistakes that could have been avoided for a smoother process. The big one is not retaining an attorney. No, he doesn't have to for small claims court, but Uber clearly had its legal team looking at this. Now, I understand that lawyers are expensive and carry their own issues - but if he'd won the case with an attorney, he could potentiall…

I get that big companies are not your friend, but is it really necessary to wage total war by using all possible legal advantages and issuing ultimatums? "Here is the evidence I have that you're in the wrong" can sometimes hurt you later in court, but it can avoid the entire mess by convincing the party that they will likely lose, or yield a compromise.

> I get that big companies are not your friend, but is it really necessary to wage total war by using all possible legal advantages and issuing ultimatums?

Initially, no. By the time you're in a court of law, yes. Once you file suit - small claims or not - discussion time is over. If you make that decision prematurely, that's not great, but there's no taking it back except by dismissing the suit, which would have been a mistake.

Re: My Uber driver robbed me, so I took Uber to court and won

#115

Post by spike021 »

donatj wrote: post #97
spike021 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"The Uber department responded that they had no record of a trip from the vehicle with that license plate [...]" This kind of thing worries me a bit. This past week I've taken two Lyfts where the license plate provided in the app didn't match what the driver was actually using. One of my drivers claimed they had just gotten a new car, but that's a bit odd to me since when I bought a new car it took several weeks to…

I've bought cars that came with plates and I've bought cars where they had to mail them to me. I think it varies.

True.

It's just a bit odd to me that the driver wouldn't think to update the plate number in the app, or that uber/lyft would be so slow to update it.

I doubt it's a human in the cloud who sees a notification that a driver would like to update their plate number and then adds it to a queue to work on.

Re: My Uber driver robbed me, so I took Uber to court and won

#116

Post by skinnymuch »

ivraatiems wrote: post #82

I'm glad this worked out for the OP. However, I think he may have made a couple mistakes that could have been avoided for a smoother process. The big one is not retaining an attorney. No, he doesn't have to for small claims court, but Uber clearly had its legal team looking at this. Now, I understand that lawyers are expensive and carry their own issues - but if he'd won the case with an attorney, he could potentiall…

The guy only got $4K. Retaining a lawyer for just that amount wouldn't be worth it, would it? I have no clue how small claims works and how likely it is to have attorney fees be included if you win like you mentioned. The guy had to fly back to Boston again for the second time around. He'd also likely have spent some money in Boston like getting around. None of that was included in the final amount either. I'm not sure if a lawyer or someone more in the know how of how small claims/courts work would have been able to get it. And even if you can, how easy is it to get it.

Agree on the mistake of giving Uber all the info. The guy was trusting Uber not to be as scummy as they ended up being. I'm sure he has learned his lesson and next time regardless of company, especially once lawsuit stuff has come into play, will do what you said:

> What he should have done was say "we can discuss this in court, or you can make me whole now and avoid that," and NOTHING else.

Re: My Uber driver robbed me, so I took Uber to court and won

#117

Post by zer00eyz »

spike021 wrote: post #110
MichaelGG wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you report the driver? The one time that happened to me, I asked the driver and showed me that he had both cars registered in Uber and had selected the wrong one.

Honestly no because I wasn't sure what the process is for that.

Well you start by taking photos!

First and foremost for your own safety.

Second just send them to CS. If something terrible ever happens and it shows up on the 11pm news, at least you can say "I tried" and the company can't run and hide from its bad policy

Re: My Uber driver robbed me, so I took Uber to court and won

#118

Post by balls187 »

ivraatiems wrote: post #82

I'm glad this worked out for the OP. However, I think he may have made a couple mistakes that could have been avoided for a smoother process. The big one is not retaining an attorney. No, he doesn't have to for small claims court, but Uber clearly had its legal team looking at this. Now, I understand that lawyers are expensive and carry their own issues - but if he'd won the case with an attorney, he could potentiall…

How would retaining an attorney work in small claims?

Re: My Uber driver robbed me, so I took Uber to court and won

#119

Post by smsm42 »

spike021 wrote: post #69
zer00eyz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: What Uber told the police. "The Uber department responded that they had no record of a trip from the vehicle with that license plate on December 5th, 2016, just after 11 PM, and the driver had not driven with them for 2 years." "Sufficiently cooperative" (per you) and outright lying are two very different things. FTA: "Why would Uber not have the information on the driver for the police? Uber asserted that they…

>"The Uber department responded that they had no record of a trip from the vehicle with that license plate [...]" This kind of thing worries me a bit. This past week I've taken two Lyfts where the license plate provided in the app didn't match what the driver was actually using. One of my drivers claimed they had just gotten a new car, but that's a bit odd to me since when I bought a new car it took several weeks to…

> One of my drivers claimed they had just gotten a new car

That can happen, you don't even need a new car for it. I've bought a car with one license plate missing, and when I went to DMV to ask what to do with it, I just was issued a new set. One other time, on another car, my back license plate disappeared - still have no idea what happened to it, I suspect it was stolen, but I have no idea where (how often you check the license plate on your own car?) or why. It's very easy to steal it, it's just two screws, so it was gone, and I went to the DMV and got another set. Some of my documents still list the same car under an old license plate. So it's not impossible to have several sets of plates for the same car, and it's very easy to get a new set.

Getting license plate btw can be very fast - at least in California, once you're in the DMV they just have a stack of plates sitting there and they take one from the top and give it to you (obviously, after you waited in the line and paid and filled in the documents, etc. - that may take time :) Brand-new car may take longer or if you get them by mail.

Re: My Uber driver robbed me, so I took Uber to court and won

#120

Post by daveguy »

gravypod wrote: post #109
daveguy wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but you could if their delivery driver robbed you.

GrubHub doesn't provide the drivers. They facilitate orders. They don't have anything to do with who delivers.

That was Uber's argument too. They lost.
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