11 ms·

Uber charges driver for completing a 13-mile fare

178 points by bbatsell 5y ago

bbatsell 5y ago
Here are screenshots of the “service fees”: https://twitter.com/TheSofaaa/status/1399070201925312512?s=20 https://twitter.com/TheSofaaa/status/1399070201925312512?s=2...
- petee 5y ago
  Thanks for this; I'm a little confused since they still don't show the total accounting. One screen shows $11 total service charge, another shows $6 for Third-party fees (either way thats crazy Uber passes this cost on) There is a missing $5 they're not explaining
  - acgh213 5y ago
    As someone who does uber eats for some side cash (I have a very small and fuel effecient car, so it actually works out gas wise for me), the 11 dollars was the total service charge. Uber then breaks it down by what they take (the first party part, not included), and any other fees are in a seperate Third party section. So from my perspective of 11 dollars total, with 6 for the third party (which they absolutely pass onto the driver), the missing 5 could be made up by the Uber first party charges. Now I can't confirm this, I'm not on his account, and he hasn't posted it yet. But I would put a nickel on the other 5 bucks being paid directly to Uber. Which again, not uncommon. Here's an example from a delivery I did the other day, I can get more screenshots if you want. But out of the 22 dollars the customer paid for the delivery, I received 5.61 before tip. The rest went to uber [1] [1] https://imgur.com/a/WaNh692 https://imgur.com/a/WaNh692
    - bombcar 5y ago
      That’s insane. 25% went to you.
    - icebergonfire 5y ago
      > out of the 22 dollars the customer paid for the delivery, I received 5.61 before tip I am completely ignorant on how this works on the driver’s side, so I could be missing something here: Those 22 dollars the customer paid include whatever food you were delivering, right? Now, I’m sure the Food cost/Service cost split changes from country to country (I’m somewhere in the Euro zone)… but interpolating from those numbers, I get the feeling that Uber must be subsidizing the service very heavily. They don’t charge that much extra money to the customer, so I wonder where the profit is coming from. I’m having trouble conceptualizing how they are making any actual profit after expenses, and in the meantime they (and their ilk) are pushing the traditional restaurant delivery network away since they cannot compete or price nor convenience. I don’t have a conclusion for this train of thought, just a bit of shock here in the early morning.
      - jfrunyon 5y ago
        > I’m having trouble conceptualizing how they are making any actual profit after expenses They're not. They aren't profitable. They have never been profitable. They admit that they would not have been profitable even without COVID last year. They do not expect to be profitable until Q4 of this year - if you remove half their costs and their assumptions hold. They do not expect to actually be profitable (even on EBITDA) for even longer. http://techcrunch.com/2021/02/12/will-ride-hailing-profits-ever-come/ http://techcrunch.com/2021/02/12/will-ride-hailing-profits-e... > in the meantime they (and their ilk) are pushing the traditional restaurant delivery network away since they cannot compete or price nor convenience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing
sp332 5y ago
Update from Uber Support 30 minutes ago https://mobile.twitter.com/Uber_Support/status/1399149311175372800 https://mobile.twitter.com/Uber_Support/status/1399149311175...
- petee 5y ago
  "Thanks for bringing this to our attention, @TheSofaaa . We believe this is due to a technical bug, which we are actively investigating. We apologize to you and any other drivers who may be impacted, all of whom will be fully refunded." But the OP also has a screenshot(1) of Uber's fare review saying they were in fact charged correctly. So the review process is broken as well? ^1 https://mobile.twitter.com/TheSofaaa/status/1399079166046314497 https://mobile.twitter.com/TheSofaaa/status/1399079166046314...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - fouc 5y ago
    the fare review probably triggered the same bug
    - sp332 5y ago
      The verbiage specifically says "your fare was within our estimates", but wouldn't negative fares at least be flagged as out of range?
      - savant_penguin 5y ago
        The fact that one of the most important parts of the billing system of a billion dollar corporation lacks >0 check is really bizarre Maybe they have to use negative fares for some reason?
        duncan-donuts 5y ago
        Negative fares for what tho? Taxis have a minimum for just getting in the car. Seems like Uber could figure out some minimum so that the driver isn’t being charged to work. Is hostile design with complete disregard for all users.
strken 5y ago
It's a bit terrifying that people on twitter seem to think this is an intentional product decision rather than a bug plus shitty automated support with no human in the loop. I guess if you keep setting OKRs like "5% lower support call volume" for years then at some point your reputational risk goes up because you've made it impossible to contact an actual human being.
- petee 5y ago
  Uber, Doordash, and the like have consistently played games with payments, fees, and tips; an intentional decision would just be par for the course, to see how much you can get away with and toe the line before enough people complain.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    Complaining will do nothing. They will continue this behavior until they're forced to change through regulation.
    - Finnucane 5y ago
      Not using them is better than complaining.
      - tharkun__ 5y ago
        Maybe it's better than complaining. Is it better than regulation? I have never used Uber, doordash or anything like these. On purpose. Even when given free Uber eats vouchers at work (covid...). They still seem to be winning.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- acdha 5y ago
  Even if you ignore Uber’s history of screwing people and lying about it, if this is a bug the decision not to test core software and have ineffective support is an intentional product decision. Senior management sets the structures which make things like this a predictable outcome.
encryptluks2 5y ago
It will take massive fines and employment regulation to change anything. Uber will continue and defend this type of behavior until they're made to do otherwise.
- briandear 5y ago
  No. It will take a driver shortage. Or a rider shortage.
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    They’re just recently coming out of one of those.
draw_down 5y ago
I don’t want to hear about this was just a one time thing, Uber doesn’t normally rip drivers off, etc. I don’t think this should be possible, there should be safeguards that make something else bad happen before allowing this.
mullingitover 5y ago
Uber's handling of edge cases is...something. My wife is banned for life from Uber because after she was overcharged by a driver by $80 (for a five minute ride), and after Uber denied her dispute of the fraudulent charge, she flagged the fraudulent charge with the credit card company and got refunded via that route. I don't think a human was in the loop for any step of this process on Uber's end.
- howzitallworkeh 5y ago
  Whether or not it is fair, people should be aware that chargebacks are a nuclear option, at least in the US. Sometimes they get hailed as a magic wand on consumer-advocate sites, but if you issue a chargeback with your bank, you should be prepared to completely sever relations with the vendor.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    In my wife's case, Uber compounded the bad experience of a blatant overcharge by casually, automatically dismissing her when she flagged it with them, with no option to appeal to a human. Sloppy business practice built on sloppy automation. Permanently severing relations with them was a really easy call.
- stefan_ 5y ago
  This is such a big thing nowadays and it needs regulation. Dispute a charge on Steam? Banned for life. Return one too many item according to some neural network on Amazon? Banned for life. Do nothing wrong at all? Random chance to wake up to a banned Google account, no recourse. Your business runs on GCP? Bad luck. There need to be serious consequences for this "the computer made a mistake" bullshit.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    It certainly feels illegal to have the threat of a ban when you make a good faith report of fraudulent charges. A business could have a pattern of deliberate overcharges that they layer in with regular transactions with the knowledge that enough users will just give in and eat the fraudulent charge to avoid losing access to the service. If the business has run the numbers and found that it's a net gain in profits from this practice, there would be a reasonable (if completely corrupt) motive for operating the scam.
davidhyde 5y ago
13.5 miles in 16 minutes. Including stopping? That seems a little quick. Perhaps it was an automatically charged speeding fine ;)
- dogsgobork 5y ago
  The map appears to show the route as being mostly highway, with the destination being the airport. Depending on the time of day it wouldn't be unreasonable for that to average to about 60mph.
zaroth 5y ago
Another Uber bug I ran into a couple weeks ago. I had a long trip which I updated after departing to be a short trip. After getting out of the Uber I clicked to pay a 20% tip, and it paid it on the original (much higher) amount. Worked out to be almost a 100% tip. I called support, walked the very nice woman through what happened, she filed a bug report and reset the tip to a normal amount.
- pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
  > I had a long trip which I updated after departing to be a short trip Bugs notwithstanding, if intentional, then that's a pretty scummy thing to do. Not all drivers are given the full details of the offer they are accepting (it's the norm not to have details), but some offers that drivers receive do include things like "guaranteed $X trip". So even if unintentional, someone would be getting screwed there (e.g. Uber, if they were forced to cover the difference to the driver).
  - randallsquared 5y ago
    > if they were forced to cover the difference to the driver The rider isn't guaranteeing a $X trip, if anyone is -- that's a contract Uber is making with the driver, and they should absolutely cover the difference. If they find themselves losing money on that, then they can and will update the guarantee message, right? Guessing or investigating the internal negotiations between a service provider and their own service providers is not the responsibility of the customer!
    - pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
      > that's a contract Uber is making with the driver, and they should absolutely cover the difference No one here is arguing otherwise. > If they find themselves losing money on that, then they can and will update the guarantee message What is your conception of "update" here? Someone receives an offer for a given payout. The driver accepts and goes to pick up the passenger. The passenger gets into the car and then changes the destination, nullifying the entire set of conditions that were in play for the original arrangement. Does your "update" involve something magic, like a time machine?
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Obviously, the system shouldn’t be allowing negative fares to occur. Uber needs to eat the cost on those and provide some minimum payout floor for the driver. The driver posted more details further down in the thread showing some of the charges: https://twitter.com/TheSofaaa/status/1399070201925312512?s=20 https://twitter.com/TheSofaaa/status/1399070201925312512?s=2... Ironically, the negative balance appears to be due to regulatory fees applied haphazardly. This includes a $5 surcharge from the airport and two charges from the city of Chicago. It seems like the correct solution would be to pass those charges to the customer, not the driver. I don’t know how they came up with the idea of charging the driver.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  A minimum net hourly pay would solve this. The floor shouldn’t be $0 but the minimum wage plus the driver’s costs. That floor should also apply when idling.
_eqet 5y ago
People try to take any chance to make a villian out of big tech, it's just a damn bug people! They might not be the most decent "being", but the fact that this post is trending bothers me
- hn8788 5y ago
  And it bothers me that there are people who think they need to white knight for a company valued at billions of dollars when a bug causes a driver to pay money to work, yet here we are.
  - gher-shyu3i 5y ago
    A company that provided jobs and services for millions of people. Nothing wrong with being valued at "billions of dollars" as long as things are done ethically.
- BEEdwards 5y ago
  A villain don't have to be evil, apathy that causes harm is enough.
missedthecue 5y ago
I wonder if modern rates of depression are normal, and we're just diagnosing cases more accurately, or if more people are becoming depressives. I haven't got data, and I'm not an expert in this field, but it feels to me like the latter is what's happening. If this is the case, I wonder what is causing it, and how it can be remediated. I don't remember so many people being depressed when I was young.
choward 5y ago
Why is everyone so concerned that the earnings was a negative amount of money? Instead of being charged, the driver only got paid $0.01. Would that be okay? In a way the driver is still getting charged because the gas alone is more than that. If this is just one example, imagine all the drivers who don't get a negative earnings but end up spending more than they make. The real question is what number is okay and how do you calculate it.
- diebeforei485 5y ago
  There are different levels of errors. Something like a negative number for a fare is a serious error in every circumstance and should ping the billing team in their Slack channel (or PagerDuty) immediately. Something like a small positive number, while still concerning, is harder to calculate and harder to justify a critical alert for. For example, Uber does have a feature for drivers where they can type in where they are going (eg. for a personal errand) and be connected to a rider going the same direction, and the fares on those trips pay fairly small amounts of money.
jdkee 5y ago
Uber needs to be mandated an employer in every US state and made to follow the existing laws. Otherwise throw the management in jail.

178 points by bbatsell 5y ago

Here are screenshots of the “service fees”: https://twitter.com/TheSofaaa/status/1399070201925312512?s=20 https://twitter.com/TheSofaaa/status/1399070201925312512?s=2...

petee 5y ago
Thanks for this; I'm a little confused since they still don't show the total accounting. One screen shows $11 total service charge, another shows $6 for Third-party fees (either way thats crazy Uber passes this cost on) There is a missing $5 they're not explaining
- acgh213 5y ago
  As someone who does uber eats for some side cash (I have a very small and fuel effecient car, so it actually works out gas wise for me), the 11 dollars was the total service charge. Uber then breaks it down by what they take (the first party part, not included), and any other fees are in a seperate Third party section. So from my perspective of 11 dollars total, with 6 for the third party (which they absolutely pass onto the driver), the missing 5 could be made up by the Uber first party charges. Now I can't confirm this, I'm not on his account, and he hasn't posted it yet. But I would put a nickel on the other 5 bucks being paid directly to Uber. Which again, not uncommon. Here's an example from a delivery I did the other day, I can get more screenshots if you want. But out of the 22 dollars the customer paid for the delivery, I received 5.61 before tip. The rest went to uber [1] [1] https://imgur.com/a/WaNh692 https://imgur.com/a/WaNh692
  - bombcar 5y ago
    That’s insane. 25% went to you.
  - icebergonfire 5y ago
    > out of the 22 dollars the customer paid for the delivery, I received 5.61 before tip I am completely ignorant on how this works on the driver’s side, so I could be missing something here: Those 22 dollars the customer paid include whatever food you were delivering, right? Now, I’m sure the Food cost/Service cost split changes from country to country (I’m somewhere in the Euro zone)… but interpolating from those numbers, I get the feeling that Uber must be subsidizing the service very heavily. They don’t charge that much extra money to the customer, so I wonder where the profit is coming from. I’m having trouble conceptualizing how they are making any actual profit after expenses, and in the meantime they (and their ilk) are pushing the traditional restaurant delivery network away since they cannot compete or price nor convenience. I don’t have a conclusion for this train of thought, just a bit of shock here in the early morning.
    - jfrunyon 5y ago
      > I’m having trouble conceptualizing how they are making any actual profit after expenses They're not. They aren't profitable. They have never been profitable. They admit that they would not have been profitable even without COVID last year. They do not expect to be profitable until Q4 of this year - if you remove half their costs and their assumptions hold. They do not expect to actually be profitable (even on EBITDA) for even longer. http://techcrunch.com/2021/02/12/will-ride-hailing-profits-ever-come/ http://techcrunch.com/2021/02/12/will-ride-hailing-profits-e... > in the meantime they (and their ilk) are pushing the traditional restaurant delivery network away since they cannot compete or price nor convenience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing

sp332 5y ago

Update from Uber Support 30 minutes ago https://mobile.twitter.com/Uber_Support/status/1399149311175372800 https://mobile.twitter.com/Uber_Support/status/1399149311175...

petee 5y ago
"Thanks for bringing this to our attention, @TheSofaaa . We believe this is due to a technical bug, which we are actively investigating. We apologize to you and any other drivers who may be impacted, all of whom will be fully refunded." But the OP also has a screenshot(1) of Uber's fare review saying they were in fact charged correctly. So the review process is broken as well? ^1 https://mobile.twitter.com/TheSofaaa/status/1399079166046314497 https://mobile.twitter.com/TheSofaaa/status/1399079166046314...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- fouc 5y ago
  the fare review probably triggered the same bug
  - sp332 5y ago
    The verbiage specifically says "your fare was within our estimates", but wouldn't negative fares at least be flagged as out of range?
    - savant_penguin 5y ago
      The fact that one of the most important parts of the billing system of a billion dollar corporation lacks >0 check is really bizarre Maybe they have to use negative fares for some reason?
      - duncan-donuts 5y ago
        Negative fares for what tho? Taxis have a minimum for just getting in the car. Seems like Uber could figure out some minimum so that the driver isn’t being charged to work. Is hostile design with complete disregard for all users.

strken 5y ago

It's a bit terrifying that people on twitter seem to think this is an intentional product decision rather than a bug plus shitty automated support with no human in the loop. I guess if you keep setting OKRs like "5% lower support call volume" for years then at some point your reputational risk goes up because you've made it impossible to contact an actual human being.

petee 5y ago
Uber, Doordash, and the like have consistently played games with payments, fees, and tips; an intentional decision would just be par for the course, to see how much you can get away with and toe the line before enough people complain.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Complaining will do nothing. They will continue this behavior until they're forced to change through regulation.
  - Finnucane 5y ago
    Not using them is better than complaining.
    - tharkun__ 5y ago
      Maybe it's better than complaining. Is it better than regulation? I have never used Uber, doordash or anything like these. On purpose. Even when given free Uber eats vouchers at work (covid...). They still seem to be winning.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
acdha 5y ago
Even if you ignore Uber’s history of screwing people and lying about it, if this is a bug the decision not to test core software and have ineffective support is an intentional product decision. Senior management sets the structures which make things like this a predictable outcome.

encryptluks2 5y ago

It will take massive fines and employment regulation to change anything. Uber will continue and defend this type of behavior until they're made to do otherwise.

briandear 5y ago
No. It will take a driver shortage. Or a rider shortage.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  They’re just recently coming out of one of those.

draw_down 5y ago

I don’t want to hear about this was just a one time thing, Uber doesn’t normally rip drivers off, etc. I don’t think this should be possible, there should be safeguards that make something else bad happen before allowing this.

mullingitover 5y ago

Uber's handling of edge cases is...something. My wife is banned for life from Uber because after she was overcharged by a driver by $80 (for a five minute ride), and after Uber denied her dispute of the fraudulent charge, she flagged the fraudulent charge with the credit card company and got refunded via that route. I don't think a human was in the loop for any step of this process on Uber's end.

howzitallworkeh 5y ago
Whether or not it is fair, people should be aware that chargebacks are a nuclear option, at least in the US. Sometimes they get hailed as a magic wand on consumer-advocate sites, but if you issue a chargeback with your bank, you should be prepared to completely sever relations with the vendor.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  In my wife's case, Uber compounded the bad experience of a blatant overcharge by casually, automatically dismissing her when she flagged it with them, with no option to appeal to a human. Sloppy business practice built on sloppy automation. Permanently severing relations with them was a really easy call.
stefan_ 5y ago
This is such a big thing nowadays and it needs regulation. Dispute a charge on Steam? Banned for life. Return one too many item according to some neural network on Amazon? Banned for life. Do nothing wrong at all? Random chance to wake up to a banned Google account, no recourse. Your business runs on GCP? Bad luck. There need to be serious consequences for this "the computer made a mistake" bullshit.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  It certainly feels illegal to have the threat of a ban when you make a good faith report of fraudulent charges. A business could have a pattern of deliberate overcharges that they layer in with regular transactions with the knowledge that enough users will just give in and eat the fraudulent charge to avoid losing access to the service. If the business has run the numbers and found that it's a net gain in profits from this practice, there would be a reasonable (if completely corrupt) motive for operating the scam.

davidhyde 5y ago

13.5 miles in 16 minutes. Including stopping? That seems a little quick. Perhaps it was an automatically charged speeding fine ;)

dogsgobork 5y ago
The map appears to show the route as being mostly highway, with the destination being the airport. Depending on the time of day it wouldn't be unreasonable for that to average to about 60mph.

zaroth 5y ago

Another Uber bug I ran into a couple weeks ago. I had a long trip which I updated after departing to be a short trip. After getting out of the Uber I clicked to pay a 20% tip, and it paid it on the original (much higher) amount. Worked out to be almost a 100% tip. I called support, walked the very nice woman through what happened, she filed a bug report and reset the tip to a normal amount.

pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
> I had a long trip which I updated after departing to be a short trip Bugs notwithstanding, if intentional, then that's a pretty scummy thing to do. Not all drivers are given the full details of the offer they are accepting (it's the norm not to have details), but some offers that drivers receive do include things like "guaranteed $X trip". So even if unintentional, someone would be getting screwed there (e.g. Uber, if they were forced to cover the difference to the driver).
- randallsquared 5y ago
  > if they were forced to cover the difference to the driver The rider isn't guaranteeing a $X trip, if anyone is -- that's a contract Uber is making with the driver, and they should absolutely cover the difference. If they find themselves losing money on that, then they can and will update the guarantee message, right? Guessing or investigating the internal negotiations between a service provider and their own service providers is not the responsibility of the customer!
  - pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
    > that's a contract Uber is making with the driver, and they should absolutely cover the difference No one here is arguing otherwise. > If they find themselves losing money on that, then they can and will update the guarantee message What is your conception of "update" here? Someone receives an offer for a given payout. The driver accepts and goes to pick up the passenger. The passenger gets into the car and then changes the destination, nullifying the entire set of conditions that were in play for the original arrangement. Does your "update" involve something magic, like a time machine?

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

Obviously, the system shouldn’t be allowing negative fares to occur. Uber needs to eat the cost on those and provide some minimum payout floor for the driver. The driver posted more details further down in the thread showing some of the charges: https://twitter.com/TheSofaaa/status/1399070201925312512?s=20 https://twitter.com/TheSofaaa/status/1399070201925312512?s=2... Ironically, the negative balance appears to be due to regulatory fees applied haphazardly. This includes a $5 surcharge from the airport and two charges from the city of Chicago. It seems like the correct solution would be to pass those charges to the customer, not the driver. I don’t know how they came up with the idea of charging the driver.

alkonaut 5y ago
A minimum net hourly pay would solve this. The floor shouldn’t be $0 but the minimum wage plus the driver’s costs. That floor should also apply when idling.

_eqet 5y ago

People try to take any chance to make a villian out of big tech, it's just a damn bug people! They might not be the most decent "being", but the fact that this post is trending bothers me

hn8788 5y ago
And it bothers me that there are people who think they need to white knight for a company valued at billions of dollars when a bug causes a driver to pay money to work, yet here we are.
- gher-shyu3i 5y ago
  A company that provided jobs and services for millions of people. Nothing wrong with being valued at "billions of dollars" as long as things are done ethically.
BEEdwards 5y ago
A villain don't have to be evil, apathy that causes harm is enough.

missedthecue 5y ago

I wonder if modern rates of depression are normal, and we're just diagnosing cases more accurately, or if more people are becoming depressives. I haven't got data, and I'm not an expert in this field, but it feels to me like the latter is what's happening. If this is the case, I wonder what is causing it, and how it can be remediated. I don't remember so many people being depressed when I was young.

choward 5y ago

Why is everyone so concerned that the earnings was a negative amount of money? Instead of being charged, the driver only got paid $0.01. Would that be okay? In a way the driver is still getting charged because the gas alone is more than that. If this is just one example, imagine all the drivers who don't get a negative earnings but end up spending more than they make. The real question is what number is okay and how do you calculate it.

diebeforei485 5y ago
There are different levels of errors. Something like a negative number for a fare is a serious error in every circumstance and should ping the billing team in their Slack channel (or PagerDuty) immediately. Something like a small positive number, while still concerning, is harder to calculate and harder to justify a critical alert for. For example, Uber does have a feature for drivers where they can type in where they are going (eg. for a personal errand) and be connected to a rider going the same direction, and the fares on those trips pay fairly small amounts of money.

jdkee 5y ago

Uber needs to be mandated an employer in every US state and made to follow the existing laws. Otherwise throw the management in jail.