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FTC takes action against Uber for deceptive billing and cancellation practices

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Re: FTC takes action against Uber for deceptive billing and cancellation practices

#131

Post by acid__ »

rideontime wrote: post #68
ceejayoz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, in my case, I was literally forbidden from canceling. I got a screen saying I couldn’t cancel within 24 hours after the monthly renewal. Very clearly intended to combat “oh shit I need to cancel that one” when the charge shows up in hopes you forget again.

I'm trying to play Devil's Advocate, but I literally can't think of another reason they would do this.

I can, I’ve written a billing system before (unfortunately). There’s a lot of annoying math/edge cases and systems to sync between.

While I never implemented a restriction like this, it would have prevented a lot of weird bugs/customer support issues and kept the underlying code much simpler.

(Annoying math = time zones, prorations, discounts, billing cycle anchors, etc. see the “falsehoods programmers believe about X” series)

(Systems to sync between = internal DBs, billing APIs, payment processors, etc.)

Re: FTC takes action against Uber for deceptive billing and cancellation practices

#132

Post by janalsncm »

reverendsteveii wrote: post #42
janalsncm wrote: post #23

I use virtual credit cards for most of my subscriptions. If I can’t cancel via normal means, I cancel the card. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Can’t say whether this is the recommended method for all services but it works for me.

I tried that with my real card and it turns out that if you report a card lost/stolen and get a replacement behind the scenes your bank will still forward some transactions from the old card to the new one without having to update

Yeah, you have to use something like Citi, Capital One or privacy.com and explicitly turn the card off.

Re: FTC takes action against Uber for deceptive billing and cancellation practices

#133

Post by socalgal2 »

paxys wrote: post #95
teeray wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst thing is that you can't even do a chargeback, otherwise you get banned. There is no recourse for the consumer. If this is their solution for fighting chargebacks, they should get banned from accepting Visa / MC / AMEX.

Who is Visa / MC / AMEX going to side with? The company that gets them hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue every year or a random account holder? It doesn't really matter who is right or wrong.

Visa / MC are also under monpoloy FTC scrutiny. They've kept out all competitors in he usa, supposedly by threating not letting you accept Visa / MC if you accept anyone else. In places like Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Mayalsia there are tons of competitors. And because of the competition the fees are much lower to try to lure merchants as well bonuses for consumers.

Re: FTC takes action against Uber for deceptive billing and cancellation practices

#134

Post by Macha »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #72
NoTeslaThrow wrote: post #53

I can't express how angry it makes me that I only had access to taxis for a couple years in the city before they were all pushed out and rates were jacked, screwing both the customer and the driver providing the value. It will take decades to reverse this course even if everyone has decent intentions, and shareholders rarely do.

The taxi companies were dumb though. They should have embraced the internet and apps. I am still not sure how to even call a taxi in my town.

They did have a local taxi app here that was reasonably popular and founded by a group of taxi drivers and was pretty liked by passengers and drivers.

Then they sold to a UK company, who sold to a German company, who recently sold to Lyft, each step along the way the new owner finding ways to make the service worse.

Re: FTC takes action against Uber for deceptive billing and cancellation practices

#135

Post by avarun »

woodruffw wrote: post #130
rd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be intentionally obtuse - even for people living in a place with public transport as encompassing as say NYC, you _need_ some form of ride-sharing service eventually in day-to-day life. Being banned from the duopoly of ride-share services is a life-altering thing to happen.

> even for people living in a place with public transport as encompassing as say NYC, you _need_ some form of ride-sharing service eventually in day-to-day life Not really. You can say this about smaller US cities, but NYC is absolutely a city where the >90% percentile of people can live without the daily use of a car. (The simplest reason for this has nothing do to with car ownership or desirability per se : it's be…

This is a strawman if I've ever seen one. The person you're responding to said literally nothing about "daily use of a car". The point was that you need rideshare at some point in your life, which is a point you failed to respond to. There are trips, even in NYC, where you'd be severely inconveniencing yourself by not using rideshare, which makes it a tough calculus to choose between $20 and being banned from Uber for life.

Re: FTC takes action against Uber for deceptive billing and cancellation practices

#136

Post by paxys »

woodruffw wrote: post #127
paxys wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is Visa / MC / AMEX going to side with? The company that gets them hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue every year or a random account holder? It doesn't really matter who is right or wrong.

This tidily demonstrates the value of a competent regulatory authority. The payment processor (i.e. card provider) should be even more afraid of the regulator than they are of potential lost business.

Would be nice, except that consumer protections were anyways an afterthought in this country and we just elected a government with an explicit goal to kill them entirely.

Re: FTC takes action against Uber for deceptive billing and cancellation practices

#137

Post by woodruffw »

paxys wrote: post #136
woodruffw wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This tidily demonstrates the value of a competent regulatory authority. The payment processor (i.e. card provider) should be even more afraid of the regulator than they are of potential lost business.

Would be nice, except that consumer protections were anyways an afterthought in this country and we just elected a government with an explicit goal to kill them entirely.

I agree about the current government. However, we do have examples of muscular regulatory schemes and infrastructure in this country's past: CFPB and Dodd-Frank are recent good examples. Both could also have been stronger, of course.

Re: FTC takes action against Uber for deceptive billing and cancellation practices

#138

Post by woodruffw »

avarun wrote: post #135
woodruffw wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even for people living in a place with public transport as encompassing as say NYC, you _need_ some form of ride-sharing service eventually in day-to-day life Not really. You can say this about smaller US cities, but NYC is absolutely a city where the >90% percentile of people can live without the daily use of a car. (The simplest reason for this has nothing do to with car ownership or desirability per se : it's be…

This is a strawman if I've ever seen one. The person you're responding to said literally nothing about "daily use of a car". The point was that you need rideshare at some point in your life, which is a point you failed to respond to. There are trips, even in NYC, where you'd be severely inconveniencing yourself by not using rideshare, which makes it a tough calculus to choose between $20 and being banned from Uber fo…

I didn't see the "eventually" before "day-to-day." But I also quoted it, so this is a reading comprehension error on my part, not a strawman.

Re: FTC takes action against Uber for deceptive billing and cancellation practices

#139

Post by MaKey »

nradov wrote: post #118
paxys wrote: post #40

The latest dark pattern in all these apps is that they will mess up your order/ride and then "refund" you in the form of account credit. There's no way to actually get your money back. Trying to contact support results in an endless loop of help screens and chatbots. If you are able to figure out the magic combination of options that will get you to a support agent they will say "sure we will refund your money" but t…

I still can't fathom why so many customers voluntarily subject themselves to abuse by food delivery services. Overpay for cold, late food (which the driver might have already sampled). I mean I can sort of understand the use case for customers who are stuck at home due to illness or something. But I've seen plenty of young people in good health waste scarce funds on UberEats and similar services. Why? When I want tak…

The last time I checked I just had to pay 1,50€ extra compared to ordering directly with the restaurant. The delivery itself is free with Uber One. Getting your food delivered for 1,50€ seems pretty cheap to me.

Re: FTC takes action against Uber for deceptive billing and cancellation practices

#140

Post by greenchair »

teeray wrote: post #58
paxys wrote: post #40

The latest dark pattern in all these apps is that they will mess up your order/ride and then "refund" you in the form of account credit. There's no way to actually get your money back. Trying to contact support results in an endless loop of help screens and chatbots. If you are able to figure out the magic combination of options that will get you to a support agent they will say "sure we will refund your money" but t…

The worst thing is that you can't even do a chargeback, otherwise you get banned. There is no recourse for the consumer. If this is their solution for fighting chargebacks, they should get banned from accepting Visa / MC / AMEX.

I didn't know what a chargeback was till last few years when it became popular almost meme like. Probably lots of fraud there.
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