It’s called vomit fraud. And it could make your Uber trip really expensive | Hacker News Reader

It’s called vomit fraud. And it could make your Uber trip really expensive

miamiherald.com

79 pointsminimaxir77 comments

Somewhat related: landlords in NYC have been pulling similar stuff on renters for years when they move out, often forcing people to leave thousands of dollars behind in forfeited security deposits due to "damages", because most people never put up a fight.

Two anecdotes from personal experience, both in rental buildings ran by large RE holdings mind you:

- a building claimed a scratched sink and subtracted $600 for replacement. After multiple discussions and a firm stance that I will pay it only if they provided me with physical scratched sink they've swapped out, the charge magically dropped to $70, as they "were able to polish out the scratches instead and there was a miscommunication with maintenance staff".

- another building claimed a vanity was destroyed by water and had to be replaced at a cost of a bit over $2,000. After multiple emails and threats to go to court, I've won. The key was showing them that EXIF data on photo "evidence" they sent me showed it was taken 3 months BEFORE i moved into the apt in question and also that the marble pattern on photos did not match several photos i've had of the bathroom of the apartment.

Similar stories happened with rental cars a few times.

Sadly, it's a lesson i've learned for life - whether its a rental car, apartment, or anything of value really, taking video evidence is almost necessary nowadays.

Interesting, thank you for sharing. Regarding EXIF data, how did you prove you didn't fake it? Or did you have an email and have to show that the email attachment was the same file? (Did you have to prove the email was sent by their domain, with DKIM etc.?)

Deep into the dispute, the building's head of maintenance sent the "evidence" photos, which still had the metadata on them, along with lengthy email referring to photos, so there was no chance to contest that email was fake.

The moment i've pointed that out and threatened to bring up their fraud, they sent the check for full amount along with a note that "please consider this matter resolved from our side". I wish I had the time and energy to pursue the fraud further but never did so.

Wow! Yeah, no kidding... I would've wished I would've had the time and energy to pursue the fraud too. I'm glad you at least caught it... most people wouldn't even know about EXIF data, let alone think to check it. I hope they don't keep doing what they did to you to other tenants...

Rental cars is an interesting one. The Munich airport rental car companies contract with a third party in returns. Myself and a friend were both told by the rental companies that the third party is incentivized to come up with BA scratches, etc.

Being diligent is important. Pictures, notes, properly filled out forms.

I take pictures, insist on a walk-around, and insist the employee on the walk-around with me notes all observed defects.

Sometimes, they'll say "don't worry about it". I politely, hopefully somewhat adroitly and politically, insist.

In many situations, e.g. storm damage, I've taken to taking a bunch of pictures -- maybe also a video, in which all the observations "hang together" and have contemporary commentary.

I may never need to use this, but digital memory's cheap, these days, and it also saves me from worry about trying to recall details at a later date.

Just yesterday, I was looking in on an older artist friend who has a combination of care-givers and an handyman through the house on a daily basis. Part of one of her heavier, wall-mounted ceramics had crashed to the floor, with the top end leaning against the dining room table.

What happened? I'm not sure (the friend is confused, at times). But I grabbed my phone and took some pictures. The handyman probably has it cleaned up by now. But if something needs to be done -- even just an insurance claim, depending on the details of their insurance that I don't currently know -- I can supply the pictures.

On the other hand, I feel a bit at times like I'm expressing/demonstrating paranoia. And the whole "surveillance society" thing. I try to limit this to immediately relevant subjects/events, in my own life. Not "watching the neighbors".

While application fees are non refundable, they do cut this sort of crap out. Plus it's way less then a security deposit. I can walk away without worries and they only have the 500 I put up originally.

> While application fees are non refundable, they do cut this sort of crap out. Plus it's way less then a security deposit.

Application fees and security deposits (and associated deposit fraud) are not mutually exclusive.

When I vacate an apartment, I don't let my landlord keep the security deposit. I stop paying my last two month's rent--or whatever is equivalent to the security deposit. That way if he thinks I owe him money, he can come after me and take me to court if need be, instead of the other way round. I've been burned too many times.

Depending where you live, fraudulent charges against the security deposit can be very lucrative for an informed tenant - a bad faith charge against the security deposit opens the landlord up to treble damages.

A friend of mine had a similar problem. He leased a flat (New Zealand term for a rental of various sorts) and took photos of the place, including the thread-bare carpets. When he moved out, the landlord decided that they hadn't cleaned the place properly and wanted to charge them for it. Friend hired a carpet cleaner, and went back in, scrubbing every square centimeter of the place. Landlord insisted that it wasn't properly cleaned, so the Tenancy Tribunal got involved. In the end, the landlord took half the bond, and my friend got the other half of the bond.

The landlord still won.

This happened to me exactly one week ago. Three days after a very ordinary Sunday afternoon ride I got a ~$80 fee. I contested through the app and got a message containing two close-up pictures of a stained back seat. There was no background of the car, just a close-up of a seat cushion. The ticket was closed immediately after I received the picture. I was able to re-open it by replying to the email of the ticket I received, where I asked for proof of the time it occurred, or proof of anything really. I received a message acknowledging that I wanted proof, and then a generic summary of Uber's policy - once again the ticket was closed.

I am now adamantly not using Uber. Keep your $80 you lost a frequent customer.

Edit: FWIW this was for a ride from SF to RWC. Not in Miami.

driver should be required to save a small sample and this will drastically cut down on false claim by both parties. make false claim twice? you are banned whether aa driver or passenger.

Twice? I think you're giving a little too much leeway in terms of fraud. If you commit it once, you should be permanently banned from the platform. No second chances.

The reason it's twice is to reduce the likelihood of a false positive fraud case banning someone who didn't commit fraud.

Chargeback.

If you charge them back you'll also never be using Uber again, they'll definitely ban you for that

It sounded like gp is choosing not to use them again anyway. If that's the case, I fail to see the argument against a chargeback here.

Use a different CC#

I’m not using Uber because of their uber-sexist working environment, their uber-exploiting their drivers and complete lack of morals.

Their platform becoming a breeding ground for scams is a function of the company’s nature.

How is uber sexist?

One of the most comment article on HN in recent history

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682022

Replying since I can no longer edit my original post.

I find a way to re-open my support ticket with uber and linked them the miamiherald article - they then immediately refunded the cleaning fee.

This is terrible. Obviously, when people puke in cars, they should be charged accordingly, but these types of scams are awful.

The easiest solution seems to be that the driver should initiate the “charge” while the passenger is still in the car/on the ride. Then a notification can come up in the app and tell the passenger they are being charged for cleanliness/whatever.

That’s how regulars cabs work (at least in NYC). You puke in the cab, you get $75 added to your fair (been there, done that. Not proud.).

It’s possible some scammers might try to do that with people in the car, but at that point, the passenger can gather their own evidencs and contact the company immedietly.

I say increase the burden of proof to a video. All Uber drivers really should have a dashcam by now for many other reasons.

The cleaning supplies cannot even go above $20, like you have got to be kidding me. Uber has the same issue all online retail has, when complaints come in, who can you believe and how do you evaluate? My thing is, if a driver keeps reporting these events and multiple drivers keep disputing it, maybe that driver has a pattern of screwing with your customers... The first time it happens to a driver it should be that Uber out of their own pocket pays for 'supplies' and still only charge like $20 or whatever is 'reasonable' I suppose.

Although my next question is: how much of that vomit fee goes only to Uber? They sure as hell aint cleaning nobodys car...

>The cleaning supplies cannot even go above $20, like you have got to be kidding me.

A cab or uber driver could well lose more than $20 while the car is out of commission due to vomit, as it's not just about a car wash or cleaning supplies.

Not only are they losing revenue, but in cities like NYC they may well also be paying a lease fee to the owner of the car or medallion.

The cleaning supplies aren’t the only issue. From a driver’s standpoint, if they’re in their first hour of a long shift and get a puker, they have significant lost income for the rest of the night. That’s what this is to reimburse for. And I also think it’s high so people will think twice about doing it!

This sort of fraud is unacceptable, though. Uber’s going to have to come up with some sort of photo recognition that time and date stamps every photo submitted, and doesn’t allow same or similar photos. This is pushing the edge of what ML/AI can do currently.

I see, hadn't considered it from that perspective, I've never driven Uber or Lyft, only have family that have. I've heard only of one instance where somebody spilled juice in my relatives car and they put a negative review against the rider.

Chargeback. Chargeback. Chargeback. That's unfortunately the new strategy that I've been using more and more these last couple of years to deal with crooked companies like Uber, Amazon, as well as local businesses like car repair and ticket vending. It's just unbelievable how little protection consumers have. And of course, even chargebacks don't always work. Then it's over to small claims court. This has also been increasing because we simply don't have proper consumer protection laws and have no other alternatives to companies literally stealing our money. It's just a fact of life in America that you will be fucked over and over by companies stealing money with little recourse. This isn't even uber's only scam. Drivers often don't even try to come and when you cancel the ride, they charge you for the driver's incompetence. Chargeback again and again and again then small claims. If only we could have proper laws regulating such fraud...

That's how in the article one of the victims got her money back.

> But she disputed the charge with her credit card company and got back her $98. Uber then canceled her account.

The problem is then Uber canceled her account. So they assumed she was the one being fraudulent.

I guess she can try Lyft from now on, but then the same fraud could happen there and she'd be locked out of that app as well. Then back to taxis? Which may or may not be bad, as I noticed some taxi services started getting better after they were forced to compete with these ride sharing companies.

> The problem is then Uber canceled her account. So they assumed she was the one being fraudulent.

Why would a customer want to continue using a service whose driver fraudulently accused them of damaging property?

> I guess she can try Lyft from now on, but then the same fraud could happen there and she'd be locked out of that app as well. Then back to taxis? Which may or may not be bad, as I noticed some taxi services started getting better after they were forced to compete with these ride sharing companies.

The uncontroversial answer to your question is yes. If you find that Uber, Lyft, Yellow Cab, and every reasonable form of available public transportation have drivers who are all uniformly running scams and refuse you service upon CC disputes, you've probably got much bigger problems to worry about in this country.

edit: typo

> Why would a customer want to continue using a service whose driver fraudulently accused them of damaging property?

Because Uber is an effective monopoly in certain markets given the convenience factor. It's why people still use their crappy internet provider or utility company.

Or she can sign up for a new email and new uber/lyft account. I doubt they care and probably leave this door open like Amazon because they know they will fuck people over wrongfully.

I don't see why that's unfortunate. It was the route taken here, too:

> Despite several email exchanges, Uber never agreed to reimburse her the extra money. But she disputed the charge with her credit card company and got back her $98. Uber then canceled her account.

Problem solved.

> If neither Uber nor the credit card issuers agree to reimburse the victims of fraud in Miami, it’s not clear if the dispute becomes an issue for the county or the state.

But I didn't read any evidence that a credit card issuer has denied the customer's dispute. In fact every (reasonable) case I've ever heard of the card issuer sides with the cardholder and not the merchant.

Unfortunately i have had the opposite experience and the card company sided with the merchant.

When you issue a chargeback, the credit card company asks the merchant to return the money. They have no power to enforce this even if they side with the issuer. If they cannot get the money after six months or so, you're on your own with small claims. I'm there right now even though the merchant promised in writing they would refund me. I've been screwed before also with five star Marriott hotel rooms that had no air conditioning in summer in Cancun. The belief that the credit card company eats the loss if the merchant refuses to refund is a myth, albeit one even I believed till recently. Don't ever rely on that. Not from any credit card, not even Amex. This is how things really work and most people don't find out till they get fucked over.

> Miami police say this type of fraud “is difficult to consider as a crime”

They must not understand how fraud is defined in their jurisdiction.

> Under Florida law, an individual commits fraud when they conceal information that should not have been concealed, when they purposefully lie, or when they undertake any sort of dishonest act for the purpose of benefiting themselves and duping another. A person found guilty of fraud in Florida faces anything from restitution to extensive jail time.

https://www.baezlawfirm.com/what-constitutes-as-fraud-under-...

This is no different than a server overcharging you at a restaurant. Contact your credit card company, then file a police report. One of the police force's primary objectives is to enforce laws by pursuing criminal charges on behalf of citizens in its jurisdiction. If your report is mishandled, file a complaint against the officer assigned to the case.

I think what they meant was "we don't have the resources to prosecute this sort of crime in light of all the more serious crime we have to deal with in Miami."

More like "we have enough crime that we can pick and choose what we want to solve and we'd rather kick down doors and arrest minor drug dealers than track down petty fraud". If solving petty fraud gave the swat team an excuse to kick down doors they'd probably solve more petty fraud. It's no different than a dev choosing to write more spaghetti than fix their old spaghetti. Nobody wants to do boring stuff regardless of your line of work.

How about this for a fix?

1. The driver must file a complain with video evidence within 5 minutes of the ride ending. The video evidence should be recorded via Uber app, hence we can mostly trust the timestamp.

2. The passenger entering a vehicle will look around for dirt. If they find it, they make a recording (using Uber app), within first 5 minutes of the ride. Or just refuse the ride.

Thus the driver cannot pin dirt created after the ride on the earlier passenger (5 minute limit), and they cannot pin earlier dirt on the passenger (passenger will have reported it). Technically the driver could still smear the car in the space of those 5 minutes after the ride, but that still narrows the window dramatically. And no extra overhead for the mainstream use case (no dirt).

As an extra, if the passenger is worried, they can snap a picture/video while exiting the car, as the ride ends (also using the app). Presumably the user is no longer in the vehicle, as evident in the video, and any accusations of them having vomited in the car would not be credible.

Did I miss anything?

Dunno, or maybe just require dashcam evidence...

"The Miami-Dade Office of Consumer Protection said that as of July 1, 2017 it no longer “regulates complaints against transportation services such as Uber or Lyft,” and that any complaints should be addressed to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

The state consumer affairs department said it was not aware of the change and declined an interview request."

Ensure the photo of the damage is taken through the app and is taken live, not uploaded. Then watermark it with a timestamp.

Problem solved for the common case? Photos of photos on screens aside, it would raise the barrier for the fraudster.

Uber should be transparent and add 2 fields to a drivers profile: "# of issues reported", "# of issues accepted". Every time a driver reports an issue, or a passenger complaint against such issue goes through, the corresponding counter goes up.

A driver with ie a 7-7 record would be a potential fraudster. Yet a 7-0 record could just mean the driver had a lot of bad luck picking up passengers.

It may be too idealistic from my part, but at least that way a user could check the probability of a driver being a crook. Adding a prerequisite for supporting evidence would be nice too, such as requiring a timestamped picture of the passenger next to the damage for a claim to be successfull.

On the other hand, when I was driving for Lyft someone vomited and bled on my back seat. I'm glad Lyft covered the damage and cleanup.

Won’t the time stamps on the image metadata differ from the trip? Uber could automatically review every cleaning fee. Drivers caught scamming could be terminated. Ten lines of code could eliminate the problem instantly.

Only if the photo was taken before the trip commenced. A photo taken after the trip ended would be less contestable on the basis of time.

Also, fake vomit is trivially easy to find: https://www.amazon.com/s/field-keywords=fake+vomit

This exact incident has happened to me in Bay Area. That too in the new 'express pool' ride (there were other passengers in the ride)

I had to send a few emails back and forth before the issue was quietly resolved in my favor.

So how will the inevitable self-driving Ubers handle vomit?

After no passengers are in the car they will drive to the junkyard where they will be scrapped for parts. Kidding.

It's likely they may have centers where they "rest" where human employees would clean them after rides (please tell me they'd clean them at least once a month / week) and they could handle that. Though it does raise the question of, do they have cameras on the inside and do those cameras need audio / other privacy questions.

My guess is the next passengers will report it and the car will just drive back to it's home to be cleaned. If it's a big problem you could have the offender report it for a reduced cleaning fee or have the internal cameras recognize it (or show an internal picture of the car to people before they are picked up). Those are just off the top of my head but it's far from an intractable problem.

Car2go handles it like this: When you get in the car, you rate its cleanliness.

If it’s not drivable (flat tire, puke, etc.), they have a team of people on-call to fix them.

If it’s just not clean but still drivable, it alerts them and at some point the on-call folks will come out and clean it.

They also have the ability to charge the previous driver a cleaning fee.

I am sure they can figure that out in the 20 years it's going to take for that to be a reality.

Waiting for someone to propose a blockchain to fix this

Lol my LIT out my nose!

Seriously tho’, blockchain fans think “unregulated” is a huge plus... this is what unregulated looks like

Presumably, escrow would be the blockhainy solution to this. 2-of-3 key signatures required to release payment, so at the end of a ride, both parties need to agree all was in order, or file a dispute with the escrow provider.

Blockhain shenanigans aside, it seems to me Uber could provide escrow here. It would at least remove this problem of after-the-fact surprise charges.

You don’t need blockchain to do escrow - people have been doing it for hundreds of years already without...

What I meant was more that you need escrow to use blockchains for trade, not the other way around.

So Uber updates the app, requires the user to take a photo of their seat in the car when they exit the vehicle, gets the driver to acknowledge the picture in order to close out the transaction.

Dunno whats so hard about this?

It was on the door. Or back of the passenger seat. Now you got to take like 2-3 photos every-time you exit. Super hassle.

Small price to pay for a smooth ride. I dunno, a lot of this reeks of entitlement. There's a liability to using someone else's possessions to increase ones quality of life: maintaining it in good order. Seems obvious to me: I'll take a pic/small video of entering and exiting the vehicle. Quality win, all around.

It doesn't sound like you've thought about this too well. This add serious friction to the experience Uber is trying to provide with their service.

Not to mention the fact that now driver and passenger are taking photos, presumably with people in them, and sending them to Uber.

I def don’t want random photos of me sent to Uber!

You take a picture of an empty seat.

You sit in that seat, and complete your ride.

You get out of the car, take another picture of the empty seat, and off you go.

Those pictures of the seats before/after condition don't have any personal details in them. No humans. And they're only shared with Uber for verification in cases where claims are made.

So, I don't see the problem.

I dunno, there is already friction: rating the experience.

This just makes the ratings honest.

Strange reaction from the downvote crew: okay, lets just live with fraud then. Its not like technological solutions to fraudulence are un-intersting, or?

> Its not like technological solutions to fraudulence are un-intersting, or?

What you're proposing, however, isn't a technological solution, at least not primarily. It's a solution based in modified human behavior.

A technological solution would be something closer to requiring full-time multi-camera video surveillance of each ride (as was recently on HN with the driver in Missouri live streaming to Twitch). Of course, it would raise all sorts of issues.

What you are proposing is personal irresponsibility.

But I propose that this is just your desire for personal irresponsibility.

As a user, I'd be quite happy to take a before/after picture of the car seat to ensure that both myself, and the driver, are satisfied as to the state of things during my ride. I see absolutely no issue with this - other than the fact that I have to take responsibility for the seat and the condition, no matter what.

But you seem to propose that riders shouldn't be held responsible for the condition of the car seat after they've used it. I don't think that's particularly ethical, nor great, nor does it improve the quality of service as a whole for all of Ubers riders.

No. If 99.9% of rides don't involve this kind of problem, the additional time people (users + drivers) are unnecessarily spending taking and approving pictures is going to exceed the costs from incidents like this.

That, and it's degraded UX and it'll drive a few percent of users to a competitor.

To be fair, after reading about this, I might have to start taking photos of the interior of my uber after a trip - and not rating for a number of days so that if this happens, I can give a 1 star rating. Too many of those and the driver gets kicked off the platform.

How often does this happen? How about Uber eat the cost if driver and rider don’t agree on the facts. If a driver reports statistically more denied vomit, cut zhim off from any benefits. Isn’t this how, eg, other types of fraud prevention work?

I dunno why the app can't just be updated to make this smooth.

Not for every ride, but for spills/stains: require proof of these kinds of incidents to be recorded as a video (or series of pictures) within the app, including exterior & license plate of the registered car. Log timestamp and GPS data during recording. Could cut fraud substantially just like that.

Then again, these incidents are probably only occurring on something like 0.05% of rides, so this may not really be the top priority to fix.

Uber GPS is complete garbage. Most drivers don't use it, as a rider I don't depend on it. I assume it would just use your phone's API, but apparently they managed to add a variable that significantly degraded it.

Funny you should mention that. They wrote an article on it: https://eng.uber.com/rethinking-gps/

I expect they already do this, and also have a system for cutting off suspected fraudulent passengers. And it probably works pretty well (they have some smart statisticians there, and the right incentives), but it's statistically based and every so often they have a false positive and cut off an honest customer or an honest driver. It would be unacceptable for a government body, or a utility with a government-granted monopoly, to do this without an appeals process, but it doesn't sound so bad for a private company that has competition.

The problem is that Uber doesn't care. I've had a driver say they picked me up, and I can see them driving away on the app while I'm standing on the sidewalk. I cancelled the trip and Uber still charged me for a partial trip even though my phone was reporting I wasn't in the car.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com