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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

#241

Post by mailund »

MaKey wrote: post #235
mailund wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that seems to be so cheap that at least one of {customer, delivery driver, restaurant} must be getting shafted for the business model to be profitable

I'm not sure how it's working. Maybe Uber is currently eating a part of the costs to gain market share. They handed out very generous 4x 15€ coupons last year for new users. That was when I signed up for Uber Eats.

I actually worked as a delivery driver for a local competitor for Uber eats back in college. In that case, it was pretty much all parties that were getting screwed. Restaurants gave up some of their profit margin, delivery personnel worked for poor wages and paid for their own equipment, and the customer paid a hidden markup on all items.

I started before they cranked up the exploitation and quit as the terms got increasingly bad.

I don't even think they ran a profit at that point, so I guess everyone was getting screwed

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

#242

Post by jrs235 »

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.

Then I guess do a chargeback, get banned, and good riddance to forcibly not having to ever use their crappy service(s) again?

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

#243

Post by HDThoreaun »

mmmmmbop wrote: post #184
nradov wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ordering my go-to meal at this restaurant down the block with Grubhub+ has $0 delivery fee and $1 "service fee". It takes roughly 4 minutes to go get it myself, assuming there's no line. $1 for 4 minutes is $15 an hour -- I value my time more than that. It's always here within 10-15 minutes. It's never been cold, and the bags are stapled shut, so I don't think the meals have ever been sampled. Plus it feels nice to b…

grubhub raises the prices for a lot of restaurants by like $1 on every item even if youre ordering takeout here in Chicago. Calling the order in yourself can save more than you expect

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

#244

Post by HDThoreaun »

paxys wrote: post #152
nradov wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in NY or SF then you have multiple restaurants within easy walking / cycling / subway distance.

Umm, no, there are 4.6 million people living in the SF metro area and twice that in New York. I can assure you very few of them are within walking/easy transit distance of good restaurants. And most have responsibilities that don't let them get out of the house for dinner. If an hour of your time is more valuable to you than $5 then why wouldn't you order food delivery?

Every single person in NYC either has a car or lives walking distance to a good restaurants.

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

#245

Post by Spooky23 »

bdangubic wrote: post #162
Spooky23 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cabbies and barmen. My family owned bars, my grand uncle always said he would fire honest bartenders, because there’s no such thing, and he’s too smart to work for him. :)

geeeeez, you guys are making it sound like going to Rome is like going to ____ ( I don’t want to offend any City here… :) ).

Oh no, don't get me wrong, it's a magical place and I had a wonderful time there a few times!

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

#246

Post by barbazoo »

mmmmmbop wrote: post #184
nradov wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ordering my go-to meal at this restaurant down the block with Grubhub+ has $0 delivery fee and $1 "service fee". It takes roughly 4 minutes to go get it myself, assuming there's no line. $1 for 4 minutes is $15 an hour -- I value my time more than that. It's always here within 10-15 minutes. It's never been cold, and the bags are stapled shut, so I don't think the meals have ever been sampled. Plus it feels nice to b…

At least where I live the prices when ordering through any of the apps are around 20% higher than when ordering from the restaurant directly.

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

#247

Post by barbazoo »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #5

> Users can be forced to navigate as many as 23 screens and take as many as 32 actions to cancel. I complain about dark patterns _a_lot_ but this one takes the cake!

Imagine being the developer having to build this, write tests for it. What a waste of time.

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

#248

Post by _fat_santa »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #47

UberOne is why I almost never use UberEats any more and instead use a local competitor. Shortly after it was introduced it seemed every order of mine would get surprise delayed after pick up as the driver would have to first drop off a different order at >90° different direction from me, no doubt for the user who would get priority for being on UberOne. I don’t order food often enough to justify a subscription, so I…

I almost signed up for it the other day (by accident). Honestly I was a bit impressed by just how "dark" this dark pattern was. After this I asked some of my friends and loads said they accidentally signed up by accident during the checkout flow.

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

#249

Post by dheera »

lurk2 wrote: post #225
dheera wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the days when Uber prices from SF to anywhere on the peninsula would suddenly spike exactly a minute or two after each Caltrain departed. If you just missed the train you paid a lot more. And then the many times that Lyft violated the triangle inequality in pricing: Ride from A->B followed by a ride from B->C was often cheaper than a direct ride from A->C, if you knew how to pick B correctly. I once confus…

> If you just missed the train you paid a lot more. That doesn’t strike me as malicious. If you just missed the train, other users probably did, too. How did you find the price differentials with Lyft?

> That doesn’t strike me as malicious. If you just missed the train, other users probably did, too.

You may not have started with malicious intent but you may have unintentionally created a malicious algorithm that learned to squeeze profits off of lower income people who normally take the train to save money but just missed it.

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

#250

Post by scantron4 »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #47

UberOne is why I almost never use UberEats any more and instead use a local competitor. Shortly after it was introduced it seemed every order of mine would get surprise delayed after pick up as the driver would have to first drop off a different order at >90° different direction from me, no doubt for the user who would get priority for being on UberOne. I don’t order food often enough to justify a subscription, so I…

Being on uber one does not prevent this. You get priority by paying another $3 to be priority, nothing else.
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