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

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

#101

Post by runlevel1 » Mon, May 31, 2021, 4:15 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.

Indeed. My account has been locked since 2015 due to a similar edge case.

My card was stolen after taking a ride so I reported it. This prevented a ride charge from going through. Uber locked my account, which then prevented me from paying.

Uber support's assistance was Kafkaesque.

They advised that I could reactivate my account by logging in and paying the balance. I told them I couldn't. Around and around we went.

So I just use Lyft now.

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

#102

Post by diebeforei485 » Mon, May 31, 2021, 4:29 AM UTC

choward wrote: post #86

Why is everyone so concerned that the earnings was a negative amount of money? Instead of being charged, the driver only got paid $0.01. Would that be okay? In a way the driver is still getting charged because the gas alone is more than that. If this is just one example, imagine all the drivers who don't get a negative earnings but end up spending more than they make. The real question is what number is okay and how…

There are different levels of errors. Something like a negative number for a fare is a serious error in every circumstance and should ping the billing team in their Slack channel (or PagerDuty) immediately.

Something like a small positive number, while still concerning, is harder to calculate and harder to justify a critical alert for. For example, Uber does have a feature for drivers where they can type in where they are going (eg. for a personal errand) and be connected to a rider going the same direction, and the fares on those trips pay fairly small amounts of money.

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

#103

Post by manigandham » Mon, May 31, 2021, 4:31 AM UTC

yuliyp wrote: post #51

stefan_ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

It's not a guaranteed refund. It's just another dispute resolution, but done by the card issuer rather than the merchant.

Often they will side with the consumer and will refund the charges through their various policies, but they also investigate the case and will let the payment go through if there's no actual problem found. There are plenty of cases where consumers didn't even contact the merchant at all and yet still chargeback.

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

#104

Post by jdkee » Mon, May 31, 2021, 4:41 AM UTC

Uber needs to be mandated an employer in every US state and made to follow the existing laws.

Otherwise throw the management in jail.

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

#105

Post by manigandham » Mon, May 31, 2021, 4:47 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?

The driver must end the ride, but the GPS is tracked on both devices and a driver that is far away from the rider on the same "trip" will cause an alert.

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

#106

Post by manigandham » Mon, May 31, 2021, 4:54 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,…

Situations and destinations change. There is nothing "scummy" about changing where you're going on a trip you're paying for.

Any guarantees to the driver are an issue for the company to deal with.

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

#107

Post by jfrunyon » Mon, May 31, 2021, 4:59 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.

> after she was overcharged by a driver

How's that? Drivers don't set the fare, Uber does.

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

#108

Post by subhro » Mon, May 31, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

yuliyp wrote: post #51

stefan_ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> It's a consumer being able to unilaterally say "give me my money back"

That is actually not true. The credit card company must follow established guidelines and pragmatically look at the available information/user agreement/contract and decide on whether there was a breach of contract. They can not blindly stick the bill to the business.

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

#109

Post by jfrunyon » Mon, May 31, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

yuliyp wrote: post #51

stefan_ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> It's a consumer being able to unilaterally say "give me my money back" and the merchant basically being stuck with the tab.

That's not even remotely true. The merchant absolutely has the ability to dispute chargebacks.

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

#110

Post by jfrunyon » Mon, May 31, 2021, 5:10 AM UTC

ta988 wrote: post #80

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...

But they were cheaper!

... while illegally operating at a loss without a permit to drive the competition out of the space.