Uber charges driver for completing a 13-mile fare • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by howzitallworkeh » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:09 AM UTC

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.

Whether or not it is fair, people should be aware that chargebacks are a nuclear option, at least in the US.

Sometimes they get hailed as a magic wand on consumer-advocate sites, but if you issue a chargeback with your bank, you should be prepared to completely sever relations with the vendor.

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

#72

Post by dheera » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:15 AM UTC

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.

Uber Support on Twitter:

"Thanks for bringing this to our attention, @TheSofaaa . We believe this is due to a technical bug, which we are actively investigating. We apologize to you and any other drivers who may be impacted, all of whom will be fully refunded."

It's kind of sad that these days the only way to get real support is to make noise on Twitter. And probably 95% of the time posts don't get that initial snowball to make noise.

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

#73

Post by barkingcat » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:21 AM UTC

hyperdimension wrote: post #47

mullingitover wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When she got out of the Uber, the driver continued driving for a long time before "ending" the ride, and the tab ran the entire time which racked up extra charges.

I thought the ride automatically ended, geo-fenced to the destination. Is that not the case?

Nope. If you've ever taken an uber/lyft ride before you will know that the driver has to tap the end button in order for the final bill to show up on your phone app.

Auto-ending rides doesn't even make sense. If the final destination pin happens to be in the middle of a highway off ramp (due to a map error) would you want the app to "autoend" the ride on the offramp (and kick the passenger out on the shoulder), or let the driver do the sensible thing, get off the ramp and pull over to a safer location to let the person off?

This case happens especially often at airports, where the passenger drop off area can literally be represented on the maps as "side of the highway" but in fact, there are traffic loops that the driver needs to navigate in order to comply with traffic rules and routing at airports.

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

#74

Post by bombcar » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:25 AM UTC

temporallobe wrote: post #69

yuliyp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disputing charges with a credit card is an interesting thing. It's a consumer being able to unilaterally say "give me my money back" and the merchant basically being stuck with the tab. Doing a chargeback means the relationship between consumer and merchant is ineffective that they can't resolve their differences normally. That the merchant doesn't want to risk more money on serving such a customer in the future is p…

I hate having to dispute charges with the CC company because I don’t like the idea that the merchant gets stuck with the bill, but I have done it on a few occasions where I felt like I had absolutely no recourse. I recently had to do this with one of those gigantic furniture warehouse places. I paid full retail price + delivery and setup changes for a bed. The guys came and set up the bed, but it had some greasy smud…

Some of the chargebacks get eaten by the merchant, and some get eaten by the credit card company’s “satisfaction guarantee” (which is accounted as a form of insurance).

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

#75

Post by randallsquared » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:26 AM UTC

pwdisswordfish8 wrote: post #64

zaroth wrote: post #40

Another Uber bug I ran into a couple weeks ago. I had a long trip which I updated after departing to be a short trip. After getting out of the Uber I clicked to pay a 20% tip, and it paid it on the original (much higher) amount. Worked out to be almost a 100% tip. I called support, walked the very nice woman through what happened, she filed a bug report and reset the tip to a normal amount.

> I had a long trip which I updated after departing to be a short trip Bugs notwithstanding, if intentional, then that's a pretty scummy thing to do. Not all drivers are given the full details of the offer they are accepting (it's the norm not to have details), but some offers that drivers receive do include things like "guaranteed $X trip". So even if unintentional, someone would be getting screwed there (e.g. Uber,…

> if they were forced to cover the difference to the driver

The rider isn't guaranteeing a $X trip, if anyone is -- that's a contract Uber is making with the driver, and they should absolutely cover the difference. If they find themselves losing money on that, then they can and will update the guarantee message, right?

Guessing or investigating the internal negotiations between a service provider and their own service providers is not the responsibility of the customer!

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

#76

Post by strken » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:27 AM UTC

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…

I'm pretty sure that at no point did anyone sit down and say "let's charge drivers for trips". It's clearly the unintended consequence of real product decisions, but it's equally clearly not a new strategic direction to bill the supply side of the market.

It's terrifying because it illustrates the lack of trust that the general public has in tech. Instead of "looks like someone's having a bad day at the Uber office, guess they'll fix it soon," it's a plot trialling a new form of exploitation. Two replies in, someone wants to nationalise the company. That's a lot of lost trust.

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

#77

Post by bombcar » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:30 AM UTC

acgh213 wrote: post #59

petee wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this; I'm a little confused since they still don't show the total accounting. One screen shows $11 total service charge, another shows $6 for Third-party fees (either way thats crazy Uber passes this cost on) There is a missing $5 they're not explaining

As someone who does uber eats for some side cash (I have a very small and fuel effecient car, so it actually works out gas wise for me), the 11 dollars was the total service charge. Uber then breaks it down by what they take (the first party part, not included), and any other fees are in a seperate Third party section. So from my perspective of 11 dollars total, with 6 for the third party (which they absolutely pass…

That’s insane. 25% went to you.

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

#78

Post by missedthecue » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:33 AM UTC

I wonder if modern rates of depression are normal, and we're just diagnosing cases more accurately, or if more people are becoming depressives.

I haven't got data, and I'm not an expert in this field, but it feels to me like the latter is what's happening. If this is the case, I wonder what is causing it, and how it can be remediated. I don't remember so many people being depressed when I was young.

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

#79

Post by zanellato19 » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:36 AM UTC

strken wrote: post #76

malwarebytess wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm pretty sure that at no point did anyone sit down and say "let's charge drivers for trips". It's clearly the unintended consequence of real product decisions, but it's equally clearly not a new strategic direction to bill the supply side of the market. It's terrifying because it illustrates the lack of trust that the general public has in tech. Instead of "looks like someone's having a bad day at the Uber office,…

Yeah, but the ramifications of the unending automation is indeed exactly the impossible-to-deal-with bugs. The fact of the matter is that Uber (the company, not any specific PMs/Engineers inside it) decided that this was unnaceptable loss of money and they instead shift that to the customers. That decision, to not "invest" in support, is completely conscious by the founders/investors to make the business more viable, because at their scale, support can be quite expensive.

In other words, technology is bringing scale and leaving the cost of the rounding errors to the most vulnerable.

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

#80

Post by ta988 » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:37 AM UTC

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.

When will people realize Uber is a bad and evil company. From the get go, with waht they did to others in the sector, how they treat drivers and clients... I really can't believe anybody is still using them...