It’s called vomit fraud. And it could make your Uber trip really expensive
chicagotribune.com
chicagotribune.com
These drivers are looking for any way that they can to make their work barely profitable, because just letting the algorithm "Manna[1]" them around a city ends up being barely break even after all costs are added in.
So that's why you get the calls asking where you're going so they can get long trips (especially around airports), the "oh not I got into an accident, can you cancel the trip?" calls, etc... Not to mention the drivers who are stuck with high interest loans on cars from Uber.
It's marginal labor inputs for a marginalized workforce - and an increasingly immigrant one, which is great generally but correlates to the easily exploitable. So while I don't condone this kind of behavior, I can see why they would feel pushed into doing it - especially if it's relatively retribution free.
Unfortunately, not enough people use Lyft so those who don't like Uber are still forced to "multi-app" with Uber rather than relying on it as a sole source of income.
It's companies like Uber that make the US unemployment rate bullshit; people can be independent contractors, get treated like trash by "unicorns" like Uber, get paid shit, and be considered employed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You can make a living working multiple gig economy jobs, but it's hardly sustainable.
I found that hard to believe, so I looked it up, and you're right.
DoorDash uses some pretty fancy wording to try to hide it, but they use tips to subsidize your pay. If a delivery is going to pay you $5 and the customer tips $0, then you get $5, obviously paid entirely by DD. If the customer tips $3, then they give you the $3 tip, and DD only pays $2, so you still drive away with only $5. If on that same delivery, they instead tip a whopping $10, then you get the $10 tip and DD only pays you $1.
But DD is charging the customer the same delivery fee no matter what. If DD charged the customer $7 for this hypothetical delivery, then they keep $2 from the non-tipper, $5 from the $3 tipper, and $6 from the $10 tipper, when really, they should be keeping only $2 each time with the remainder going to you.
They are absolutely stealing tips.
The entire cost of his Labour was borne by me, yet I didn’t tip him.
Is it a tax evasion scheme, and thus a tax subsidy for certain professions?
If it wasn't clear, what I meant is: employer under pays employee with the expectation that customer will pick up the slack via tipping.
It's identical, expect I suspect the $5 tip isn't taxed
Work 30 hours a week at minimum wage for McDonalds, and technically you're considered employed.
Sympathizing with this is like sympathizing with a store clerk who is taking money out of the register on the side.
second, regular cabs also have tons of ways to rip off riders, and do so. Playing with the meter, intentionally taking a longer route, etc.
Which you report to Weights & Measures if you suspect that since the meters are supposed to be certified and untampered with -- back before uber defanged Weights & Measures (at least in Arizona so they would quit hunting their illegal livery vehicles) this was a serious offence.
> ...intentionally taking a longer route
Everyone has a smartphone and generally don't trust cab drivers so have their google maps open.
The main difference is with a cab the only way they can charge you extra is to call the police and have them make you pay (or give you a ticket for "theft of service"), with uber they just tack on some extra charges and you have to fight them to get the money back. The police are going to ask a few questions and not make someone pay $150+ for a couple mile trip when they can look in the back seat and see there's no vomit.
It's a shame our system (USA) allows this type of abuse to happen. Time to bring back unions (at least until they become corrupt).
peace
I only recently read Manna, and it was terrifying and inspirational. My concern is that only the inspirational is fictional.
Watching a travelogue this evening in a rural Sicilian town that was mostly empty. The population in the last generation had left. Not to Palermo, or even Rome, but to Berlin and London.
The governemt was keeping the village alive by settling immigrants from Africa there, but eventually, under our current system, they’ll need jobs.
It’s the same story world over. In places looks Tunisia it’s more explicit than in say England, but in today’s world it’s not going to go away any time sooner. It’s like a sinking ship in “titanic”, and as technical experts with the benefot of a western passport and education we’re further from the bow. Eventually though there’s only a few life rafts.
While we still have nominal democracy there is a chance though, doesn’t matter how much voter disenfranchise or brainwashing you have, when 90% of the country is unemployed, they aren’t going to vote for the system that keeps 10% in power.
Also, I'm totally skeptical of the guy complaining of two vomit frauds committed against him in one evening. Far more likely is that he blacked out and then threw up twice in different vehicles, or he's simply too embarrassed to admit it.
Yes. The statistics bear this out.
It once took me 4 hours to clean my car after an incident that involved my sliding door mechanism. Cleaning quote for that exceeded $300.
And that smell... ugh!!!
Edit: vomit incident.
And with that, I'm definitely done.
If that's the case, then Uber should at least save the submitted photos and implement some minor automated procedures to raise the bar from effectively zero to just a few millimeters above. Check the EXIF data and compare it to the ride data, and compare the photos to old ones. When a vomit charge is disputed, Uber employees could compare the submitted photos to old ones in case a driver took a bunch of different photos from different angles. Or if they want to put more effort into things, control the camera directly from the Uber driver app and only allow photos taken from the app to be submitted.
It wouldn't solve the problem, but Uber could at least put a minor speed bump in front of would-be fraudsters.
But I was thinking more in terms of catching at least some of the fraud attempts and making it a bit riskier as a deterrence, rather than a foolproof detection method.
“I see that it was an uncomfortable experience, because the driver started the trip without you in the car, which should not happen.”
also, that plainly does not make sense.
Still, doesn't seem scalable. Also not super pleasant to have that done to your car unless you're renting it. Every time I would tell other Uber drivers this story, they would just laugh and not believe it.
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For the passengers, just take a picture of the interior after you get off an uber vehicle.
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.If its a problem with both services, it's dishonest to target Uber specifically.
EDIT: A quick Google search indicates it's likely a problem in both Lyft and Uber.
Yeah every taxi experience I've had has been terrible. Taking a longer route to increase the fair, rude, drives like a maniac. Then hassles me for a tip.
I assume those “infomercials” don’t exist nowadays with video on demand.
Hmm. Gee. Someone should really look into that.
Also, I wonder if a request for metadata of the photos would help resolve this in your favor.