Uber Scam in Brazil – Drivers Have ‘Challenges’ Ending Trips
loyaltylobby.com
loyaltylobby.com
So basically they said I would have been charged the same amount regardless since the cost displayed before taking a trip is an estimate, and it only increases if it goes above the estimate. This means they're over charging for long trips since you pay the estimated price even if the trip cost is lower than the estimate.
I'm not sure if Uber works the same everywhere, this was in South Africa.
Lifetime value in this case was sharply negative
It seems people here don't understand how credit cards work :) The main reason to prefer them is because the chargeback process is straightforward and heavily biased in favour of the customer.
A quick google search reveals lots more, and none that I saw saying companies can’t come after you for a disputed charge. Most won’t, and most of those that do will only do it if they can clearly show they’re in the right, and you should be able to beat any collection attempt if they aren’t, but they can try.
Prime example: gym memberships
I wondered why, but I guess it's to reassure riders that they're not cheating.
"Well, YMMV"
No, your mileage cannot vary, because it's tracked in the app.
A more useful feature would be to make payments subject to a confirmation and don't allow the costumer to request a new ride until payment has been made (or disputed). You already have to leave review and (skip) tip after every ride anyway.
This seems like exactly the kind of behavior that's should trigger a 2-star review.
Airbnb has this problem though. A loud apartment on the highway will have no mention of it being on the loud highway. Just ratings like “5 stars, great for early risers!”
Airbnb has no motive to fix it because their service looks great with rating inflation.
If there’s a problem with Uber’s rating system, it’s that it’s a five-star system.
I thought I was the perfect Uber passenger (always on time, sat quietly) until I saw my rating. It was 3.5/5. Too arbitrary to be actionable. Is it because I’m a gringo living in Mexico? Should I start small talk more often? Tip them in cash? Is it because I only use it to go to the airport which is a long and traffic-ridden drive which must not be fun for the driver? Or is 3.5 actually a good rating because it’s above 3.0, etc.
They have no motive to fix it if they have an incredibly short term view of things. It's fairly obvious that this damages the entire platform over time.
Framing a stupid decision as rational because it's rational if you squint enough doesn't ring true. It's rational to think ahead a bit and take into account secondary and tertiary effects.
"Single axis" ratings systems are unintuitive, unreliable, prone to "gaming", and thus often self-defeating.
I think person-to-person services should have at least 2 rating axes:
• Was the service rendered [as advertised]? Yes / No
This would be for whether the driver dropped you off at the destination, or the seller delivered the advertised item, or the room and facilities matched the description.
A simple confirmation that the contract was completed; emotions should not enter into this rating.
• How do you feel? Disappointed / Neutral / Pleased
This must be presented in such a way that users DO NOT ASSUME that "Neutral" == "Bad." It should be OK to rate Neutral, because that's how we feel about most of the things in life.
I believe this was the original intent of the 5 star systems to begin with: 3 would be neutral/average/okay, 4 would be above average, and 5 would be exceptional/rare.
Or, since they are STARS, even 1 would be good.
But in practice, our collective psychology thinks anything <5 is bad.
Maybe introduce tomatoes or poo in addition to stars. Stars would be how good it was, and poo would be how many things annoyed you.
ie. reserve one star for when it's really bad.
Is it different in various markets, perhaps?
I had a driver who got lost once, and he just stopped the trip and took me to my destination -- because he would rather go a few miles out of pocket than risk a bad rating.
1) contact your credit card company for a chargeback
2) immediately stop being a customer of a company that has conciously ripped you off
I am pretty sure, that in 70-80% of the cases Uber drivers end up unchallenged by foreigners in Brazil. Taxi scams in Rio de Janeiro are a norm even if you take a metered taxi from a local company, as long as you don't speak Portuguese. A few years ago I was taken on a 3x longer ride than needed, and it didn't help that I was pointing to the driver that he is going to the opposite direction from the route Google Maps was showing on my phone. When I finally reached the home of my Brazilian friend, she couldn't believe how much I paid for the trip and how long it was.
No. The same thing happened to me and my friends, everyone speaks Portuguese.
Their culture explains a lot about the state of things in the city/state.
My guess is that Uber will record drivers that commit fraud and they would be affected over time. One point, taxi drivers are famous for making way worse frauds than what they do at Uber and with no way for you to file a complaint.
Peace
1) Calling an Uber for someone else.
2) When traveling abroad with no data plan, I'd use hotel WiFi to call up a vehicle, but then lose the connectivity as soon as I got in the vehicle. Unlike the experience described in the article, the quote provided at the dispatch time was fixed, not an estimate, so overcharging was never an issue.
1) driver and requester would become distant at the start of the ride, not at the end
2) disconnections are different from detecting a distance and you would usually get a connection (some time) after you left the vehicle.
Maybe the user could have a "terminate ride now" button (which is subject to abuses as well, but might be a better user experience)
Or that the effort involved is so great that people write off the ~$100 or odd so dollars that the scam cost them.
Disclaimer: I never actually performed any rides or deliveries on the platform. At least not at the juncture. I had quite some time previously done it for a few days during concert “surges”.
I can't imagine that Uber did not have a solution for this all these years since we seem to only be seeing reports now. But I could easily imagine stuff like that getting lost over time when there is sufficient turnaround in the department of "moving fast and breaking things". If there even are people who have the explicit responsibility of making sure that the company's basic business formula is kept intact, they will be the ridiculed naysayers in an environment of yes-men.
What does ‘velocity’ mean in this context?
quick, how many US dollars are R$78.50? and 42.80?
I assume a lot of (business) travelers use the company's Uber account and don't care much about an extra USD10.
Still, these apps' review system, GPS recording, and payback process make them much, much, much better than the regular taxi in Brazil. Specially in Rio.
Another point: If the fraud was going the other way, if it was costing Uber money, then I expect the problem would have been solved long before it reached the attention of HN. It's like the old story (or maybe urban myth) of supermarket checkout barcode scanners - the supermarkets argued that the error rate was normal, until someone pointed out that a large majority of the errors were in the supermarkets' favor. Oops! but not oops.
Uber should be motivated to catch and stop this because the extra revenue from the scams is almost certainly not worth the loss of users that will result.
It should also be easy for Uber to detect this since they collect location data from both phones. Sure, one of the two could be faking the data, but they could check both traces for plausibility (this might be why they collect location data even for a few minutes after the trip has ended - to get a baseline), and even if they don't apply any advanced smarts, it should be easy to check whether a driver got caught doing this repeatedly with unrelated customers.
Is it just drivers trying it without realizing that it is unlikely to benefit them in the long term, or Uber being bad at their job?
Sure maybe the rules need updating but using a loop hole to just completely ignore all of them and the having its users complain about 'unfair business practices' is just mind boggling.
Uber is becoming the mob 2.0
Don't let perfection get in the way of improvement.
Plus, with uber you can easily give a low rating, then drivers will disappear from the platform within long. This is why behavior like this isn't widespread, and why it's better than taxis..
With Uber you have a much lower probability of being scammed and a much higher probability of getting your money back after it (with taxis the probability of getting your money back is basically zero).
And by the way the probability of being scammed at all increases not only by being a foreigner, it increases only by being from another place and not knowing the city. There are dozens of cases of friends of mine born in São Paulo who got scammed by taxi drivers in RJ. With Uber/Cabify/99 this became much less common.
Medieval Town invites in Duke. Duke promises to fight against the injustices of the King. Eventually the Duke becomes the King. Repeat ad infinitum.
At some point, the usurper will become the establishment.
Also, nobody seems very clear on the point that the trip seems to include the toll you may face going between them. To say nothing of whether your driver has enough gas for this trip and needs gas money. That drive can be very interesting when you're going on fumes.
Yeah, it's interesting. I suggest carrying some extra cash (but not too much) if there are places you need to be. If it's something you can schedule, there are private drivers that cost a bit more but you can arrange things up front.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/mPZayvcX93CvnZ1fA
Was actually dropped off on the left. Lyft was really fast about correcting it and giving credit.
Lesson here is make sure you have an idea what the fare should cost.
Ratings only work if the bad guys get dinged.