14 ms·

My Uber driver robbed me, so I took Uber to court and won

588 points by fischerq 9y ago

skinnymuch 9y ago
Wow what a crazy story. The twist half way through after the first court case was cool. Trying not to spoil anything for someone who hasn't read or finished reading the article. But first it sucks how much time was spent by everyone in the story especially the victim. It also sucks that if you have to go to court again because something comes up that shows the defense, Uber, in this case, did something clearly wrong that wasn't known the first time, you seemingly can't increase the amount you're suing for. So all the expenses of going back to court again, etc, come out of your pocket. That's lame. But at least you won in the end^. I'll be weary of Uber from now on and my belongings. I can't completly stop using Uber because of friends who don't care. Finally, who knows how other companies would handle this. Probably better, but, I don't know. ^ not a spoiler like a commentor noted because the title and URL both say he won
- BoorishBears 9y ago
  ... my bi-monthly reminder not to say anything tounge-in-cheek on HN, lest people trip overthemselves to remind you how you said something tounge-in-cheek and downvote you
  - bryanlarsen 9y ago
    That's also in the title, so isn't a spoiler.
  - 086421357909764 9y ago
    To be fair the title has and won in it.
  - skinnymuch 9y ago
    Yeah I wasn't going to include it until I verified the title and URL both include that. I'll clarify in my post.
  - wutbrodo 9y ago
    > ... my bi-monthly reminder not to say anything tounge-in-cheek on HN, lest people trip overthemselves to remind you how you said something tounge-in-cheek and downvote you just avoid the hassle and use "/s"
  - skinnymuch 9y ago
    Damn sorry that you were kidding around. I'm the OP and I thought you were being completely serious. I immediately felt bad for you and hoped you wouldn't get downvoted into gray. I agree it is hard to be tongue in cheek on HN. I have to remind myself of that too. At least your happiness isn't dependent on your karma ;).
mrob 9y ago
Misleading title. Robbery is theft by force or threat of force. Although the author says he was "robbed", he alleges theft by driving off with his bag, no violence involved.
- robert12345 9y ago
  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/robbing https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/robbing to remove valuables without right from (a place) Does not need to be violent to be a robbery
  - haberman 9y ago
    It's a legal term, the legal definition is that robbery involves physical force or fear: http://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2015/01/whats-the-difference-between-burglary-robbery-and-theft.html http://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2015/01/whats-the-differenc...
    - Retric 9y ago
      As this is not a court room we are not so bound.
      - haberman 9y ago
        Merriam-Webster also added a definition for "literally" that means "virtually." https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally So sure, you could cite a dictionary as license to use words in misleading ways because other (confused) people have made an unhelpful definition commonplace. But some people actually care about using words to convey meaning, and care about the difference between "robbery" and "theft."
        chc 9y ago
        The "difference" between robbery and theft exists primarily in legal jargon, and was never sharply defined in common usage. Regardless of your distaste for "literally," the dictionary is a much better source on colloquial usage than the penal code.
startupdiscuss 9y ago
For me, the most heartbreaking aspect of this story is the sheer amount of time and effort that had to be squandered. You could probably have designed an app, coded a site, or written a small novel with that time.
- darepublic 9y ago
  That code could have in turn saved other people from menial tasks. Enriching the lives of billions.
  - startupdiscuss 9y ago
    The natural conclusion is that someone should write a piece of code to manage evidence and file small claims suits in various municipalities. Surely no one would ever abuse such a tool.
- foobarbazetc 9y ago
  Yeah, or you could get your $4000 back...
  - startupdiscuss 9y ago
    I'm just saying what a waste of time just because of this one strange random event. I am not saying it was (or was not) worth it.
    - foobarbazetc 9y ago
      Sure, but you can't always optimize your life for 100% operational productivity/efficiency. Sometimes it really is the principle of the thing. Also it's good to have this data point out there for people to see how Uber operates behind the scenes.
- mchanson 9y ago
  Sure, but there is principle involved here which makes it worth the time invested. The driver who stole the backpack full of gear should not be in a position of trust with other people's belongings. Following the thread to make yourself whole and also hopefully to have some repercussion for the thief is worth while.
pilsetnieks 9y ago
> I ended up going to an Apple store as they had just made everything in their laptops Type-C, but in typical Apple fashion they were $90 and that just seemed outrageous. Not too far away a Microsoft store had a charger for only $30, so I bought that instead. Was this nugget really necessary? And, by the way, a laptop charger for $90 is a reasonable price; if anything, I'd be more outraged about a $30 phone charger.
- flerchin 9y ago
  No it's not. The BoM is at most $10.
- Dryken 9y ago
  no 90$ for an item that doesn't even 15$ to make is not a reasonable price !
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Only if you care about the quality of the charger that can easily smoke your $2000 laptop.
    - burkaman 9y ago
      Do you think the Microsoft store is selling chargers that will set your laptop on fire?
      - valuearb 9y ago
        I can believe they aren't up to Apple's standards for their laptops.
        PhasmaFelis 9y ago
        I don't have a USB-C Mac, but but Apple's $80 MagSafe chargers aren't actually very good. They don't have basic strain relief sleeves on the cables, so they get kinked at the ends and fray/melt/stop working after a year or two of regular use. This has been a problem for more than 10 years and Apple's never done anything about it. I can only imagine it's because they think the strain relief is ugly, which is one of those random bits of belligerent incompetence that's really frustrating as a Mac fan.
dmitrygr 9y ago
A fun read. Glad the author prevailed. Not surprised at uber's action, sadly. Claiming they do not control the drivers' actions is their norm.
- netsharc 9y ago
  Is it really a fun read? I skimmed through the first few paragraphs and it seemed he mentioned dota, his dad, his old job, how his flight was...
  - PacketPaul 9y ago
    I agree. It was like listening to my six year old tell me what happened. Every story begins when he woke.
  - whostolemyhat 9y ago
    Couple of mentions of watching films on his phone...
  - softawre 9y ago
    It is interesting if you skip the first 50%..
baby 9y ago
Damn, one of my driver drove with my girlfriend's phone, we were waving to him but he didn't stop. We managed to call him via the app and he said he would send it back to us but never did. After that it was impossible to do anything/contact him via Uber :/
- devoply 9y ago
  I wonder what recourse you have with a real taxi. I am sure the company contracting a taxi driver would consider firing a driver that steals your stuff. Especially after a few complaints. The main problem seems to be Uber's unresponsiveness to the whole issue. It would not be hard for them to set up some sort of system to prevent fraud and theft and to punish drivers accused of that sort of thing, and to kick them out of the system after a certain number of complaints.
  - gsnedders 9y ago
    It depends a lot on where you are, and whether you knew the identity of the car. I once lost my phone in a private hire in the UK (these are essentially less tightly regulated taxis that cannot pick people up off the street, they must be pre-booked only, and are what Uber operates as), and having emailed the office kept getting told that he was going to hand it in to the police as lost property "tomorrow" for a number of days. In the end, I told them that unless he handed it in within a further three days I would go to the police and make a complaint of theft against the driver, with all the emails between me and their office as evidence that a) they knew who the driver was even though they wouldn't tell me, and that b) he had it. Surprisingly enough, it got handed in within a couple of hours after that.
  - tacon 9y ago
    I'm displaying my single use of Uber to date, but if the driver steals your phone, can you ever give him a one star review? I thought a couple of one stars and he never drives for Uber again. But if he inoculates himself from reviews, that is quite a hack of the system.
  - matthewowen 9y ago
    This is a tired argument. Yes, it's harder with a taxi. Less proof / information about exactly which taxi you were in. But Uber doesn't get to simultaneously claim to be safer than taxis because of the data being tracked whilst also not using that data to help prevent and prosecute crimes.
water42 9y ago
before uber, I don't think I've ever rooted for a company to fail
- chronic7ul 9y ago
  Travis is walking away as a multi-million dollar man. This is whether you root for Uber or not.
  - StreamBright 9y ago
    I do not care about Travis that much as I care about the next victims of this rip-off machine what uber became in the recent years.
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    Some of us measure worth in things more than dollars, and some are the more impoverished for not doing so.
  - foobarbazetc 9y ago
    What does that have to do with this though? Plenty of rich people aren't nice.
- forgot-my-pw 9y ago
  Oracle is in most people's list too.
  - rrobukef 9y ago
    Microsoft too
    - ReverseCold 9y ago
      Why? Did Microsoft do something?
      - 9y ago
hsod 9y ago
Interesting story, but I think it was a bit unfair to Uber. I'm glad this guy was made whole, but I'm not sure Uber's reluctance to paying you 4000 dollars because a driver stole your backpack qualifies as corruption. From what I can tell, the worst thing Uber did was not be sufficiently cooperative with the police investigation. This part of the narrative is extremely muddled and unclear, so it's hard to take a strong position on their behavior here.
- mchanson 9y ago
  When one of your customers accuses one of your agents of stealing > $1,000 of stuff from them you should get to the bottom of it. Anything else is poor customer service and apparently also enough to get a magistrate to rule them liable for the theft.
  - FireBeyond 9y ago
    Oh no, that's not the Uber way. They're not agents, they're independent contractors and the Uber rep said in court "we have absolutely no control over what they do, and no responsibility for what they do"...
    - Chronos 9y ago
      Which is a blatant lie, or else Uber wouldn't bother with the expense of driver background checks and the like.
- EnFinlay 9y ago
  The narrative around that is crystal clear. He filed a police report, and when the police went to Uber they gave incorrect information. They cooperated exactly like an accomplice giving a false alibi, actually.
  - hsod 9y ago
    Is it? "It was later asserted that they reached out to the police detective to clear this up. They found the information and tried to contact the detective with all the information." "If you are curious as to when this happened, it was April 9th. Uber did everything in their power to make the investigation successful and cooperate with the detective, on April 9th, 2017, four months after the incident. They also only reached out to the detective with the correct information once they were caught obstructing the investigation." How exactly did Uber obstruct the investigation? What incorrect information did they give? Maybe I'm thick, but it's not clear to me at all from the article.
tbrake 9y ago
I don't get the "should have heard the car drive away and chased him" angle they twice tried. He should be at fault for not being as fast as a car? Most people aren't going to be able to run at >10mph for very long, forget about anything more. And even then, suppose he had caught up to the car and the driver didn't want to stop. Just slimy.
- waqf 9y ago
  That's not what they were trying to argue. They were trying to argue that the video of the car leaving as soon as he got out (and him continuing to walk away) proved that he was expecting the car to leave as soon as he got out, therefore he was lying to the court about having intentionally left a backpack in the car.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Could be some middle ground. That video doesn't really help his case to me. He knows the car is in the middle of the street, and not parked. The driver does start rolling while the passenger is clearly very close to the car. Even if you assume he didn't notice the car leaving, it seems to speak to the drivers intent. If the driver was intending to steal something, why risk pulling away when the owner of the bag is so close? It's plausible to me that the driver didn't hear, or didn't pay full attention to the request to wait, and just pulled away...and that the bag was taken by a later passenger. I would have been happy to get the money, and probably would have skipped the blog post.
    - codedokode 9y ago
      This doesn't explain why the driver didn't return any calls. And in this case Uber could give data about that passenger to the police.
      - tyingq 9y ago
        Sure. I've heard of that problem, both with Uber and Lyft, on things that had nothing to do with fraud though. I don't know that either company does anything to reward drivers that answer calls/texts, or punish those that don't.
dba7dba 9y ago
Note to self, "leave doors/trunks open UNTIL I am positive all my luggages are out of the car."
- RangerScience 9y ago
  I do this. I also keep the most valuable stuff with me (re: backpack on) while doing this. But also generally the driver gets out with me to help get the luggage out...?
- gav 9y ago
  If I have luggage in the truck, I'm always concerned that the driver may simply forget and drive off. Leaving the passenger door open until you get your luggage is good advice.
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  Given that the driver did this intentionally, is there anything preventing the driver from taking off with an open trunk? Hell, from the video footage in this article, even an open door wouldn't have done much. He could easily drive a block in a residential area with an open door and then pull over and quickly close the door.
  - 0xfeba 9y ago
    Nope. Take off strong enough and the doors close shut, some trunks too.
    - jldugger 9y ago
      And good news, an EV has constant torque!
    - wutbrodo 9y ago
      Yea, I was giving the strongest form of the argument but this would probably work too. In the video, the guy took off pretty slowly to minimize sound so I didn't mention this possibility.
valuearb 9y ago
Really poorly written. Spends far too long in getting to the event, and really confusing about the court proceedings.
- teen 9y ago
  The guy makes hot sauce, what do you expect? I thought it was a pretty good read. Although I'm familiar with FYM from Dota 2. (Love Team NP)
- rustid 9y ago
  Sorry, I am not a writer by trade. I was trying to give every bit of information and I know it was longwinded but I am not good at cutting things out.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jszymborski 9y ago
Any anecdotal stories about losing items in traditional Taxis? The first clerk didn't think that ever worked out, wondering about that claim...
- smsm42 9y ago
  You would probably get zilch. People think filing a suit against Uber is bad because they big and have lawyers and stuff. But at least there's a large target. Try suing a private cabman, when you discover owner of the license and the driver are completely different people, and nobody wants to talk to you, and their terms of service, which you have never seen but implicitly accepted, say they are not responsible for anything. And unlike Uber they are not concerned at all about the bad press, and if you sue them them might obstruct and delay you every way possible (or the driver might just disappear and the owner disclaim any responsibility because they just own a medallion and have no idea about what the driver does when), and even if you win they could just refuse to pay up and you'd have to figure out how to get money out of them, while living on the other end of the country. At least Uber is a big target that can be found, forced to disclose the data that you know they always have, and if you win, you have reasonable assurance you get the money.
  - gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
    I thought traditional Taxis assumed liability.
    - smsm42 9y ago
      Who exactly assumes it? Driver? Whoever hired him? Whoever owns the medallion? I think it'd be non-trivial to even figure out who to sue, let alone win it.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
king_panic 9y ago
did anyone else notice this blog post is on site that sells hot sauce?
- VA3FXP 9y ago
  Actually because I use NoScript, nothing at all shows up when I visit that URL. Empty white page. Defective site design.
  - jmcdiesel 9y ago
    "I block HTML and your site doesnt load for me, defective site!" I know JS isnt HTML, but at this point, it basically is. Complaining that a site is broken because you choose to break it is just astounding.
    - jszymborski 9y ago
      > but at this point, it basically is. Normally, I find belly-aching about something not looking right or not working right because NoScript is on is silly. But I find it astounding that this page requires javascript to display the text of a _blog post_. What is so important that your site completely shits the bed and fails so badly that it shows nothing but a white screen. Frankly, I think Shopify just purposely sabotages the page because they want you to enable javascript so they can enable analytics and track you across their sites. Not to mention they load code from Google APIs, Google Analytic, Shopify.com, Embed.ly, Gfycat.com, and Mlveda.com, which means I'm suddenly running code from websites I never intended on visiting. Why should visiting https://fymhotsauce.rocks https://fymhotsauce.rocks send a road flare to all those services? You're right, this is the new normal, but it's shit and we should be complaining.
    - parshimers 9y ago
      That's not why the site is broken if you're using uBlock/NoScript. It's broken because it loads everything (even the text of the site) from 3rd party domains and scripts.
paulcole 9y ago
>Before my hot sauce set a record on Kickstarter I would've liked to know more about this relevant detail.
- jamie_ca 9y ago
  $64k in 2014, $13k in 2016. Pretty sure that's just his inner salesman speaking.
theprop 9y ago
Awesome work!! Great story about how awful the legal system is given the amount of effort and work you had to go through. You deserved a lot more than just that $4k. I personally feel bad that it's only after reading this that I'm going to stop using Uber as well...despite all of the terrible stuff that's going on over there, I was willing to strike up to "growing pains" or "bad apples", since I wrongly believed they were 100% committed to their users. That's clearly not the case so there's no more Uber for me.
gravypod 9y ago
"I just didn’t buy that a company could just get away with that business model. Hire anyone with a car, facilitate everything, and have no responsibility for what happens in the cars." If I got food sick from something I ordered off GrubHub could I sue them?
- daveguy 9y ago
  No, but you could if their delivery driver robbed you.
  - gravypod 9y ago
    GrubHub doesn't provide the drivers. They facilitate orders. They don't have anything to do with who delivers.
    - daveguy 9y ago
      That was Uber's argument too. They lost.
- thisone 9y ago
  if grubhub's practices meant that you received food that made you ill, you may have a case.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- joeyo 9y ago
  If the food poisoning was due to negligence, I don't see why not.
- markkanof 9y ago
  It's an interesting thought exercise, but I don't think GrubHub is really the same situation. The restaurants that you order from on GrubHub exist as businesses and serve food regardless if GrubHub is facilitating delivery or not. If the GrubHub driver robbed you when they showed up at your house, then yes, I would think you might be able to sue them.
sjg007 9y ago
Uber and Lyft are here to stay and if not them then someone else. Cabs suck.
ivraatiems 9y ago
I'm glad this worked out for the OP. However, I think he may have made a couple mistakes that could have been avoided for a smoother process. The big one is not retaining an attorney. No, he doesn't have to for small claims court, but Uber clearly had its legal team looking at this. Now, I understand that lawyers are expensive and carry their own issues - but if he'd won the case with an attorney, he could potentially have secured attorney's fees as well. Plus, a good way to make a company cave on an issue like this is to say "direct all requests to my attorney; I'm not speaking to you on this matter." I realize getting a lawyer isn't always feasible, though, especially in small claims, so I'll assume it just wasn't possible for this case (also, I'm not a lawyer, this is just based on my understanding of the small claims process). Still, giving Uber all the evidence in the case after a suit had been filed but before any discovery had been ordered was a misstep. Small claims court rarely has formal discovery - the process by which each side finds and turns over evidence to the other side. The OP was - as far as I can tell - under no obligation to give evidence to the Uber rep of any kind. He should not have; they used it against him. What he should have done was say "we can discuss this in court, or you can make me whole now and avoid that," and NOTHING else. Edit: A line I really enjoyed from the piece: "They were a company that shows blatant disrespect to authority, operating illegally in cities and using technology to intentionally avoid law enforcement." Yep. That's Uber in a nutshell. Well played.
- jessriedel 9y ago
  I get that big companies are not your friend, but is it really necessary to wage total war by using all possible legal advantages and issuing ultimatums? "Here is the evidence I have that you're in the wrong" can sometimes hurt you later in court, but it can avoid the entire mess by convincing the party that they will likely lose, or yield a compromise.
  - schwap 9y ago
    > I get that big companies are not your friend, but is it really necessary to wage total war by using all possible legal advantages and issuing ultimatums? I think when you're facing a large entity and their thousands of dollars per billable hour legal team, it makes sense to leverage any advantage you can.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
I don't fault the driver. He's just following the normal standards of conduct for business transactions in Massachusetts. I say this as someone who had the misfortune of growing up there. I'm only being sarcastic about not faulting the driver. Unless you're trying to grow your customer base or know the person you screw them. It's just how things are done.
jellicle 9y ago
You know, if Uber employees started going to jail when they lied to the government, the culture would probably change pretty fast.
hosh 9y ago
I wonder -- with a company culture on the lookout for loopholes and exploits in order to enter markets, do they tend to see that by default in the behavior of others? This guy got accused of deliberately leaving his bag in the car. There was also that incident with the rape, and the executive who brought back confidential files to discuss whether that was a fraud. It is as if, "I think you are trying to commit fraud here ... because that is what I can imagine trying to pull off myself."
Pxtl 9y ago
11 paragraphs of self-promotion before getting to the meat.
- rustid 9y ago
  I wanted to give people knowledge of what I went through so they would be able to avoid what happened to me.
  - Pxtl 9y ago
    I'm very happy for your successful kickstarter and your relationship with an LoL team is quite cool, but it doesn't exactly appear really naturally in your post.
    - rustid 9y ago
      Obviously I am longwinded. I was trying to give backstory as to why I left my IT career to make hot sauce. I had a successful (record breaking) crowdfunding campaign that gave me the confidence to change my entire life.
  - netsharc 9y ago
    I'm about to go to bed so I only skimmed through the first 10-11 paragraphs, but how is your dad calling you, and what you used to do before, and how comfy your flight was, relevant to the story? Maybe it was, and hey, it's your story, but my thought was "Damn, he got off on a tangent, on a tangent!"
    - aembleton 9y ago
      The comfiness of the flight is the reason for taking the photo that was then used in court. Yes, it is relevant.
      - watmough 9y ago
        "I'll allow it."
Bahamut 9y ago
This is sad to hear, and while I don't use Uber anymore, I did have one great experience - my phone slipped out of my pocket into the car as I was getting out, and the car drove off as I got out and did not carry anything there. I was able to contact the last driver by logging into the app from a hotel employee's phone and arrange a pickup not too long later. I gave her a generous cash tip and many thanks for doing the right thing, as I was far away from my home in the Bay Area (was in Savannah for a race).
module0000 9y ago
This guy took the high road - once he had the license plate and an address, this could have taken a very different turn. If you're into someone for $4,000, it's a coin flip whether they invest effort into getting it back, or invest another $4,000 for someone else to get you back. If you are going to steal from someone, always keep that in the back of your mind... you don't know what type of person you're stealing from. Maybe it's an easy mark, or maybe it's a vindictive psychopath that would love an excuse to pull your teeth out in his basement over the next 30 days. "Risk vs Reward" and all that...
- escapetech 9y ago
  > This could have taken a very different turn. Until something similar happens to them, people often take for granted living in a society where the legal process is relatively accessible to those needing it.
iplaw 9y ago
Ultimately, Uber did not want to establish a precedent for liability. What they should have done is settled for $4,000 and forced the victim to sign an NDA, ensuring that this little conflict remained private. Instead, in usual Uber fashion, the legal and HR team worked their magic and created a lose-lose-lose situation for themselves: 1. They established precedent for liability; 2. They obstructed justice, which could be used as fodder in subsequent lawsuits; and 3. They did nothing to prevent this story from being broadcasted far and wide.
- gpm 9y ago
  I don't believe ruling before a magistrate judge in small claims court create precedent in a legal sense, though if you just mean it will inspire others to do the same, agreed.
freeplatform 9y ago
I get that the court process is the main part of the story, but I still can't believe that you left $4k worth of equipment in the car with a stranger. I guess I'm just much more paranoid. Also, that's how I view taxi drivers as well as Uber/Lyft drivers. Sure there are some protections like background checks and tracking, but at the end of the day it is a stranger we don't know, and anything could happen, so we probably should at least be a bit hesitant.
- rustid 9y ago
  I won't make that mistake again. If I were giving someone a ride I would have helped them with their bags and not thought about taking them. I assumed people shared that quality.
sivex 9y ago
Not a single comment on here about using insurance. I know that a backpack with a laptop can be stolen out of someone else's car and cut-rate renters insurance will cover it. I don't really think Uber was the correct person to foot this bill, I think this is the same as someone grabbing your purse from you when walking down the street. You either have decent insurance or you're SOL
- vkou 9y ago
  If Comcast sent a contractor over to your house, to hook up cable, and the tech stole your TV, is Comcast liable for this? If you check into a hotel, and the bellboy steals your luggage, is the hotel liable for it? If you hired a roofing company to fix your roof, they subcontracted it to another firm, which came and set your house on fire, are the roofers also not liable? Especially after they spend a few months trying to prevent you and the police from getting in touch with the subcontractors? This smells of criminal conspiracy.
- shuntress 9y ago
  >I think this is the same as someone grabbing your purse from you when walking down the street. It is not the same as someone grabbing your purse when you are walking down the street. Unless the person who grabbed your purse was hired by you through an agency to hold your bags and walk you down the street before they ran off with your purse.
- rustid 9y ago
  My insurance didn't cover it
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
hoodoof 9y ago
Can I say that I had the inverse experience where an Uber driver drove off with something that I left in the trunk of the car. He went to considerable effort over multiple calls over a few days of coordinating and attempts for me to get it back, until eventually I got it back intact. It was a first class customer service experience.
- ctvo 9y ago
  I'm glad it worked out for you. It enforces the point of the article: your experience with Uber is entirely influenced by your driver. If you happen to have a bad one (like the author), Uber takes no responsibility (contractor contractor contractor!), and your only recourse is considerable time and effort taking them to court.
qb45 9y ago
The detective in charge of my case sent me the police report. She had contacted the official law enforcement department of Uber to get more information. She gave Uber the date and time of the ride, as well as the license plate of the vehicle and name of the driver. The Uber department responded that they had no record of a trip from the vehicle with that license plate on December 5th, 2016, just after 11 PM, and the driver had not driven with them for 2 years. Funny, I came here to rant that Uber shouldn't really be responsible for that and the OP should have sued the driver instead, but if this is their response then they totally deserved everything they got and more. How is it even possible to get away with lying to the police like that? They should be in serious trouble for this alone.
- caf 9y ago
  Individuals lie to police. Corporations merely make unfortunate errors that they are only too happy to correct now that it has been brought to our attention, sir.
codedokode 9y ago
So in the end Uber got away with obstructing justice and the driver got away with theft. It is surprising that police cannot find the thief even knowing his identity.
- lathiat 9y ago
  That's the most ridiculous part; in theory you could have discovery to actually get the drivers details and then take the driver to small claims. in practice even for $4000 you're stretching it being worth it in many jurisdictions.
linkmotif 9y ago
What I don’t understand about Uber after all these months/years of them being horrible to customers is: Why? #1 rule of capitalism is to coddle your customers as much as possible at every possible expense while still remaining profitable. Why does Uber act so 2nd World?
redwyvern 9y ago
Deleting Uber
ElijahLynn 9y ago
This reads a lot like The Rosie Project, which is a great read!
uptown 9y ago
What kind of snacks did you eat on the plane?
cakedoggie 9y ago
I tried reading this, when does the guy get to the point? I am not sure what Dota, or his dad, or his hot sauce or his awesome flight has to do with any of this? Ok, go about 2 pages down, and you can skip the incredibly detailed discussion of his exiting the car. This seems more like the driver thought he had all his bags, the door was closed, a simple mistake. But no, the driver was a master thief, spying him using stuff in his bag and racing off (at an incredibly slow pace according to the video). Good on the guy for following up with this, and it is an interesting story. > They were a company that shows blatant disrespect to authority, operating illegally in cities and using technology to intentionally avoid law enforcement. This is true, and well known. And if you knowingly use Uber, you understand this.
olegkikin 9y ago
You should've added like $50K of punitive damages. The fact that they lied to the police and got away with it is crazy. You didn't even break even, considering how much time and research you spent.
revmoo 9y ago
Fantastic writeup, thanks
frostymarvelous 9y ago
On a night out drinking, a friend invited their uber driver to join them as they had a great connection (this is Africa so its not really strange). At the end of the night, said friend forgot all his devices in the ride and after trying to reach the driver for days and failing, we reported the issue to uber. Uber called the driver and he denied he'd seen the devices. Uber basically gave us the finger and told us they could do nothing.
- kbart 9y ago
  Sorry to hear, but this sounds like you friend's fault. How does he really knows that driver took these devices? Maybe he lost them somewhere else (he was intoxicated, after all) or maybe the next passenger took them? If this has happened in a bus, would you blame a bus driver too?
  - frostymarvelous 9y ago
    There were 4 of them out that night. And the driver closed for the day to hang with them. After he dropped them, they realized the devices were still in the car, and immediately tried to reach him. And he never picked up. Well, he never pursued the issue further and left it at that. I've had some rather good experiences e.g. where the driver called me, and brought back the stuff to me after he was done at the end of the day and refused to take any money as a reward. I guess it all depends on the person.
AngeloAnolin 9y ago
This. "Ultimately I am sad that the company that is trying to reform the taxi industry is so corrupt."

588 points by fischerq 9y ago

Wow what a crazy story. The twist half way through after the first court case was cool. Trying not to spoil anything for someone who hasn't read or finished reading the article. But first it sucks how much time was spent by everyone in the story especially the victim. It also sucks that if you have to go to court again because something comes up that shows the defense, Uber, in this case, did something clearly wrong that wasn't known the first time, you seemingly can't increase the amount you're suing for. So all the expenses of going back to court again, etc, come out of your pocket. That's lame. But at least you won in the end^. I'll be weary of Uber from now on and my belongings. I can't completly stop using Uber because of friends who don't care. Finally, who knows how other companies would handle this. Probably better, but, I don't know. ^ not a spoiler like a commentor noted because the title and URL both say he won

BoorishBears 9y ago
... my bi-monthly reminder not to say anything tounge-in-cheek on HN, lest people trip overthemselves to remind you how you said something tounge-in-cheek and downvote you
- bryanlarsen 9y ago
  That's also in the title, so isn't a spoiler.
- 086421357909764 9y ago
  To be fair the title has and won in it.
- skinnymuch 9y ago
  Yeah I wasn't going to include it until I verified the title and URL both include that. I'll clarify in my post.
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  > ... my bi-monthly reminder not to say anything tounge-in-cheek on HN, lest people trip overthemselves to remind you how you said something tounge-in-cheek and downvote you just avoid the hassle and use "/s"
- skinnymuch 9y ago
  Damn sorry that you were kidding around. I'm the OP and I thought you were being completely serious. I immediately felt bad for you and hoped you wouldn't get downvoted into gray. I agree it is hard to be tongue in cheek on HN. I have to remind myself of that too. At least your happiness isn't dependent on your karma ;).

mrob 9y ago

Misleading title. Robbery is theft by force or threat of force. Although the author says he was "robbed", he alleges theft by driving off with his bag, no violence involved.

robert12345 9y ago
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/robbing https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/robbing to remove valuables without right from (a place) Does not need to be violent to be a robbery
- haberman 9y ago
  It's a legal term, the legal definition is that robbery involves physical force or fear: http://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2015/01/whats-the-difference-between-burglary-robbery-and-theft.html http://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2015/01/whats-the-differenc...
  - Retric 9y ago
    As this is not a court room we are not so bound.
    - haberman 9y ago
      Merriam-Webster also added a definition for "literally" that means "virtually." https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally So sure, you could cite a dictionary as license to use words in misleading ways because other (confused) people have made an unhelpful definition commonplace. But some people actually care about using words to convey meaning, and care about the difference between "robbery" and "theft."
      - chc 9y ago
        The "difference" between robbery and theft exists primarily in legal jargon, and was never sharply defined in common usage. Regardless of your distaste for "literally," the dictionary is a much better source on colloquial usage than the penal code.

startupdiscuss 9y ago

For me, the most heartbreaking aspect of this story is the sheer amount of time and effort that had to be squandered. You could probably have designed an app, coded a site, or written a small novel with that time.

darepublic 9y ago
That code could have in turn saved other people from menial tasks. Enriching the lives of billions.
- startupdiscuss 9y ago
  The natural conclusion is that someone should write a piece of code to manage evidence and file small claims suits in various municipalities. Surely no one would ever abuse such a tool.
foobarbazetc 9y ago
Yeah, or you could get your $4000 back...
- startupdiscuss 9y ago
  I'm just saying what a waste of time just because of this one strange random event. I am not saying it was (or was not) worth it.
  - foobarbazetc 9y ago
    Sure, but you can't always optimize your life for 100% operational productivity/efficiency. Sometimes it really is the principle of the thing. Also it's good to have this data point out there for people to see how Uber operates behind the scenes.
mchanson 9y ago
Sure, but there is principle involved here which makes it worth the time invested. The driver who stole the backpack full of gear should not be in a position of trust with other people's belongings. Following the thread to make yourself whole and also hopefully to have some repercussion for the thief is worth while.

pilsetnieks 9y ago

> I ended up going to an Apple store as they had just made everything in their laptops Type-C, but in typical Apple fashion they were $90 and that just seemed outrageous. Not too far away a Microsoft store had a charger for only $30, so I bought that instead. Was this nugget really necessary? And, by the way, a laptop charger for $90 is a reasonable price; if anything, I'd be more outraged about a $30 phone charger.

flerchin 9y ago
No it's not. The BoM is at most $10.
Dryken 9y ago
no 90$ for an item that doesn't even 15$ to make is not a reasonable price !
- valuearb 9y ago
  Only if you care about the quality of the charger that can easily smoke your $2000 laptop.
  - burkaman 9y ago
    Do you think the Microsoft store is selling chargers that will set your laptop on fire?
    - valuearb 9y ago
      I can believe they aren't up to Apple's standards for their laptops.
      - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
        I don't have a USB-C Mac, but but Apple's $80 MagSafe chargers aren't actually very good. They don't have basic strain relief sleeves on the cables, so they get kinked at the ends and fray/melt/stop working after a year or two of regular use. This has been a problem for more than 10 years and Apple's never done anything about it. I can only imagine it's because they think the strain relief is ugly, which is one of those random bits of belligerent incompetence that's really frustrating as a Mac fan.

dmitrygr 9y ago

A fun read. Glad the author prevailed. Not surprised at uber's action, sadly. Claiming they do not control the drivers' actions is their norm.

netsharc 9y ago
Is it really a fun read? I skimmed through the first few paragraphs and it seemed he mentioned dota, his dad, his old job, how his flight was...
- PacketPaul 9y ago
  I agree. It was like listening to my six year old tell me what happened. Every story begins when he woke.
- whostolemyhat 9y ago
  Couple of mentions of watching films on his phone...
- softawre 9y ago
  It is interesting if you skip the first 50%..

baby 9y ago

Damn, one of my driver drove with my girlfriend's phone, we were waving to him but he didn't stop. We managed to call him via the app and he said he would send it back to us but never did. After that it was impossible to do anything/contact him via Uber :/

devoply 9y ago
I wonder what recourse you have with a real taxi. I am sure the company contracting a taxi driver would consider firing a driver that steals your stuff. Especially after a few complaints. The main problem seems to be Uber's unresponsiveness to the whole issue. It would not be hard for them to set up some sort of system to prevent fraud and theft and to punish drivers accused of that sort of thing, and to kick them out of the system after a certain number of complaints.
- gsnedders 9y ago
  It depends a lot on where you are, and whether you knew the identity of the car. I once lost my phone in a private hire in the UK (these are essentially less tightly regulated taxis that cannot pick people up off the street, they must be pre-booked only, and are what Uber operates as), and having emailed the office kept getting told that he was going to hand it in to the police as lost property "tomorrow" for a number of days. In the end, I told them that unless he handed it in within a further three days I would go to the police and make a complaint of theft against the driver, with all the emails between me and their office as evidence that a) they knew who the driver was even though they wouldn't tell me, and that b) he had it. Surprisingly enough, it got handed in within a couple of hours after that.
- tacon 9y ago
  I'm displaying my single use of Uber to date, but if the driver steals your phone, can you ever give him a one star review? I thought a couple of one stars and he never drives for Uber again. But if he inoculates himself from reviews, that is quite a hack of the system.
- matthewowen 9y ago
  This is a tired argument. Yes, it's harder with a taxi. Less proof / information about exactly which taxi you were in. But Uber doesn't get to simultaneously claim to be safer than taxis because of the data being tracked whilst also not using that data to help prevent and prosecute crimes.

water42 9y ago

before uber, I don't think I've ever rooted for a company to fail

chronic7ul 9y ago
Travis is walking away as a multi-million dollar man. This is whether you root for Uber or not.
- StreamBright 9y ago
  I do not care about Travis that much as I care about the next victims of this rip-off machine what uber became in the recent years.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  Some of us measure worth in things more than dollars, and some are the more impoverished for not doing so.
- foobarbazetc 9y ago
  What does that have to do with this though? Plenty of rich people aren't nice.
forgot-my-pw 9y ago
Oracle is in most people's list too.
- rrobukef 9y ago
  Microsoft too
  - ReverseCold 9y ago
    Why? Did Microsoft do something?
    - 9y ago

hsod 9y ago

Interesting story, but I think it was a bit unfair to Uber. I'm glad this guy was made whole, but I'm not sure Uber's reluctance to paying you 4000 dollars because a driver stole your backpack qualifies as corruption. From what I can tell, the worst thing Uber did was not be sufficiently cooperative with the police investigation. This part of the narrative is extremely muddled and unclear, so it's hard to take a strong position on their behavior here.

mchanson 9y ago
When one of your customers accuses one of your agents of stealing > $1,000 of stuff from them you should get to the bottom of it. Anything else is poor customer service and apparently also enough to get a magistrate to rule them liable for the theft.
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  Oh no, that's not the Uber way. They're not agents, they're independent contractors and the Uber rep said in court "we have absolutely no control over what they do, and no responsibility for what they do"...
  - Chronos 9y ago
    Which is a blatant lie, or else Uber wouldn't bother with the expense of driver background checks and the like.
EnFinlay 9y ago
The narrative around that is crystal clear. He filed a police report, and when the police went to Uber they gave incorrect information. They cooperated exactly like an accomplice giving a false alibi, actually.
- hsod 9y ago
  Is it? "It was later asserted that they reached out to the police detective to clear this up. They found the information and tried to contact the detective with all the information." "If you are curious as to when this happened, it was April 9th. Uber did everything in their power to make the investigation successful and cooperate with the detective, on April 9th, 2017, four months after the incident. They also only reached out to the detective with the correct information once they were caught obstructing the investigation." How exactly did Uber obstruct the investigation? What incorrect information did they give? Maybe I'm thick, but it's not clear to me at all from the article.

tbrake 9y ago

I don't get the "should have heard the car drive away and chased him" angle they twice tried. He should be at fault for not being as fast as a car? Most people aren't going to be able to run at >10mph for very long, forget about anything more. And even then, suppose he had caught up to the car and the driver didn't want to stop. Just slimy.

waqf 9y ago
That's not what they were trying to argue. They were trying to argue that the video of the car leaving as soon as he got out (and him continuing to walk away) proved that he was expecting the car to leave as soon as he got out, therefore he was lying to the court about having intentionally left a backpack in the car.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Could be some middle ground. That video doesn't really help his case to me. He knows the car is in the middle of the street, and not parked. The driver does start rolling while the passenger is clearly very close to the car. Even if you assume he didn't notice the car leaving, it seems to speak to the drivers intent. If the driver was intending to steal something, why risk pulling away when the owner of the bag is so close? It's plausible to me that the driver didn't hear, or didn't pay full attention to the request to wait, and just pulled away...and that the bag was taken by a later passenger. I would have been happy to get the money, and probably would have skipped the blog post.
  - codedokode 9y ago
    This doesn't explain why the driver didn't return any calls. And in this case Uber could give data about that passenger to the police.
    - tyingq 9y ago
      Sure. I've heard of that problem, both with Uber and Lyft, on things that had nothing to do with fraud though. I don't know that either company does anything to reward drivers that answer calls/texts, or punish those that don't.

dba7dba 9y ago

Note to self, "leave doors/trunks open UNTIL I am positive all my luggages are out of the car."

RangerScience 9y ago
I do this. I also keep the most valuable stuff with me (re: backpack on) while doing this. But also generally the driver gets out with me to help get the luggage out...?
gav 9y ago
If I have luggage in the truck, I'm always concerned that the driver may simply forget and drive off. Leaving the passenger door open until you get your luggage is good advice.
wutbrodo 9y ago
Given that the driver did this intentionally, is there anything preventing the driver from taking off with an open trunk? Hell, from the video footage in this article, even an open door wouldn't have done much. He could easily drive a block in a residential area with an open door and then pull over and quickly close the door.
- 0xfeba 9y ago
  Nope. Take off strong enough and the doors close shut, some trunks too.
  - jldugger 9y ago
    And good news, an EV has constant torque!
  - wutbrodo 9y ago
    Yea, I was giving the strongest form of the argument but this would probably work too. In the video, the guy took off pretty slowly to minimize sound so I didn't mention this possibility.

valuearb 9y ago

Really poorly written. Spends far too long in getting to the event, and really confusing about the court proceedings.

teen 9y ago
The guy makes hot sauce, what do you expect? I thought it was a pretty good read. Although I'm familiar with FYM from Dota 2. (Love Team NP)
rustid 9y ago
Sorry, I am not a writer by trade. I was trying to give every bit of information and I know it was longwinded but I am not good at cutting things out.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jszymborski 9y ago

Any anecdotal stories about losing items in traditional Taxis? The first clerk didn't think that ever worked out, wondering about that claim...

smsm42 9y ago
You would probably get zilch. People think filing a suit against Uber is bad because they big and have lawyers and stuff. But at least there's a large target. Try suing a private cabman, when you discover owner of the license and the driver are completely different people, and nobody wants to talk to you, and their terms of service, which you have never seen but implicitly accepted, say they are not responsible for anything. And unlike Uber they are not concerned at all about the bad press, and if you sue them them might obstruct and delay you every way possible (or the driver might just disappear and the owner disclaim any responsibility because they just own a medallion and have no idea about what the driver does when), and even if you win they could just refuse to pay up and you'd have to figure out how to get money out of them, while living on the other end of the country. At least Uber is a big target that can be found, forced to disclose the data that you know they always have, and if you win, you have reasonable assurance you get the money.
- gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
  I thought traditional Taxis assumed liability.
  - smsm42 9y ago
    Who exactly assumes it? Driver? Whoever hired him? Whoever owns the medallion? I think it'd be non-trivial to even figure out who to sue, let alone win it.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

king_panic 9y ago

did anyone else notice this blog post is on site that sells hot sauce?

VA3FXP 9y ago
Actually because I use NoScript, nothing at all shows up when I visit that URL. Empty white page. Defective site design.
- jmcdiesel 9y ago
  "I block HTML and your site doesnt load for me, defective site!" I know JS isnt HTML, but at this point, it basically is. Complaining that a site is broken because you choose to break it is just astounding.
  - jszymborski 9y ago
    > but at this point, it basically is. Normally, I find belly-aching about something not looking right or not working right because NoScript is on is silly. But I find it astounding that this page requires javascript to display the text of a _blog post_. What is so important that your site completely shits the bed and fails so badly that it shows nothing but a white screen. Frankly, I think Shopify just purposely sabotages the page because they want you to enable javascript so they can enable analytics and track you across their sites. Not to mention they load code from Google APIs, Google Analytic, Shopify.com, Embed.ly, Gfycat.com, and Mlveda.com, which means I'm suddenly running code from websites I never intended on visiting. Why should visiting https://fymhotsauce.rocks https://fymhotsauce.rocks send a road flare to all those services? You're right, this is the new normal, but it's shit and we should be complaining.
  - parshimers 9y ago
    That's not why the site is broken if you're using uBlock/NoScript. It's broken because it loads everything (even the text of the site) from 3rd party domains and scripts.

paulcole 9y ago

>Before my hot sauce set a record on Kickstarter I would've liked to know more about this relevant detail.

jamie_ca 9y ago
$64k in 2014, $13k in 2016. Pretty sure that's just his inner salesman speaking.

theprop 9y ago

Awesome work!! Great story about how awful the legal system is given the amount of effort and work you had to go through. You deserved a lot more than just that $4k. I personally feel bad that it's only after reading this that I'm going to stop using Uber as well...despite all of the terrible stuff that's going on over there, I was willing to strike up to "growing pains" or "bad apples", since I wrongly believed they were 100% committed to their users. That's clearly not the case so there's no more Uber for me.

gravypod 9y ago

"I just didn’t buy that a company could just get away with that business model. Hire anyone with a car, facilitate everything, and have no responsibility for what happens in the cars." If I got food sick from something I ordered off GrubHub could I sue them?

daveguy 9y ago
No, but you could if their delivery driver robbed you.
- gravypod 9y ago
  GrubHub doesn't provide the drivers. They facilitate orders. They don't have anything to do with who delivers.
  - daveguy 9y ago
    That was Uber's argument too. They lost.
thisone 9y ago
if grubhub's practices meant that you received food that made you ill, you may have a case.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
joeyo 9y ago
If the food poisoning was due to negligence, I don't see why not.
markkanof 9y ago
It's an interesting thought exercise, but I don't think GrubHub is really the same situation. The restaurants that you order from on GrubHub exist as businesses and serve food regardless if GrubHub is facilitating delivery or not. If the GrubHub driver robbed you when they showed up at your house, then yes, I would think you might be able to sue them.

sjg007 9y ago

Uber and Lyft are here to stay and if not them then someone else. Cabs suck.

ivraatiems 9y ago

I'm glad this worked out for the OP. However, I think he may have made a couple mistakes that could have been avoided for a smoother process. The big one is not retaining an attorney. No, he doesn't have to for small claims court, but Uber clearly had its legal team looking at this. Now, I understand that lawyers are expensive and carry their own issues - but if he'd won the case with an attorney, he could potentially have secured attorney's fees as well. Plus, a good way to make a company cave on an issue like this is to say "direct all requests to my attorney; I'm not speaking to you on this matter." I realize getting a lawyer isn't always feasible, though, especially in small claims, so I'll assume it just wasn't possible for this case (also, I'm not a lawyer, this is just based on my understanding of the small claims process). Still, giving Uber all the evidence in the case after a suit had been filed but before any discovery had been ordered was a misstep. Small claims court rarely has formal discovery - the process by which each side finds and turns over evidence to the other side. The OP was - as far as I can tell - under no obligation to give evidence to the Uber rep of any kind. He should not have; they used it against him. What he should have done was say "we can discuss this in court, or you can make me whole now and avoid that," and NOTHING else. Edit: A line I really enjoyed from the piece: "They were a company that shows blatant disrespect to authority, operating illegally in cities and using technology to intentionally avoid law enforcement." Yep. That's Uber in a nutshell. Well played.

jessriedel 9y ago
I get that big companies are not your friend, but is it really necessary to wage total war by using all possible legal advantages and issuing ultimatums? "Here is the evidence I have that you're in the wrong" can sometimes hurt you later in court, but it can avoid the entire mess by convincing the party that they will likely lose, or yield a compromise.
- schwap 9y ago
  > I get that big companies are not your friend, but is it really necessary to wage total war by using all possible legal advantages and issuing ultimatums? I think when you're facing a large entity and their thousands of dollars per billable hour legal team, it makes sense to leverage any advantage you can.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

I don't fault the driver. He's just following the normal standards of conduct for business transactions in Massachusetts. I say this as someone who had the misfortune of growing up there. I'm only being sarcastic about not faulting the driver. Unless you're trying to grow your customer base or know the person you screw them. It's just how things are done.

jellicle 9y ago

You know, if Uber employees started going to jail when they lied to the government, the culture would probably change pretty fast.

hosh 9y ago

I wonder -- with a company culture on the lookout for loopholes and exploits in order to enter markets, do they tend to see that by default in the behavior of others? This guy got accused of deliberately leaving his bag in the car. There was also that incident with the rape, and the executive who brought back confidential files to discuss whether that was a fraud. It is as if, "I think you are trying to commit fraud here ... because that is what I can imagine trying to pull off myself."

Pxtl 9y ago

11 paragraphs of self-promotion before getting to the meat.

rustid 9y ago
I wanted to give people knowledge of what I went through so they would be able to avoid what happened to me.
- Pxtl 9y ago
  I'm very happy for your successful kickstarter and your relationship with an LoL team is quite cool, but it doesn't exactly appear really naturally in your post.
  - rustid 9y ago
    Obviously I am longwinded. I was trying to give backstory as to why I left my IT career to make hot sauce. I had a successful (record breaking) crowdfunding campaign that gave me the confidence to change my entire life.
- netsharc 9y ago
  I'm about to go to bed so I only skimmed through the first 10-11 paragraphs, but how is your dad calling you, and what you used to do before, and how comfy your flight was, relevant to the story? Maybe it was, and hey, it's your story, but my thought was "Damn, he got off on a tangent, on a tangent!"
  - aembleton 9y ago
    The comfiness of the flight is the reason for taking the photo that was then used in court. Yes, it is relevant.
    - watmough 9y ago
      "I'll allow it."

Bahamut 9y ago

This is sad to hear, and while I don't use Uber anymore, I did have one great experience - my phone slipped out of my pocket into the car as I was getting out, and the car drove off as I got out and did not carry anything there. I was able to contact the last driver by logging into the app from a hotel employee's phone and arrange a pickup not too long later. I gave her a generous cash tip and many thanks for doing the right thing, as I was far away from my home in the Bay Area (was in Savannah for a race).

module0000 9y ago

This guy took the high road - once he had the license plate and an address, this could have taken a very different turn. If you're into someone for $4,000, it's a coin flip whether they invest effort into getting it back, or invest another $4,000 for someone else to get you back. If you are going to steal from someone, always keep that in the back of your mind... you don't know what type of person you're stealing from. Maybe it's an easy mark, or maybe it's a vindictive psychopath that would love an excuse to pull your teeth out in his basement over the next 30 days. "Risk vs Reward" and all that...

escapetech 9y ago
> This could have taken a very different turn. Until something similar happens to them, people often take for granted living in a society where the legal process is relatively accessible to those needing it.

iplaw 9y ago

Ultimately, Uber did not want to establish a precedent for liability. What they should have done is settled for $4,000 and forced the victim to sign an NDA, ensuring that this little conflict remained private. Instead, in usual Uber fashion, the legal and HR team worked their magic and created a lose-lose-lose situation for themselves: 1. They established precedent for liability; 2. They obstructed justice, which could be used as fodder in subsequent lawsuits; and 3. They did nothing to prevent this story from being broadcasted far and wide.

gpm 9y ago
I don't believe ruling before a magistrate judge in small claims court create precedent in a legal sense, though if you just mean it will inspire others to do the same, agreed.

freeplatform 9y ago

I get that the court process is the main part of the story, but I still can't believe that you left $4k worth of equipment in the car with a stranger. I guess I'm just much more paranoid. Also, that's how I view taxi drivers as well as Uber/Lyft drivers. Sure there are some protections like background checks and tracking, but at the end of the day it is a stranger we don't know, and anything could happen, so we probably should at least be a bit hesitant.

rustid 9y ago
I won't make that mistake again. If I were giving someone a ride I would have helped them with their bags and not thought about taking them. I assumed people shared that quality.

sivex 9y ago

Not a single comment on here about using insurance. I know that a backpack with a laptop can be stolen out of someone else's car and cut-rate renters insurance will cover it. I don't really think Uber was the correct person to foot this bill, I think this is the same as someone grabbing your purse from you when walking down the street. You either have decent insurance or you're SOL

vkou 9y ago
If Comcast sent a contractor over to your house, to hook up cable, and the tech stole your TV, is Comcast liable for this? If you check into a hotel, and the bellboy steals your luggage, is the hotel liable for it? If you hired a roofing company to fix your roof, they subcontracted it to another firm, which came and set your house on fire, are the roofers also not liable? Especially after they spend a few months trying to prevent you and the police from getting in touch with the subcontractors? This smells of criminal conspiracy.
shuntress 9y ago
>I think this is the same as someone grabbing your purse from you when walking down the street. It is not the same as someone grabbing your purse when you are walking down the street. Unless the person who grabbed your purse was hired by you through an agency to hold your bags and walk you down the street before they ran off with your purse.
rustid 9y ago
My insurance didn't cover it

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

hoodoof 9y ago

Can I say that I had the inverse experience where an Uber driver drove off with something that I left in the trunk of the car. He went to considerable effort over multiple calls over a few days of coordinating and attempts for me to get it back, until eventually I got it back intact. It was a first class customer service experience.

ctvo 9y ago
I'm glad it worked out for you. It enforces the point of the article: your experience with Uber is entirely influenced by your driver. If you happen to have a bad one (like the author), Uber takes no responsibility (contractor contractor contractor!), and your only recourse is considerable time and effort taking them to court.

qb45 9y ago

The detective in charge of my case sent me the police report. She had contacted the official law enforcement department of Uber to get more information. She gave Uber the date and time of the ride, as well as the license plate of the vehicle and name of the driver. The Uber department responded that they had no record of a trip from the vehicle with that license plate on December 5th, 2016, just after 11 PM, and the driver had not driven with them for 2 years. Funny, I came here to rant that Uber shouldn't really be responsible for that and the OP should have sued the driver instead, but if this is their response then they totally deserved everything they got and more. How is it even possible to get away with lying to the police like that? They should be in serious trouble for this alone.

caf 9y ago
Individuals lie to police. Corporations merely make unfortunate errors that they are only too happy to correct now that it has been brought to our attention, sir.

codedokode 9y ago

So in the end Uber got away with obstructing justice and the driver got away with theft. It is surprising that police cannot find the thief even knowing his identity.

lathiat 9y ago
That's the most ridiculous part; in theory you could have discovery to actually get the drivers details and then take the driver to small claims. in practice even for $4000 you're stretching it being worth it in many jurisdictions.

linkmotif 9y ago

What I don’t understand about Uber after all these months/years of them being horrible to customers is: Why? #1 rule of capitalism is to coddle your customers as much as possible at every possible expense while still remaining profitable. Why does Uber act so 2nd World?

redwyvern 9y ago

Deleting Uber

ElijahLynn 9y ago

This reads a lot like The Rosie Project, which is a great read!

uptown 9y ago

What kind of snacks did you eat on the plane?

cakedoggie 9y ago

I tried reading this, when does the guy get to the point? I am not sure what Dota, or his dad, or his hot sauce or his awesome flight has to do with any of this? Ok, go about 2 pages down, and you can skip the incredibly detailed discussion of his exiting the car. This seems more like the driver thought he had all his bags, the door was closed, a simple mistake. But no, the driver was a master thief, spying him using stuff in his bag and racing off (at an incredibly slow pace according to the video). Good on the guy for following up with this, and it is an interesting story. > They were a company that shows blatant disrespect to authority, operating illegally in cities and using technology to intentionally avoid law enforcement. This is true, and well known. And if you knowingly use Uber, you understand this.

olegkikin 9y ago

You should've added like $50K of punitive damages. The fact that they lied to the police and got away with it is crazy. You didn't even break even, considering how much time and research you spent.

revmoo 9y ago

Fantastic writeup, thanks

frostymarvelous 9y ago

On a night out drinking, a friend invited their uber driver to join them as they had a great connection (this is Africa so its not really strange). At the end of the night, said friend forgot all his devices in the ride and after trying to reach the driver for days and failing, we reported the issue to uber. Uber called the driver and he denied he'd seen the devices. Uber basically gave us the finger and told us they could do nothing.

kbart 9y ago
Sorry to hear, but this sounds like you friend's fault. How does he really knows that driver took these devices? Maybe he lost them somewhere else (he was intoxicated, after all) or maybe the next passenger took them? If this has happened in a bus, would you blame a bus driver too?
- frostymarvelous 9y ago
  There were 4 of them out that night. And the driver closed for the day to hang with them. After he dropped them, they realized the devices were still in the car, and immediately tried to reach him. And he never picked up. Well, he never pursued the issue further and left it at that. I've had some rather good experiences e.g. where the driver called me, and brought back the stuff to me after he was done at the end of the day and refused to take any money as a reward. I guess it all depends on the person.

AngeloAnolin 9y ago

This. "Ultimately I am sad that the company that is trying to reform the taxi industry is so corrupt."