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Uber charges driver for completing a 13-mile fare

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Re: Uber charges driver for completing a 13-mile fare

#21

Post by malwarebytess »

strken wrote: post #11

It's a bit terrifying that people on twitter seem to think this is an intentional product decision rather than a bug plus shitty automated support with no human in the loop. I guess if you keep setting OKRs like "5% lower support call volume" for years then at some point your reputational risk goes up because you've made it impossible to contact an actual human being.

Why is it terrifying? It's accurate.

A bug plus shitty automated support with no human in the loop is an intentional product decision. They could have humans in the loop. They could have human support. They could make bugs like this more easily remediable. But they don't. On purpose. To the extent that their "fare review process" and the app failed. Now it's going to be fixed by some PR person. Because it's still cheaper, apparently, than the alternative design decisions.

This outcome is a result of their intentional product decisions.

Re: Uber charges driver for completing a 13-mile fare

#22

Post by antonvs »

stolen_biscuit wrote: post #9
sp332 wrote: post #4

Update from Uber Support 30 minutes ago https://mobile.twitter.com/Uber_Support/status/1399149311175...

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding but does that mean that Uber refunded their employee the $2.20 they paid for doing their job, so driver ended up with exactly $0 after this trip?

The OP is saying that Uber deducted $2.20 from his account with them, so that he paid money to carry the passenger.

Re: Uber charges driver for completing a 13-mile fare

#23

Post by mullingitover »

Uber's handling of edge cases is...something.

My wife is banned for life from Uber because after she was overcharged by a driver by $80 (for a five minute ride), and after Uber denied her dispute of the fraudulent charge, she flagged the fraudulent charge with the credit card company and got refunded via that route. I don't think a human was in the loop for any step of this process on Uber's end.

Re: Uber charges driver for completing a 13-mile fare

#25

Post by petee »

antonvs wrote: post #22
stolen_biscuit wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding but does that mean that Uber refunded their employee the $2.20 they paid for doing their job, so driver ended up with exactly $0 after this trip?

The OP is saying that Uber deducted $2.20 from his account with them, so that he paid money to carry the passenger.

the post you're replying to is in response to Uber Support saying they'll refund the driver...but what is being refunded isn't clear

Re: Uber charges driver for completing a 13-mile fare

#26

Post by stefan_ »

mullingitover wrote: post #23

Uber's handling of edge cases is...something. My wife is banned for life from Uber because after she was overcharged by a driver by $80 (for a five minute ride), and after Uber denied her dispute of the fraudulent charge, she flagged the fraudulent charge with the credit card company and got refunded via that route. I don't think a human was in the loop for any step of this process on Uber's end.

This is such a big thing nowadays and it needs regulation. Dispute a charge on Steam? Banned for life. Return one too many item according to some neural network on Amazon? Banned for life. Do nothing wrong at all? Random chance to wake up to a banned Google account, no recourse. Your business runs on GCP? Bad luck.

There need to be serious consequences for this "the computer made a mistake" bullshit.

Re: Uber charges driver for completing a 13-mile fare

#27

Post by LodeOfCode »

sp332 wrote: post #8
fouc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the fare review probably triggered the same bug

The verbiage specifically says "your fare was within our estimates", but wouldn't negative fares at least be flagged as out of range?

I'd guess the fare review only covers the $9.06 listed as fare, and not the service fees/net earnings

Re: Uber charges driver for completing a 13-mile fare

#28

Post by derefr »

malwarebytess wrote: post #21
strken wrote: post #11

It's a bit terrifying that people on twitter seem to think this is an intentional product decision rather than a bug plus shitty automated support with no human in the loop. I guess if you keep setting OKRs like "5% lower support call volume" for years then at some point your reputational risk goes up because you've made it impossible to contact an actual human being.

Why is it terrifying? It's accurate. A bug plus shitty automated support with no human in the loop is an intentional product decision. They could have humans in the loop. They could have human support. They could make bugs like this more easily remediable. But they don't. On purpose. To the extent that their "fare review process" and the app failed. Now it's going to be fixed by some PR person. Because it's still che…

Yes, but that's still a different thing than "a human sat down and decided that there would be trips that would cost the driver money to run; and that Uber wouldn't announce this change."

One is an emergent consequence — the "banality of evil", a property of the corporation itself. The other is active malfeasance — something that's not so much even about the corporation as about an individual horrible person in a decision-making role, where the correct move for customers/employees is to boycott the decision-maker, rather than the company; and where the correct move for the company is to fire the decision-maker, and distance themselves from them as much as possible. (Unless it keeps happening with different people in the same company, at which point it becomes a thing about the company's culture.)

Re: Uber charges driver for completing a 13-mile fare

#29

Post by mullingitover »

stefan_ wrote: post #26
mullingitover wrote: post #23

Uber's handling of edge cases is...something. My wife is banned for life from Uber because after she was overcharged by a driver by $80 (for a five minute ride), and after Uber denied her dispute of the fraudulent charge, she flagged the fraudulent charge with the credit card company and got refunded via that route. I don't think a human was in the loop for any step of this process on Uber's end.

This is such a big thing nowadays and it needs regulation. Dispute a charge on Steam? Banned for life. Return one too many item according to some neural network on Amazon? Banned for life. Do nothing wrong at all? Random chance to wake up to a banned Google account, no recourse. Your business runs on GCP? Bad luck. There need to be serious consequences for this "the computer made a mistake" bullshit.

It certainly feels illegal to have the threat of a ban when you make a good faith report of fraudulent charges. A business could have a pattern of deliberate overcharges that they layer in with regular transactions with the knowledge that enough users will just give in and eat the fraudulent charge to avoid losing access to the service. If the business has run the numbers and found that it's a net gain in profits from this practice, there would be a reasonable (if completely corrupt) motive for operating the scam.

Re: Uber charges driver for completing a 13-mile fare

#30

Post by Finnucane »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #15
petee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber, Doordash, and the like have consistently played games with payments, fees, and tips; an intentional decision would just be par for the course, to see how much you can get away with and toe the line before enough people complain.

Complaining will do nothing. They will continue this behavior until they're forced to change through regulation.

Not using them is better than complaining.
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