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It’s called vomit fraud. And it could make your Uber trip really expensive
- Simulacra 8y agoYes, but wouldn't you then dispute the charge with your credit card company?
- mathrawka 8y agoDespite several email exchanges, Uber never agreed to reimburse her the extra money. But she disputed the charge with her credit card company and got back her $98. Uber then canceled her account.
- xkcd-sucks 8y agoTypically companies store CC info hashed with a per account salt, so you can sign up for another account with the same credit card
- baddox 8y agoWouldn't they need the plaintext credit card number to, well, charge the credit card? Maybe not, if they're using a third-party credit card processor that stores the credit card number keyed by an account ID, but I doubt Uber is using a separate processor.
- toomanybeersies 8y agoUber will ban you by name, so you can't just use a new card.
- waterhouse 8y agoSurely names aren't a unique identifier? "John Smith" et al. Would they keep around other information and use that?
- mikeyouse 8y agoYou could, but then you'd likely be banned from Uber in the future..
- playpause 8y ago> Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries.
- simongr3dal 8y agoHere you go, https://outline.com/wwhuDF https://outline.com/wwhuDF :)
- isostatic 8y ago“Unfortunately we take your life and sell it to criminal gangs for 2.6 cents and Europe insists you have to explicitly allow you to happen”
- leephillips 8y agoYet another reason to use taxis: https://lee-phillips.org/lyfthuh/ https://lee-phillips.org/lyfthuh/
- CamperBob2 8y agoI wonder why people were so eager to stop using taxis when Uber and Lyft came along? Hmm. Gee. Someone should really look into that.
- mikeash 8y agoThat post reminds me of late-night TV commercials for bizarre gadgets, which try to sell you on their nonsense by showing videos of ordinary people completely failing to accomplish easy household tasks.
- 0xfeba 8y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/wheredidthesodago/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wheredidthesodago/ Yeah every taxi experience I've had has been terrible. Taking a longer route to increase the fair, rude, drives like a maniac. Then hassles me for a tip.
- isostatic 8y ago“Kevin” opening milk in friends in the 90s I assume those “infomercials” don’t exist nowadays with video on demand.
- Sohcahtoa82 8y agoIt's easy to laugh at them, but generally those products are actually being sold to people with disabilities.
- mikeash 8y agoInteresting. You'd think they would show people with disabilities in the ads... unless they were going for the mental sort.
- code_duck 8y agoHow could their systems allow a charge for a trip with a cancellation, and also a fee for vomit on that trip? “I see that it was an uncomfortable experience, because the driver started the trip without you in the car, which should not happen.” also, that plainly does not make sense.
- AndrewKemendo 8y agoThis is yet another example of what happens as a result of the "race to bottom" for wages and compensation for Uber/Lyft drivers. These drivers are looking for any way that they can to make their work barely profitable, because just letting the algorithm "Manna[1]" them around a city ends up being barely break even after all costs are added in. So that's why you get the calls asking where you're going so they can get long trips (especially around airports), the "oh not I got into an accident, can you cancel the trip?" calls, etc... Not to mention the drivers who are stuck with high interest loans on cars from Uber. It's marginal labor inputs for a marginalized workforce - and an increasingly immigrant one, which is great generally but correlates to the easily exploitable. So while I don't condone this kind of behavior, I can see why they would feel pushed into doing it - especially if it's relatively retribution free. [1]http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
- paulpauper 8y agoexcept that: vomit fraud is a very uncommon occurrence second, regular cabs also have tons of ways to rip off riders, and do so. Playing with the meter, intentionally taking a longer route, etc.
- UncleEntity 8y ago> Playing with the meter... Which you report to Weights & Measures if you suspect that since the meters are supposed to be certified and untampered with -- back before uber defanged Weights & Measures (at least in Arizona so they would quit hunting their illegal livery vehicles) this was a serious offence. > ...intentionally taking a longer route Everyone has a smartphone and generally don't trust cab drivers so have their google maps open. The main difference is with a cab the only way they can charge you extra is to call the police and have them make you pay (or give you a ticket for "theft of service"), with uber they just tack on some extra charges and you have to fight them to get the money back. The police are going to ask a few questions and not make someone pay $150+ for a couple mile trip when they can look in the back seat and see there's no vomit.
- ravenstine 8y ago
- wiseleo 8y agoOn the flip side, $150 is an insufficient cleaning fee. Driver loses all revenue for the rest of the day and the cost of professional detailing often exceeds that amount. It should be a minimum of $300. It once took me 4 hours to clean my car after an incident that involved my sliding door mechanism. Cleaning quote for that exceeded $300. And that smell... ugh!!! Edit: vomit incident.
- VectorLock 8y agoDid someone throw up on your sliding door mechanism?
- Bluestrike2 8y agoProbably blood.
- isostatic 8y agoWell if you sharpen the edges...
- Bluestrike2 8y agoThat'd do it, though I was imagining something a bit less severe; think patch of skin caught in the door latch mechanism, a sharp edge in a weird place, etc. Plus, the detailing bill would have probably been a lot higher... probably. Depends on whether the arm was reaching in or reaching out. And with that, I'm definitely done.
- VectorLock 8y agoMaybe. The "ugh the smell" made me believe vomit.
- Bluestrike2 8y agoCompletely missed that. Oops.
- antongribok 8y agoI wonder if you can push your case with Uber by threatening to sue for defamation of character. Also, I wonder if a request for metadata of the photos would help resolve this in your favor.
- Bluestrike2 8y agoI'd assume that the drivers keep a bunch of photos of actual vomit on their phones, and then just use them when they decide to commit a bit of vomit fraud? If that's the case, then Uber should at least save the submitted photos and implement some minor automated procedures to raise the bar from effectively zero to just a few millimeters above. Check the EXIF data and compare it to the ride data, and compare the photos to old ones. When a vomit charge is disputed, Uber employees could compare the submitted photos to old ones in case a driver took a bunch of different photos from different angles. Or if they want to put more effort into things, control the camera directly from the Uber driver app and only allow photos taken from the app to be submitted. It wouldn't solve the problem, but Uber could at least put a minor speed bump in front of would-be fraudsters.
- tantalor 8y agoOkay but https://www.google.com/search?q=fake+vomit&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=fake+vomit&tbm=isch
- Bluestrike2 8y agoI guess you could whip up a batch of fake vomit. But then you have to actually clean up the fake vomit, thereby incurring the very costs (both money and time) the fee was meant to compensate you for. If you use the gimmicky plastic variety, I'd think it'd be pretty obvious in photos. Especially if you only buy one fake vomit piece. But I was thinking more in terms of catching at least some of the fraud attempts and making it a bit riskier as a deterrence, rather than a foolproof detection method.
- sudosteph 8y agoAfter a particularly terrible uber experience in Miami (driver swerved terribly the whole time, didn't understand english enough to recognize that we were asking him to pull over because I was nauseated), I thought this would be about drivers intentionally making passengers motion sick so they could extort cash from them (ie: pay up or I'll report you). But this makes a lot more sense. I don't see a fair solution other than requiring video footage, which unfortunately would just be another expense for legitimate drivers.
- BadassFractal 8y agoI had an Uber driver tell me years ago he would sometimes shake people up extra hard when it was his last ride of the day at 2-3am Fri/Sat and the passengers looked like they were ready to pop. He claimed to know a guy who would be able to clean up for only $50, and Uber would pay him an extra $200 for the inconvenience. It was a nice occasional $150 boost. Still, doesn't seem scalable. Also not super pleasant to have that done to your car unless you're renting it. Every time I would tell other Uber drivers this story, they would just laugh and not believe it.
- jnbiche 8y agoYeah, I'm sure some incidents of this kind of fraud have happened, but I'm skeptical it happens often, simply because of driver incentives (ie, why make a quick hundred bucks if it's at the risk of never making any additional Uber income ever again). Also, I'm totally skeptical of the guy complaining of two vomit frauds committed against him in one evening. Far more likely is that he blacked out and then threw up twice in different vehicles, or he's simply too embarrassed to admit it.
- WalterGR 8y agoFar more likely is... Yes. The statistics bear this out.
- aaron695 8y agoThis is so fucking dumb. You don't think Uber won't catch on when they have a driver accused twice of vomit fraud and just fire him destroying his job? (The cost of setting up is probably around two vomit frauds worth off $) Do people really think this is a fucking unsolvable problem. Do people really think this is happening on mass? Compared to a normal taxi that can continuously take people on long routes. Compared to a normal taxi that can assault and rob you and no one knows what car did it? Yes, this happened a lot before Uber, but now Taxis are starting to put measures in place. The real fraud here is the users claiming the drivers are lying, and the drivers have to take it. They can't risk their jobs over it.
- lobo_tuerto 8y agoThe easy thing to do for the driver (for legitimate cases), is to take a picture/video of the passenger while still on the car right after the incident. For the passengers, just take a picture of the interior after you get off an uber vehicle.
- Sohcahtoa82 8y agoI wonder if this is a thing at all with Lyft. If its a problem with both services, it's dishonest to target Uber specifically. EDIT: A quick Google search indicates it's likely a problem in both Lyft and Uber.
- vinni2 8y agoI get following message when I open the link. “Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism”