Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluetidepro | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a "non-story". Uber has a feature (charge customer a fee for vomiting in their car) that some drivers have abused, and Uber refunded the customers that were wrongfully charged. Seems like a pretty cut and dry situation that they are trying to make a bigger deal than it is.

EDIT: The original Miami Herald article people have now linked def paints a bit of a different picture.

View on HN

From the original article this one is referencing -

> “I immediately contacted Uber through the app. I told them that I was alone, sober, that I was not carrying any drinks and that it was impossible for me to have caused that damage,” she said. “But every new email from Uber came from a different representative and always favored the driver.”

> 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.

Uber account cancelations are automated whenever they receive a chargeback.

Which does not really excuse them of course.

The stories discussed previously on HN involved customers who had to chargeback after Uber wouldn't refund the charge, FWIW.

I'm going venture a guess that if anyone charges back against Uber, they're summarily banned from using Uber ever again.

You could venture a guess, or venture into the article itself to find out.

And after you do that, the answer is yes, they do get banned.

I don't know, I guess I just don't see it as a real story when so little customers are reporting it as a problem. Esp when all the customers referenced in the story itself didn't even have to do a chargeback. Yeah, it was a hassle with some emails back and forth, but Uber eventually took care of them all (at least the ones referenced in the article). I've personally never had a problem at all disputing a charge from Uber (I use the service every day for work).

>so little customers are reporting

Do you mean "so little customers are reporting it to HN" ? Or do you have some data from Uber internal support?

There are people that use Uber with debit cards, and who don't have a lot of money hanging around in their accounts. An $80-$150 charge (that takes time to ever get refunded) is a big deal for those people.

I understand what you're saying, but the fact is that, at least the customers in the article, all did eventually get a refund. Which makes it a "non-story" to me, personally. This could happen with any company. Company X accidentally charges you more, you dispute it, and you get your money back. It sucks, yeah, but it's not a big enough Uber specific problem to warrant a story like this trying to make it a bigger deal than it is.

That's only because you're ignoring all the other comments which point out that there are people who didn't get refunds, and that there were others who had to go back and forth with Uber and fight for these refunds.

Sorry, all the Miami Herald original article links came after I made these comments. I was going off the info mentioned in the Gizmodo article. The original article def paints a bit of a different picture.

The Gizmodo article is basically just the Miama Herald article badly summarized. In cases like this I always recommend reading the original article.

I personally have yet to be refunded.

It's just surprising to me the article didn't reference any customers in your case that HAVEN'T been refunded. All the ones they mention in the article eventually got their refund. It doesn't really make it look like that big of a deal in the article. Would help their argument if they included people haven't been able to get a refund, like yourself.

The Miami Herald article where I think this story broke suggests it's that not every incident gets resolved:

> 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.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article215299675.h...

Check out this article [1] and its accompanying HN post. It references cases where chargebacks were the only option, and one particular story where a rider had two rides back to back commit vomit fraud.

[1]: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article215299675.h...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17587952

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

> 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.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article215299675.h...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com