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UberEats took unauthorized amount (and not willing to pay it back)

217 points by boros2me 5y ago

boros2me 5y ago
Probably no one cares as it's only £4, but posting on HN has a therapeutic effect.
- new_guy 5y ago
  £4 over a million customers soon adds up.
  - throw_m239339 5y ago
    This is exactly how these companies think.
  - lozenge 5y ago
    Luckily, they all signed the class action waiver and didn't mail in their opt out with the address in green ink like the terms and conditions said.
- stemlord 5y ago
  I care. I've grown very embittered by big tech I want people to continue call out their bs.
- BossingAround 5y ago
  Why should a customer pay for bad app design? The app allowed the code to be applied to that specific restaurant. Then backend refused it and customer pays the difference. In what world is that acceptable?
  - berberous 5y ago
    This is so bad I can’t imagine even Uber Eats really thinks it’s acceptable. Probably a bug. The problem is that tech support are useless automatons and there is no way to really escalate to those that can see it clearly should be fixed other than shouting on Twitter. Very frustrating when there’s no avenue for real review and redress other than chargebacks.
    - jcheng 5y ago
      After seeing https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_sure_i_wasnt_ordering_near_closing_time_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_..., I don’t think Uber Eats deserves the benefit of the doubt.
  - paulgb 5y ago
    I recently(ish) discovered a legitimate billing error with Lyft/Bay Wheels that caused a few bucks of overage[1]. It wasn’t a lot of money to me, but I pointed it out to them as it was an obvious error. To their credit, they refunded several entire trips, not just the disparity, and I believe they refunded others’ affected rides as well. I think that’s a satisfactory approach: mistakes happen, but companies should make an effort to ensure that they don’t benefit if they make an accident that favors themselves. [1] https://twitter.com/paulgb/status/1449779457200300033?s=21 https://twitter.com/paulgb/status/1449779457200300033?s=21
- razakel 5y ago
  £4 times the millions of people they pull the same trick on, though.
cbhl 5y ago
In the US one would consider escalating to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, since this seems like lying (the price before the button press is different from the price after). Not sure if the UK has a similar ministry you could appeal to? Though one would consider the risk of being banned from Uber Eats over $4.
- SllX 5y ago
  Risk being banned from a service that stole your money and refused to give it back? You chargeback and move on with your life.
  - paulgb 5y ago
    Yeah, this is a slam-dunk chargeback; the user has documented the disparity and documented their attempt at going through the businesses’ preferred channel. Assuming that what’s presented is true, of course. I guess chargebacks are less of a thing in the UK?
    - bserge 5y ago
      They're not a problem in my experience. At worst you'll get banned by the merchant. Bank never required proof or anything the few times I charged back (for not delivering the items for over a month, pre Covid).
    - cabalamat 5y ago
      Chargebacks are a thing in the UK, and the only time I've ever gone to my credit card company with one they resolved the issue properly.
    - boros2me 5y ago
      Chargeback is exactly what I'm going for, but need to wait until the payment settles (couple of days) and then I can start the dispute process (called my credit card provider right after I realised UberEats is not willing to refund), which with my credit card provider is the following: - Hold the phone for 40 minutes - Explain the situation - Wait for a paper letter on the post that includes an empty printed form with a return envelope - Fill out the form with the exact information I provided on the phone - Post the return envelope - Wait Fortunately I don't mind playing along and I'm pretty sure having this deliberately crazy process (instead of an online form) is a much bigger pain for my credit card provider (who are hoping for churn and people abandoning the process) than myself. Well, not me. It's not the £4, it's the principal.
ajaimk 5y ago
Funny enough, I encountered the is issue earlier this week. I assumed it was a bug and didn’t place the order.
curiousgal 5y ago
Sometimes I've had the same intial screen with the code applied only to be told after trying to place the order that my account was not eligible for the promotion. I was sent back to the same screen with the appropriate amount (without the promo applied). Judging by the screenshots, this could be the case so I will hold my judgement. Edit: Just wanted to make this clearer, a way to reproduce this would be: Take screenshot of code applied. Place order. App tells you the code didn't apply and sends you back to the order screen with the full price displayed. Place order. Take screenshot of receipt. Boom UberEats scammed me! Not necessarily saying that OP is lying but I am too cynical.
donkarma 5y ago
Thought it was going to be that post about the resturant that cancelled and Uber Eats took the money anyways, funny that it happened more than once
- shmel 5y ago
  I believe the case you are describing happened with Just-Eat.
  - spuz 5y ago
    No, it was UberEats: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_sure_i_wasnt_ordering_near_closing_time_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_...
    - renewiltord 5y ago
      This is comically bad. “Thank you for supporting local restaurants”? Hahaha. Wtf.
dubcanada 5y ago
This is one of the reasons I've only used SkipTheDishes or try to avoid UberEats as much as possible. SkipTheDishes the customer service at least somewhat tries. UberEats doesn't give two anythings about you or your food.
nojs 5y ago
> We understand you are not happy with your recent experience > [Tick] no response needed! I think companies really shoot themselves in the foot with responses like this. Surely it’s worth 4 bucks to avoid the potential PR shitstorm.
- shmel 5y ago
  Oligopoly. There are very few popular food delivery services. If you are petty over 4 bucks, you end up cooking at home. It is like saying that people outraged by FB will change anything. What are you going to do? Move to TikTok?
  - bserge 5y ago
    Cause a stink then quit for good... ideally
pgrote 5y ago
This is the one thing I cannot wrap my head around. How does anyone make any money on orders this low? Based on the screenshot the total was 12.28. UberEats takes 1.00 for a fee and I think some from the vendor. The delivery person gets 1.29. Does UberEats pay a minimum for the delivery to the delivery person and the tip is addtional? If so, whose end does it come out of? Are the delivery services trying to make it up in volume?
- wyre 5y ago
  UberEats is making money from VC and isn’t profitable [1]. They charge the customer a fee, and take 30% from the restaurant as a middleman fee. [1] https ://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/if-uber-eats-isnt-profitable-now-when-can-it-be.html
  - monkeybutton 5y ago
    30%. Thirty freakin percent. Plus a delivery fee. And they can't turn a profit? That's not a business model that can be fixed by optimizing some conversion rate or efficiency factor by any reasonable percentage.
    - potatolicious 5y ago
      > That's not a business model that can be fixed by optimizing some conversion rate or efficiency factor by any reasonable percentage. Many, many people made this exact case during the heyday of gig economy companies. Many a VCs and investors (including those who run this illustrious site) mocked this criticism as that of know-nothing haters who simply could not understand the brilliance of the minds behind these operations.
- Zanfa 5y ago
  They don’t. All of the delivery companies are massively (as in billions) unprofitable with no reasonable path to profitability due to competition from other equally unprofitable VC funded companies.
cameronh90 5y ago
UberEats are shockingly bad in my experience (London, UK). They constantly try to tempt us back with 40% promos, but we have sworn off ever using them again. Last time we used them, every driver allocated to pick up the order abandoned the delivery when they got to the restaurant. I assume something was going wrong at the restaurant. This happened maybe 10-15 times, to the point that we were joking that the restaurant was murdering the drivers. The app didn't offer any ability to contact customer service, as it only seemed to unlock customer service after the order is actually delivered. None of the phone numbers online would get through to a human. We didn't want to order from elsewhere in case that order ended up getting delivered. It took 5hrs (!) before the app auto-cancelled the order. Additional to that, the drivers rarely find my house, always turn up in different vehicles to what is claimed on the app and quite frequently a different person entirely. The order time is always longer than what it claims (much like Uber itself). The app is terribly unstable and frequency crashes, displays errors or loses my basket. Deliveroo are so much better it's not even funny.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- potatolicious 5y ago
  Similar experience in the US for me. I wrote off UberEats completely after a truly abysmal experience where Uber accepted the order, and the restaurant made it, only for Uber to fail to find a delivery person to deliver it. Except the app gave no errors or notices about this, no "sorry, we can't find a driver right now, hang on..." prompt. Nor did it update the ETA for the order. It just happily kept pushing the ETA back, 5 minutes at a time, with no notice of any sort. After about an hour I contacted the restaurant - I'm a regular there and they were puzzled - the order had been ready for quite some time and no one had shown up to pick it up. The Uber app on their end showed no errors or notifications to indicate something was wrong. So I contacted UberEats CS, where the agent revealed the "can't find a driver" part of the story, and then announced that there was nothing to be done about it. That part really pissed me off - Uber charges surge pricing to customers to incentivize more drivers, but when push comes to shove on a poor customer experience is unwilling to increase the payout for a delivery to expedite it? Given the absolutely usurious rates Uber charges restaurants to use their service they weren't even willing to sacrifice a small part of their margin to try and get a stuck order moving? The craziest part of this is how apologetic the restaurant was for something that absolutely had nothing to do with them. It sounds like UberEats fucks up regularly and customers take it out on the restaurants - meanwhile UberEats runs away to the bank with their absurd per-ticket commissions for failing to fulfill their role. Oh wait, no, they're not running away to the bank at all. Somehow despite running a truly shitty service and charging usurious fees to restaurants they are still losing money hand over fist. I will say - I have misgivings generally about the gig economy, but I now exclusively use DoorDash. I've had a couple of screwups with them but they have always responded promptly in a no-bullshit way.
spheroidmethod 5y ago
I once worked on a reasonably complex e-commerce system with millions of products, add-to-cart, taxes, promo codes, etc. Every so often, an order total changed between the time that the user saw the total on the confirmation screen and when they actually hit the button to place the order (which seems to be what happened here). This happened because of promo applicability changes, product price changes, products being de-listed, etc. But it was relatively easy to prevent problems with this. When the user clicked the button to place the order, we sent along the expected order total, the expected item IDs to purchase, the expected tax, etc. In the backend, one of the last validation step before the order was finalized was just to compare the final order details against those expected values. If there were any differences, the order was rejected with an error message to try again. There were then monitors on these types of errors which would go off if there was a higher-than-normal frequency of these sorts of errors, so we could track down any bugs causing price discrepancies. I'm kind of surprised that UberEats doesn't seem to have a similar validation step.
- dmurray 5y ago
  > Every so often, an order total changed between the time that the user saw the total on the confirmation screen and when they actually hit the button to place the order (which seems to be what happened here). I don't see any reason from the post to believe this kind of race condition is what happened here. Uber's CS says the promotional code used was not valid for this restaurant, but presumably the app accepted it anyway. That's also likely a validation error, but of a different class.
  - dboshardy 5y ago
    > I'm kind of surprised that UberEats doesn't seem to have a similar validation step. That's what OP was saying.
  - teeray 5y ago
    > an order total changed between the time that the user saw the total on the confirmation screen and when they actually hit the button to place the order > …but presumably the app accepted it anyway… Not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure things like this would constitute a contract. Of course, whether there’s squirrelly language in the Terms of Service is another question… EDIT: formatting
chrischen 5y ago
Similar thing happened to me with Square. I used their debit card and applied a boost for grocery shopping. This promised some percent discount if I shopped at a grocery store. I did a sizable purchase (>$50) and at checkout withdrew $20 in cashback. Turned out, they had hidden conditions for denying the boost if the transaction involves cashback (no way to know this at all). I contacted support who just gave the templated "can't do anything about it sorry" and they force closed the ticket. I would have accepted if they just applied the promised discount on the grocery portion of the bill (since they can clearly detect the cashback), but this seems beyond their ability to program... and at the consumer's expense? These big companies power themselves by automation, losing sight of the fact that they should be designed to serve humans, not harvest nickel and dimes off of them. It's so easy for them to profit off of massive scale but they can't find any port of the budget to cover their own programming errors and bugs (as rarely as they do occur)??? It's easy to prosecute companies on egregious scams, but these small programming errors that probably affect a non-trivial amount of customers in small ways probably add up to big scams in scale but fly under the radar.
- mcguire 5y ago
  That's the brilliant thing about being "at scale": as long as the incidents are infrequent enough that doesn't happen to essentially everyone, it's much cheaper to leave a wake of pissed-off ex-customers than it is to hire and support actual customer service.
  - notreallyserio 5y ago
    It's also the sort of thing that is catnip to senators who want to score points against Big Tech.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    Yep. And the thing is, despite reading all the awful shit Uber/UberEats has done in this thread, I'll continue using them, because it's convenient, and still better than most of the alternatives. (The Lyft app has decided over the past few weeks that taking my money is too difficult for it, so I'm a transportation app down at the moment.) I feel a little bad about this, but not bad enough to change my behavior.
armchairhacker 5y ago
Meanwhile trending on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_sure_i_wasnt_ordering_near_closing_time_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_... > Bill's Kitchen couldn't complete your order and has to cancel. We're sorry we couldn't complete your order this time but thanks for continuing to support restaurants. > You'll still be charged Commenters are saying this is flat-out illegal and OP should contact their bank.
- molszanski 5y ago
  If you contact the bank or a card company for a chargeback they will likely block you on Uber. Which might be PIA when traveling. All hail monopolies.
  - everfree 5y ago
    At least there's also Lyft. The same can't be said for the broadband internet market, for example.
    - cpcallen 5y ago
      Not outside the US!
      - wombat-man 5y ago
        I used grab in Vietnam. There's a pretty good chance there's another app to use. I don't have an Uber account
  - notyourwork 5y ago
    Taxi
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - najqh 5y ago
spuz 5y ago
There is currently a thread on Reddit where hundreds are reporting having their orders cancelled but still being charged. https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_sure_i_wasnt_ordering_near_closing_time_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_... A similar thing happened to me. I still have an email that says "your order was cancelled but we'll refund you in 3 weeks". Three weeks later I still had no refund but since so much time had passed, their support refused to consider my complaint. After trying everything I could think of I eventually reversed the charge with my bank which took another 4 weeks or so. Then shortly after that I tried to book a taxi through Uber (not UberEats) and was unexpectedly charged the original amount for my cancelled food order. Again I had to get that amount refunded through my bank which again took weeks. Most people will not bother to get their money back. Uber's business model is literal theft.
- stefan_ 5y ago
  Haha, what is that screen?! "We didn't keep our part of the contract, but we are charging you anyway"? How on earth did that make it all the way into the app.
  - kzrdude 5y ago
    Here you wonder what the programmers implementing this were thinking
    - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
      They were implementing what they had been asked to.
      - fzil 5y ago
        at a certain point you have to take responsibility for your actions and the impact it has on the world. Sure, if you don't do it somebody else will. But what matters is that you weren't the one who did it and dirtied your hands. Yes, the CEO/management are responsible for the overall direction and tactics used by the business but the engineers are also complicit since without them the plan isn't executed.
Kinrany 5y ago
We need a standard protocol for the customer-restaurant-delivery market. UberEats has no business owning both the app and the delivery service.
iamleppert 5y ago
The irony here is that through your own laziness and sloth (who has a $10 order delivered) of wanting your food delivered to you like a machine needs a top off of oil, you become scammed by a tech company seeking to enrich itself and hide behind a cloak of none other than the only thing it knows —- technology.
- tdeck 5y ago
  If I buy a jar of peanut butter made in a factory and it contains a shard of glass, is that my fault for being too lazy to grind my own peanut butter?
- webkike 5y ago
  Laziness and sloth are the same thing
MattGaiser 5y ago
Uber has always been generous with refunds to me. Anyone had this come up and then asked for a refund and not gotten it?
- rocqua 5y ago
  Where do you live? Here in NL my experience with ubereats is good. But I think they know they need to compete here. There are other more popular options. I could see customer service drop as alternatives fall away.
djakaitis 5y ago
Your post history is basically all complaints about losing a few dollars or glitches in software that are annoying but ultimately not that big a deal.
literallyaduck 5y ago
Go get a poster board and stand in front of the restaurant "Uber Eats stole my money." Contact Google or Apple and tell them their App is fraudulent. Contact the police about the theft, non emergency line. Charge back from your bank. File a complaint with the town chamber of commerce. Contact your state's attorney general office. Contact your town's newspaper and tv. Remember that pounds are not US currency and the advice doesn't apply.
MrWiffles 5y ago
I bailed on ubereats a long time ago due to abysmal service and zero support. Switched to DoorDash, who has had phenomenal support and even automates refund requests while giving you the option to talk to a human if the proposed credit/refund isn’t satisfactory (I’ve done that only a few times and they always hooked me up, sometimes beyond what I asked for). I highly recommend them over UE.
throwaway_2009 5y ago
This sort of thing is why I still use cash as much as possible. That way you have an atomic transfer. I get food, you get money. It could easily work with card, just pay on arrival and show the driver the payment confirmation. But that would mean Uber taking a small risk of fraud (e.g. people ordering food they didn't want before their account gets banned). So it won't happen unless people force it. It's the sort of thing that makes me wish that everyone else just, well, had a backbone. There are so many minor examples of bad systems all over the place that continue to exist because most people just put up with bad practice. Not an advert, but I predominantly use Just Eat in the UK for this reason, or just go directly to restaurants. Their fees are lower too.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  That is funny because I always use credit cards because I want to protect myself… if I give you cash for something and then you fail to give it to me, I have no way of getting my cash back. If I use a credit card, my bank can get it back for me.
  - throwaway_2009 5y ago
    Right, except with an atomic transfer this is impossible. You can literally stand at the door, check that the food is there, done. The worst case is that the restaurant scams you and it's not good food. This happens far far less than the middleman scams or pseudo-scams like oversubscribing delivery drivers so that everything is cold or late.
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      I'd like to hear more about the industry of delivering food without prepayment.
      - cortesoft 5y ago
        I mean, almost all pizza delivery was cash on delivery until fairly recently, which is food delivery without prepayment. The driver would tell you how much you owed, and you hand them the cash plus a tip. Yes, sometimes pizza places would have issues with people prank ordering a bunch of pizzas to someone else’s house, but pizza shops had ways to try to mitigate that risk. If you are really too young to remember this, you can watch “Home Alone” to see some examples of how this worked.
sascha_sl 5y ago
The monopolization of the market has been much worse here in Germany. Delivery Hero controls everything, and you can tell. Nonexisting support, double charges if you happen to break their frontend (no nonces here), addresses, phone numbers and emails leaking to spammers without any consequences or even acknowledgement. (I only know this because I use unique data) Please consider cutting these services out of your transactions, or at least the ones that are too big to care about consumers or providers having a good experience.
fpgaminer 5y ago
Similar thing happened to me. Uber put a random charge on my card. I totaled up all my orders/invoices and made sure it didn't belong. Then fought with them for a month, every time they either refused to help or told me it must have been someone else in the family. Luckily Discover had my back and refunded the money immediately when I asked. Never used UberEats again. Either way, just lay these transgressions on the heaping pile of Uber's toxic business practices. Stealing self driving secrets from Google, maliciously targeting politicians and police, and now just petty theft.
- bargle0 5y ago
  > maliciously targeting politicians and police I hadn’t heard anything like this. Can you provide details?
  - razakel 5y ago
    They were tracking reporters and regulators using a "God View" function.
  - fpgaminer 5y ago
    https://www.vox.com/2017/5/4/15552184/us-justice-department-uber-investigation-greyball https://www.vox.com/2017/5/4/15552184/us-justice-department-...
  - revolvingocelot 5y ago
    Grandparent is describing "Greyball"[0][1], a system by which enforcement officials, police, and undesirables were automagically detected and shadowbanned from Uber (and probably still are). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyball [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/03/uber-secret-program-greyball-resignation-ed-baker https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/03/uber-secr...
gtsop 5y ago
I regret the moment I signed up for uber eats. When things don't to well you are completely on your own. It is a legit scam. If there was a fundraiser to get a lawyer to sue them i would chip in.
oxplot 5y ago
Sharing the opposite experience: 1 out of 5-10 orders I've placed over the years have arrived with missing/different items. Every time, I got refund either for that item or the entire order instantly, effectively resulting in free meals. This is why I'm reluctant to use any other food ordering app since my experience trying to get a refund with the other ones have been bumpy.
- forty 5y ago
  I guess when there is a mistake they can put on the restaurant, they are happy to have the restaurant pay for the refund. When they do the mistake, understandably they'd rather keep the money too :)
diveanon 5y ago
I thought this was common knowledge at this point. I am legitimately surprised to hear that people are still using this service.
ytdytvhxgydvhh 5y ago
I had an issue like this with Amazon back when their marketplace was a new thing, I think around 2000 or so. I ordered a used iPod (the original thumb-wheel one) from a marketplace seller and I had a $100 Amazon gift card to put towards the order. Their checkout took the gift card code and it appeared that my total was being split between the gift card and credit card, but it ended up charging the entire amount to my credit card. Not the end of the world or anything, but I guess it shows that checkout processing is non-trivial and even the big guys can screw it up. Or maybe especially the big guys can screw it up by having a large number of confusing discounts and policies to apply.
go_prodev 5y ago
After poor experiences with UE and others (mostly UE) I have decided we'll try and order through restaurants that have their own delivery. It's usually far fresher, faster and often cheaper. The main downsides are that restaurant websites can't always be trusted for secure payments, and there are fewer options now that UE had taken over deliveries.
BrianB 5y ago
This happened to me 2 years ago. I canceled my Uber account because of it (because you can not cancel UberEATS without canceling Uber as well) Last week I found out they never did delete my account. And they will not until I pay the balance.
jrootabega 5y ago
When you cede the basic life abilities of traveling, communicating with restaurants, shopping, and cooking to [big] "tech", you will be abused.
Nextgrid 5y ago
This is a typical playbook for "big tech". I've encountered this multiple times with different companies, not just Uber - they will make it as hard as possible for you to get what is rightfully owned to you. You can successfully get it back if you fight hard enough (and if not a payment card dispute/chargeback will work) but their strategy relies on most people giving up. I can't wait for this disgusting industry to be more regulated.

217 points by boros2me 5y ago

boros2me 5y ago

Probably no one cares as it's only £4, but posting on HN has a therapeutic effect.

new_guy 5y ago
£4 over a million customers soon adds up.
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  This is exactly how these companies think.
- lozenge 5y ago
  Luckily, they all signed the class action waiver and didn't mail in their opt out with the address in green ink like the terms and conditions said.
stemlord 5y ago
I care. I've grown very embittered by big tech I want people to continue call out their bs.
BossingAround 5y ago
Why should a customer pay for bad app design? The app allowed the code to be applied to that specific restaurant. Then backend refused it and customer pays the difference. In what world is that acceptable?
- berberous 5y ago
  This is so bad I can’t imagine even Uber Eats really thinks it’s acceptable. Probably a bug. The problem is that tech support are useless automatons and there is no way to really escalate to those that can see it clearly should be fixed other than shouting on Twitter. Very frustrating when there’s no avenue for real review and redress other than chargebacks.
  - jcheng 5y ago
    After seeing https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_sure_i_wasnt_ordering_near_closing_time_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_..., I don’t think Uber Eats deserves the benefit of the doubt.
- paulgb 5y ago
  I recently(ish) discovered a legitimate billing error with Lyft/Bay Wheels that caused a few bucks of overage[1]. It wasn’t a lot of money to me, but I pointed it out to them as it was an obvious error. To their credit, they refunded several entire trips, not just the disparity, and I believe they refunded others’ affected rides as well. I think that’s a satisfactory approach: mistakes happen, but companies should make an effort to ensure that they don’t benefit if they make an accident that favors themselves. [1] https://twitter.com/paulgb/status/1449779457200300033?s=21 https://twitter.com/paulgb/status/1449779457200300033?s=21
razakel 5y ago
£4 times the millions of people they pull the same trick on, though.

cbhl 5y ago

In the US one would consider escalating to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, since this seems like lying (the price before the button press is different from the price after). Not sure if the UK has a similar ministry you could appeal to? Though one would consider the risk of being banned from Uber Eats over $4.

SllX 5y ago
Risk being banned from a service that stole your money and refused to give it back? You chargeback and move on with your life.
- paulgb 5y ago
  Yeah, this is a slam-dunk chargeback; the user has documented the disparity and documented their attempt at going through the businesses’ preferred channel. Assuming that what’s presented is true, of course. I guess chargebacks are less of a thing in the UK?
  - bserge 5y ago
    They're not a problem in my experience. At worst you'll get banned by the merchant. Bank never required proof or anything the few times I charged back (for not delivering the items for over a month, pre Covid).
  - cabalamat 5y ago
    Chargebacks are a thing in the UK, and the only time I've ever gone to my credit card company with one they resolved the issue properly.
  - boros2me 5y ago
    Chargeback is exactly what I'm going for, but need to wait until the payment settles (couple of days) and then I can start the dispute process (called my credit card provider right after I realised UberEats is not willing to refund), which with my credit card provider is the following: - Hold the phone for 40 minutes - Explain the situation - Wait for a paper letter on the post that includes an empty printed form with a return envelope - Fill out the form with the exact information I provided on the phone - Post the return envelope - Wait Fortunately I don't mind playing along and I'm pretty sure having this deliberately crazy process (instead of an online form) is a much bigger pain for my credit card provider (who are hoping for churn and people abandoning the process) than myself. Well, not me. It's not the £4, it's the principal.

ajaimk 5y ago

Funny enough, I encountered the is issue earlier this week. I assumed it was a bug and didn’t place the order.

curiousgal 5y ago

Sometimes I've had the same intial screen with the code applied only to be told after trying to place the order that my account was not eligible for the promotion. I was sent back to the same screen with the appropriate amount (without the promo applied). Judging by the screenshots, this could be the case so I will hold my judgement. Edit: Just wanted to make this clearer, a way to reproduce this would be: Take screenshot of code applied. Place order. App tells you the code didn't apply and sends you back to the order screen with the full price displayed. Place order. Take screenshot of receipt. Boom UberEats scammed me! Not necessarily saying that OP is lying but I am too cynical.

donkarma 5y ago

Thought it was going to be that post about the resturant that cancelled and Uber Eats took the money anyways, funny that it happened more than once

shmel 5y ago
I believe the case you are describing happened with Just-Eat.
- spuz 5y ago
  No, it was UberEats: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_sure_i_wasnt_ordering_near_closing_time_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_...
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    This is comically bad. “Thank you for supporting local restaurants”? Hahaha. Wtf.

dubcanada 5y ago

This is one of the reasons I've only used SkipTheDishes or try to avoid UberEats as much as possible. SkipTheDishes the customer service at least somewhat tries. UberEats doesn't give two anythings about you or your food.

nojs 5y ago

> We understand you are not happy with your recent experience > [Tick] no response needed! I think companies really shoot themselves in the foot with responses like this. Surely it’s worth 4 bucks to avoid the potential PR shitstorm.

shmel 5y ago
Oligopoly. There are very few popular food delivery services. If you are petty over 4 bucks, you end up cooking at home. It is like saying that people outraged by FB will change anything. What are you going to do? Move to TikTok?
- bserge 5y ago
  Cause a stink then quit for good... ideally

pgrote 5y ago

This is the one thing I cannot wrap my head around. How does anyone make any money on orders this low? Based on the screenshot the total was 12.28. UberEats takes 1.00 for a fee and I think some from the vendor. The delivery person gets 1.29. Does UberEats pay a minimum for the delivery to the delivery person and the tip is addtional? If so, whose end does it come out of? Are the delivery services trying to make it up in volume?

wyre 5y ago
UberEats is making money from VC and isn’t profitable [1]. They charge the customer a fee, and take 30% from the restaurant as a middleman fee. [1] https ://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/if-uber-eats-isnt-profitable-now-when-can-it-be.html
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  30%. Thirty freakin percent. Plus a delivery fee. And they can't turn a profit? That's not a business model that can be fixed by optimizing some conversion rate or efficiency factor by any reasonable percentage.
  - potatolicious 5y ago
    > That's not a business model that can be fixed by optimizing some conversion rate or efficiency factor by any reasonable percentage. Many, many people made this exact case during the heyday of gig economy companies. Many a VCs and investors (including those who run this illustrious site) mocked this criticism as that of know-nothing haters who simply could not understand the brilliance of the minds behind these operations.
Zanfa 5y ago
They don’t. All of the delivery companies are massively (as in billions) unprofitable with no reasonable path to profitability due to competition from other equally unprofitable VC funded companies.

cameronh90 5y ago

UberEats are shockingly bad in my experience (London, UK). They constantly try to tempt us back with 40% promos, but we have sworn off ever using them again. Last time we used them, every driver allocated to pick up the order abandoned the delivery when they got to the restaurant. I assume something was going wrong at the restaurant. This happened maybe 10-15 times, to the point that we were joking that the restaurant was murdering the drivers. The app didn't offer any ability to contact customer service, as it only seemed to unlock customer service after the order is actually delivered. None of the phone numbers online would get through to a human. We didn't want to order from elsewhere in case that order ended up getting delivered. It took 5hrs (!) before the app auto-cancelled the order. Additional to that, the drivers rarely find my house, always turn up in different vehicles to what is claimed on the app and quite frequently a different person entirely. The order time is always longer than what it claims (much like Uber itself). The app is terribly unstable and frequency crashes, displays errors or loses my basket. Deliveroo are so much better it's not even funny.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
potatolicious 5y ago
Similar experience in the US for me. I wrote off UberEats completely after a truly abysmal experience where Uber accepted the order, and the restaurant made it, only for Uber to fail to find a delivery person to deliver it. Except the app gave no errors or notices about this, no "sorry, we can't find a driver right now, hang on..." prompt. Nor did it update the ETA for the order. It just happily kept pushing the ETA back, 5 minutes at a time, with no notice of any sort. After about an hour I contacted the restaurant - I'm a regular there and they were puzzled - the order had been ready for quite some time and no one had shown up to pick it up. The Uber app on their end showed no errors or notifications to indicate something was wrong. So I contacted UberEats CS, where the agent revealed the "can't find a driver" part of the story, and then announced that there was nothing to be done about it. That part really pissed me off - Uber charges surge pricing to customers to incentivize more drivers, but when push comes to shove on a poor customer experience is unwilling to increase the payout for a delivery to expedite it? Given the absolutely usurious rates Uber charges restaurants to use their service they weren't even willing to sacrifice a small part of their margin to try and get a stuck order moving? The craziest part of this is how apologetic the restaurant was for something that absolutely had nothing to do with them. It sounds like UberEats fucks up regularly and customers take it out on the restaurants - meanwhile UberEats runs away to the bank with their absurd per-ticket commissions for failing to fulfill their role. Oh wait, no, they're not running away to the bank at all. Somehow despite running a truly shitty service and charging usurious fees to restaurants they are still losing money hand over fist. I will say - I have misgivings generally about the gig economy, but I now exclusively use DoorDash. I've had a couple of screwups with them but they have always responded promptly in a no-bullshit way.

spheroidmethod 5y ago

I once worked on a reasonably complex e-commerce system with millions of products, add-to-cart, taxes, promo codes, etc. Every so often, an order total changed between the time that the user saw the total on the confirmation screen and when they actually hit the button to place the order (which seems to be what happened here). This happened because of promo applicability changes, product price changes, products being de-listed, etc. But it was relatively easy to prevent problems with this. When the user clicked the button to place the order, we sent along the expected order total, the expected item IDs to purchase, the expected tax, etc. In the backend, one of the last validation step before the order was finalized was just to compare the final order details against those expected values. If there were any differences, the order was rejected with an error message to try again. There were then monitors on these types of errors which would go off if there was a higher-than-normal frequency of these sorts of errors, so we could track down any bugs causing price discrepancies. I'm kind of surprised that UberEats doesn't seem to have a similar validation step.

dmurray 5y ago
> Every so often, an order total changed between the time that the user saw the total on the confirmation screen and when they actually hit the button to place the order (which seems to be what happened here). I don't see any reason from the post to believe this kind of race condition is what happened here. Uber's CS says the promotional code used was not valid for this restaurant, but presumably the app accepted it anyway. That's also likely a validation error, but of a different class.
- dboshardy 5y ago
  > I'm kind of surprised that UberEats doesn't seem to have a similar validation step. That's what OP was saying.
- teeray 5y ago
  > an order total changed between the time that the user saw the total on the confirmation screen and when they actually hit the button to place the order > …but presumably the app accepted it anyway… Not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure things like this would constitute a contract. Of course, whether there’s squirrelly language in the Terms of Service is another question… EDIT: formatting

chrischen 5y ago

Similar thing happened to me with Square. I used their debit card and applied a boost for grocery shopping. This promised some percent discount if I shopped at a grocery store. I did a sizable purchase (>$50) and at checkout withdrew $20 in cashback. Turned out, they had hidden conditions for denying the boost if the transaction involves cashback (no way to know this at all). I contacted support who just gave the templated "can't do anything about it sorry" and they force closed the ticket. I would have accepted if they just applied the promised discount on the grocery portion of the bill (since they can clearly detect the cashback), but this seems beyond their ability to program... and at the consumer's expense? These big companies power themselves by automation, losing sight of the fact that they should be designed to serve humans, not harvest nickel and dimes off of them. It's so easy for them to profit off of massive scale but they can't find any port of the budget to cover their own programming errors and bugs (as rarely as they do occur)??? It's easy to prosecute companies on egregious scams, but these small programming errors that probably affect a non-trivial amount of customers in small ways probably add up to big scams in scale but fly under the radar.

mcguire 5y ago
That's the brilliant thing about being "at scale": as long as the incidents are infrequent enough that doesn't happen to essentially everyone, it's much cheaper to leave a wake of pissed-off ex-customers than it is to hire and support actual customer service.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  It's also the sort of thing that is catnip to senators who want to score points against Big Tech.
- kelnos 5y ago
  Yep. And the thing is, despite reading all the awful shit Uber/UberEats has done in this thread, I'll continue using them, because it's convenient, and still better than most of the alternatives. (The Lyft app has decided over the past few weeks that taking my money is too difficult for it, so I'm a transportation app down at the moment.) I feel a little bad about this, but not bad enough to change my behavior.

armchairhacker 5y ago

Meanwhile trending on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_sure_i_wasnt_ordering_near_closing_time_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_... > Bill's Kitchen couldn't complete your order and has to cancel. We're sorry we couldn't complete your order this time but thanks for continuing to support restaurants. > You'll still be charged Commenters are saying this is flat-out illegal and OP should contact their bank.

molszanski 5y ago
If you contact the bank or a card company for a chargeback they will likely block you on Uber. Which might be PIA when traveling. All hail monopolies.
- everfree 5y ago
  At least there's also Lyft. The same can't be said for the broadband internet market, for example.
  - cpcallen 5y ago
    Not outside the US!
    - wombat-man 5y ago
      I used grab in Vietnam. There's a pretty good chance there's another app to use. I don't have an Uber account
- notyourwork 5y ago
  Taxi
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - najqh 5y ago

spuz 5y ago

There is currently a thread on Reddit where hundreds are reporting having their orders cancelled but still being charged. https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_sure_i_wasnt_ordering_near_closing_time_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_... A similar thing happened to me. I still have an email that says "your order was cancelled but we'll refund you in 3 weeks". Three weeks later I still had no refund but since so much time had passed, their support refused to consider my complaint. After trying everything I could think of I eventually reversed the charge with my bank which took another 4 weeks or so. Then shortly after that I tried to book a taxi through Uber (not UberEats) and was unexpectedly charged the original amount for my cancelled food order. Again I had to get that amount refunded through my bank which again took weeks. Most people will not bother to get their money back. Uber's business model is literal theft.

stefan_ 5y ago
Haha, what is that screen?! "We didn't keep our part of the contract, but we are charging you anyway"? How on earth did that make it all the way into the app.
- kzrdude 5y ago
  Here you wonder what the programmers implementing this were thinking
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    They were implementing what they had been asked to.
    - fzil 5y ago
      at a certain point you have to take responsibility for your actions and the impact it has on the world. Sure, if you don't do it somebody else will. But what matters is that you weren't the one who did it and dirtied your hands. Yes, the CEO/management are responsible for the overall direction and tactics used by the business but the engineers are also complicit since without them the plan isn't executed.

Kinrany 5y ago

We need a standard protocol for the customer-restaurant-delivery market. UberEats has no business owning both the app and the delivery service.

iamleppert 5y ago

The irony here is that through your own laziness and sloth (who has a $10 order delivered) of wanting your food delivered to you like a machine needs a top off of oil, you become scammed by a tech company seeking to enrich itself and hide behind a cloak of none other than the only thing it knows —- technology.

tdeck 5y ago
If I buy a jar of peanut butter made in a factory and it contains a shard of glass, is that my fault for being too lazy to grind my own peanut butter?
webkike 5y ago
Laziness and sloth are the same thing

MattGaiser 5y ago

Uber has always been generous with refunds to me. Anyone had this come up and then asked for a refund and not gotten it?

rocqua 5y ago
Where do you live? Here in NL my experience with ubereats is good. But I think they know they need to compete here. There are other more popular options. I could see customer service drop as alternatives fall away.

djakaitis 5y ago

Your post history is basically all complaints about losing a few dollars or glitches in software that are annoying but ultimately not that big a deal.

literallyaduck 5y ago

Go get a poster board and stand in front of the restaurant "Uber Eats stole my money." Contact Google or Apple and tell them their App is fraudulent. Contact the police about the theft, non emergency line. Charge back from your bank. File a complaint with the town chamber of commerce. Contact your state's attorney general office. Contact your town's newspaper and tv. Remember that pounds are not US currency and the advice doesn't apply.

MrWiffles 5y ago

I bailed on ubereats a long time ago due to abysmal service and zero support. Switched to DoorDash, who has had phenomenal support and even automates refund requests while giving you the option to talk to a human if the proposed credit/refund isn’t satisfactory (I’ve done that only a few times and they always hooked me up, sometimes beyond what I asked for). I highly recommend them over UE.

throwaway_2009 5y ago

This sort of thing is why I still use cash as much as possible. That way you have an atomic transfer. I get food, you get money. It could easily work with card, just pay on arrival and show the driver the payment confirmation. But that would mean Uber taking a small risk of fraud (e.g. people ordering food they didn't want before their account gets banned). So it won't happen unless people force it. It's the sort of thing that makes me wish that everyone else just, well, had a backbone. There are so many minor examples of bad systems all over the place that continue to exist because most people just put up with bad practice. Not an advert, but I predominantly use Just Eat in the UK for this reason, or just go directly to restaurants. Their fees are lower too.

cortesoft 5y ago
That is funny because I always use credit cards because I want to protect myself… if I give you cash for something and then you fail to give it to me, I have no way of getting my cash back. If I use a credit card, my bank can get it back for me.
- throwaway_2009 5y ago
  Right, except with an atomic transfer this is impossible. You can literally stand at the door, check that the food is there, done. The worst case is that the restaurant scams you and it's not good food. This happens far far less than the middleman scams or pseudo-scams like oversubscribing delivery drivers so that everything is cold or late.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    I'd like to hear more about the industry of delivering food without prepayment.
    - cortesoft 5y ago
      I mean, almost all pizza delivery was cash on delivery until fairly recently, which is food delivery without prepayment. The driver would tell you how much you owed, and you hand them the cash plus a tip. Yes, sometimes pizza places would have issues with people prank ordering a bunch of pizzas to someone else’s house, but pizza shops had ways to try to mitigate that risk. If you are really too young to remember this, you can watch “Home Alone” to see some examples of how this worked.

sascha_sl 5y ago

The monopolization of the market has been much worse here in Germany. Delivery Hero controls everything, and you can tell. Nonexisting support, double charges if you happen to break their frontend (no nonces here), addresses, phone numbers and emails leaking to spammers without any consequences or even acknowledgement. (I only know this because I use unique data) Please consider cutting these services out of your transactions, or at least the ones that are too big to care about consumers or providers having a good experience.

fpgaminer 5y ago

Similar thing happened to me. Uber put a random charge on my card. I totaled up all my orders/invoices and made sure it didn't belong. Then fought with them for a month, every time they either refused to help or told me it must have been someone else in the family. Luckily Discover had my back and refunded the money immediately when I asked. Never used UberEats again. Either way, just lay these transgressions on the heaping pile of Uber's toxic business practices. Stealing self driving secrets from Google, maliciously targeting politicians and police, and now just petty theft.

bargle0 5y ago
> maliciously targeting politicians and police I hadn’t heard anything like this. Can you provide details?
- razakel 5y ago
  They were tracking reporters and regulators using a "God View" function.
- fpgaminer 5y ago
  https://www.vox.com/2017/5/4/15552184/us-justice-department-uber-investigation-greyball https://www.vox.com/2017/5/4/15552184/us-justice-department-...
- revolvingocelot 5y ago
  Grandparent is describing "Greyball"[0][1], a system by which enforcement officials, police, and undesirables were automagically detected and shadowbanned from Uber (and probably still are). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyball [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/03/uber-secret-program-greyball-resignation-ed-baker https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/03/uber-secr...

gtsop 5y ago

I regret the moment I signed up for uber eats. When things don't to well you are completely on your own. It is a legit scam. If there was a fundraiser to get a lawyer to sue them i would chip in.

oxplot 5y ago

Sharing the opposite experience: 1 out of 5-10 orders I've placed over the years have arrived with missing/different items. Every time, I got refund either for that item or the entire order instantly, effectively resulting in free meals. This is why I'm reluctant to use any other food ordering app since my experience trying to get a refund with the other ones have been bumpy.

forty 5y ago
I guess when there is a mistake they can put on the restaurant, they are happy to have the restaurant pay for the refund. When they do the mistake, understandably they'd rather keep the money too :)

diveanon 5y ago

I thought this was common knowledge at this point. I am legitimately surprised to hear that people are still using this service.

ytdytvhxgydvhh 5y ago

I had an issue like this with Amazon back when their marketplace was a new thing, I think around 2000 or so. I ordered a used iPod (the original thumb-wheel one) from a marketplace seller and I had a $100 Amazon gift card to put towards the order. Their checkout took the gift card code and it appeared that my total was being split between the gift card and credit card, but it ended up charging the entire amount to my credit card. Not the end of the world or anything, but I guess it shows that checkout processing is non-trivial and even the big guys can screw it up. Or maybe especially the big guys can screw it up by having a large number of confusing discounts and policies to apply.

go_prodev 5y ago

After poor experiences with UE and others (mostly UE) I have decided we'll try and order through restaurants that have their own delivery. It's usually far fresher, faster and often cheaper. The main downsides are that restaurant websites can't always be trusted for secure payments, and there are fewer options now that UE had taken over deliveries.

BrianB 5y ago

This happened to me 2 years ago. I canceled my Uber account because of it (because you can not cancel UberEATS without canceling Uber as well) Last week I found out they never did delete my account. And they will not until I pay the balance.

jrootabega 5y ago

When you cede the basic life abilities of traveling, communicating with restaurants, shopping, and cooking to [big] "tech", you will be abused.

Nextgrid 5y ago

This is a typical playbook for "big tech". I've encountered this multiple times with different companies, not just Uber - they will make it as hard as possible for you to get what is rightfully owned to you. You can successfully get it back if you fight hard enough (and if not a payment card dispute/chargeback will work) but their strategy relies on most people giving up. I can't wait for this disgusting industry to be more regulated.