7 ms·

My "Uber sucks" story is that I left a jacket in the back seat of a car. I immediately tried to figure out how to call the driver but Uber decided they needed t

by guelo 8y ago

My "Uber sucks" story is that I left a jacket in the back seat of a car. I immediately tried to figure out how to call the driver but Uber decided they needed to make money off my misfortune. Not only did they charge me $15 to connect with the driver but they refused to let me message the driver directly, so what could have been a few minutes of time turned into a week long saga. Once I finally got a hold of the driver several days later she had the same story as me where she had immediately tried to contact me and return my item but Uber didn't let her contact me. That permanently cost Uber a customer because now I know that they'll try to use dark patterns to screw me over any chance they get.

iandanforth 8y ago
Can you elaborate on how they charged you $15 to call the driver? I don't use the app.
- guelo 8y ago
  I didn't have the driver's phone number so I had to use the Uber app to contact the driver, that's when they charged me the $15.
  - segmondy 8y ago
    Well, not having the driver's phone number is good. Can you imagine passengers calling drivers and harassing them for whatever reason? It will happen. Should the driver drive for free to return your jacket? What if the driver is already en route to another passenger and they told the passenger 5 minutes, and your cost will be additional 10 minutes. Do you think another passenger will understand and be forgiving that their ride is 10 minutes late because of your situation? If you really think about all the reasons and complexity involved in just returning your jacket, it's not as simple. But then, what if you were traveling and forgot your luggage? I dunno what the right answer is, what do you think?
    - anigbrowl 8y ago
      Why are you inventing new facts to rationalize this practice? The other poster told you that the driver noticed the forgotten jacket and immediately attempted to contact the rider, but couldn't. Uber is choosing to interpose itself between the two and collect a fee that neither of them wanted to pay.
      - spookthesunset 8y ago
        > Why are you inventing new facts to rationalize this practice? The driver being nice and wanting to contact the driver is cool at a small scale but at a large scale with millions(?) of trips per day, that sort of casual niceness doesn't scale at all. At scale, you run into all the questions asked by the parent. You have to address the "oh shit, I need to get/give something back" issue in a more systemic, scalable way that accounts for all the ways drivers and passengers might try to screw each other. Whether the fee is the right way to make this happen, I cannot answer. But what I can say is the questions asked by the parent are the kinds of questions you absolutely have to answer when creating a feature allowing "call backs" that might get used by thousands or tens of thousands of people per day.
        anigbrowl 8y ago
        You ignored the rest of my comment, which was not in any case addressed to you.
        spookthesunset 8y ago
        This is a public forum. Anybody can reply to you. In fact, that’s the whole point.
    - akira2501 8y ago
      > Well, not having the driver's phone number is good. There is no need to actually give out the drivers phone number, Uber could easily have an 800 number that when called would prompt you for a case or ticket number generated by the app and then would provide you with options for anonymously connecting to your driver or a customer support agent. > Should the driver drive for free to return your jacket? When I drove cabs, we would take lost items back to the shop. If they were called for we might deliver them to you for free if it was really slow, but we would usually just charge you a regular fare from the shop to where you wanted it. Otherwise, you could come down to the shop and claim it in person. > Do you think another passenger will understand and be forgiving that their ride is 10 minutes late because of your situation? If you lost the item, I think the primary concern is that you actually get it back not how timely it is. Clearly you'll just have to wait until the driver is free and pay the fare to get the item back to where you are currently.
  - lotophage 8y ago
    That's pretty misleading. You are not charged to contact the driver in the app, you are charged once the item is returned. I've been through this process myself, and it's even stated on their FAQ: > A $15 fee is charged to you once your lost item is returned.[0] [0] https://help.uber.com/riders/article/lost-item-return-fee-?nodeId=633c684e-1d4b-426a-bd4f-6bee488dac6a https://help.uber.com/riders/article/lost-item-return-fee-?n...
    - torpfactory 8y ago
      Does the driver get all of that fee? Or does Uber take a cut?
      - jdavis703 8y ago
        Uber has to do all kinds of things that a taxi company wouldn't need to do. For example they have an entire department related to resolving sexual assault/harassment issues between customers and drivers. A taxi company would just send the the matter to the police and be done with it. They also must have a large "compliance" department as each city, state and country seems to be enacting a different set of rules around how the company can operate. All these different departments need software to support them (no point in having compliance if the app forgets to charge the right tax somewhere!), which means they need more accountants, more HR people, etc. It seems like Uber could trim some fat (I had an interview with them that was laughably easy), but who knows if the CEO thinks he can do that without causing low morale and a stampede of the actual talent.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        From the link: "The entire fee is passed on to the driver."
romed 8y ago
I can imagine there are very solid reasons related to stalking that result in Uber wanting to make it hard to contact past riders or drivers in either direction.
Game_Ender 8y ago
That is pretty shitty. It use to be that drivers had to return stuff on their own dime, I think the fee is supposed to pay them for that time.
- manigandham 8y ago
  Paying for the drivers to return something that you forgot is fair.
  - trustfundbaby 8y ago
    Unless of course they don't want to be paid for it, and the service gets in the way of them returning it to you immediately for free just so they can charge $15 that they get a cut of ;)
    - manigandham 8y ago
      If you read the posted link, you would see that the fee is entirely sent to the driver. And if you read the other comments, you would see that direct communications can be abused so this current process is likely the best compromise to help both riders and drivers. And as stated before, many drivers return items immediately for free while many others probably don't find items until days after the original rider reports it, so there are vastly different scenarios under which you need a process to work. Is the tiny detail of whether the driver can set the exact fee really that important?
mkolodny 8y ago
It's free to contact the driver. You only get charged to pay the driver to bring you your lost item.
manigandham 8y ago
You were not charged to connect to anyone. That is a Returned Item Fee for drivers to give the item back to you: https://help.uber.com/riders/article/lost-item-return-fee-?nodeId=633c684e-1d4b-426a-bd4f-6bee488dac6a https://help.uber.com/riders/article/lost-item-return-fee-?n...
- anigbrowl 8y ago
  Whether or not the driver wants it? Pull the other one.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    I'm not sure what you're trying to say. The fee is only charged if the driver returns the item, so if they cant or dont want to then there's no fee.
    - mempko 8y ago
      I lost a phone in a taxi once (didn't realize it, it was a burner). A week later I had the same taxi driver and he goes "Glad I finally picked you up again, here is your phone". Sometimes people are good.
      - manigandham 8y ago
        What's with the moral judgements? Uber is a service. You forgot your item. Most people are good, but still want to be paid. Expecting everyone else should be generous of their time for your mistake is definitely not good.
        PakG1 8y ago
        Would you have preferred it if parent wrote that sometimes people are nice? I didn't read into parent's statement as much as you did. Sometimes communication is messy.
atomical 8y ago
What I showed up to Uber headquaets to pick something up that was left in an Uber they wanted to me stand in line behind all drivers. I was told, "we are all customers here." I left, but found out later that they tried to do the same thing to the driver dropping it off. He left too.

by guelo 8y ago

iandanforth 8y ago

Can you elaborate on how they charged you $15 to call the driver? I don't use the app.

guelo 8y ago
I didn't have the driver's phone number so I had to use the Uber app to contact the driver, that's when they charged me the $15.
- segmondy 8y ago
  Well, not having the driver's phone number is good. Can you imagine passengers calling drivers and harassing them for whatever reason? It will happen. Should the driver drive for free to return your jacket? What if the driver is already en route to another passenger and they told the passenger 5 minutes, and your cost will be additional 10 minutes. Do you think another passenger will understand and be forgiving that their ride is 10 minutes late because of your situation? If you really think about all the reasons and complexity involved in just returning your jacket, it's not as simple. But then, what if you were traveling and forgot your luggage? I dunno what the right answer is, what do you think?
  - anigbrowl 8y ago
    Why are you inventing new facts to rationalize this practice? The other poster told you that the driver noticed the forgotten jacket and immediately attempted to contact the rider, but couldn't. Uber is choosing to interpose itself between the two and collect a fee that neither of them wanted to pay.
    - spookthesunset 8y ago
      > Why are you inventing new facts to rationalize this practice? The driver being nice and wanting to contact the driver is cool at a small scale but at a large scale with millions(?) of trips per day, that sort of casual niceness doesn't scale at all. At scale, you run into all the questions asked by the parent. You have to address the "oh shit, I need to get/give something back" issue in a more systemic, scalable way that accounts for all the ways drivers and passengers might try to screw each other. Whether the fee is the right way to make this happen, I cannot answer. But what I can say is the questions asked by the parent are the kinds of questions you absolutely have to answer when creating a feature allowing "call backs" that might get used by thousands or tens of thousands of people per day.
      - anigbrowl 8y ago
        You ignored the rest of my comment, which was not in any case addressed to you.
        spookthesunset 8y ago
        This is a public forum. Anybody can reply to you. In fact, that’s the whole point.
  - akira2501 8y ago
    > Well, not having the driver's phone number is good. There is no need to actually give out the drivers phone number, Uber could easily have an 800 number that when called would prompt you for a case or ticket number generated by the app and then would provide you with options for anonymously connecting to your driver or a customer support agent. > Should the driver drive for free to return your jacket? When I drove cabs, we would take lost items back to the shop. If they were called for we might deliver them to you for free if it was really slow, but we would usually just charge you a regular fare from the shop to where you wanted it. Otherwise, you could come down to the shop and claim it in person. > Do you think another passenger will understand and be forgiving that their ride is 10 minutes late because of your situation? If you lost the item, I think the primary concern is that you actually get it back not how timely it is. Clearly you'll just have to wait until the driver is free and pay the fare to get the item back to where you are currently.
- lotophage 8y ago
  That's pretty misleading. You are not charged to contact the driver in the app, you are charged once the item is returned. I've been through this process myself, and it's even stated on their FAQ: > A $15 fee is charged to you once your lost item is returned.[0] [0] https://help.uber.com/riders/article/lost-item-return-fee-?nodeId=633c684e-1d4b-426a-bd4f-6bee488dac6a https://help.uber.com/riders/article/lost-item-return-fee-?n...
  - torpfactory 8y ago
    Does the driver get all of that fee? Or does Uber take a cut?
    - jdavis703 8y ago
      Uber has to do all kinds of things that a taxi company wouldn't need to do. For example they have an entire department related to resolving sexual assault/harassment issues between customers and drivers. A taxi company would just send the the matter to the police and be done with it. They also must have a large "compliance" department as each city, state and country seems to be enacting a different set of rules around how the company can operate. All these different departments need software to support them (no point in having compliance if the app forgets to charge the right tax somewhere!), which means they need more accountants, more HR people, etc. It seems like Uber could trim some fat (I had an interview with them that was laughably easy), but who knows if the CEO thinks he can do that without causing low morale and a stampede of the actual talent.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      From the link: "The entire fee is passed on to the driver."

romed 8y ago

I can imagine there are very solid reasons related to stalking that result in Uber wanting to make it hard to contact past riders or drivers in either direction.

Game_Ender 8y ago

That is pretty shitty. It use to be that drivers had to return stuff on their own dime, I think the fee is supposed to pay them for that time.

manigandham 8y ago
Paying for the drivers to return something that you forgot is fair.
- trustfundbaby 8y ago
  Unless of course they don't want to be paid for it, and the service gets in the way of them returning it to you immediately for free just so they can charge $15 that they get a cut of ;)
  - manigandham 8y ago
    If you read the posted link, you would see that the fee is entirely sent to the driver. And if you read the other comments, you would see that direct communications can be abused so this current process is likely the best compromise to help both riders and drivers. And as stated before, many drivers return items immediately for free while many others probably don't find items until days after the original rider reports it, so there are vastly different scenarios under which you need a process to work. Is the tiny detail of whether the driver can set the exact fee really that important?

mkolodny 8y ago

It's free to contact the driver. You only get charged to pay the driver to bring you your lost item.

manigandham 8y ago

You were not charged to connect to anyone. That is a Returned Item Fee for drivers to give the item back to you: https://help.uber.com/riders/article/lost-item-return-fee-?nodeId=633c684e-1d4b-426a-bd4f-6bee488dac6a https://help.uber.com/riders/article/lost-item-return-fee-?n...

anigbrowl 8y ago
Whether or not the driver wants it? Pull the other one.
- manigandham 8y ago
  I'm not sure what you're trying to say. The fee is only charged if the driver returns the item, so if they cant or dont want to then there's no fee.
  - mempko 8y ago
    I lost a phone in a taxi once (didn't realize it, it was a burner). A week later I had the same taxi driver and he goes "Glad I finally picked you up again, here is your phone". Sometimes people are good.
    - manigandham 8y ago
      What's with the moral judgements? Uber is a service. You forgot your item. Most people are good, but still want to be paid. Expecting everyone else should be generous of their time for your mistake is definitely not good.
      - PakG1 8y ago
        Would you have preferred it if parent wrote that sometimes people are nice? I didn't read into parent's statement as much as you did. Sometimes communication is messy.

atomical 8y ago

What I showed up to Uber headquaets to pick something up that was left in an Uber they wanted to me stand in line behind all drivers. I was told, "we are all customers here." I left, but found out later that they tried to do the same thing to the driver dropping it off. He left too.