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Comment by rfurmani | Hacker News Reader

I've had a couple bad experiences with Lyft recently, including one time the driver must have clicked that they picked me up while a block away, because I could see the lyft driving to the destination without me. I tried to get a refund since I was obviously waiting my start location the whole time, but the system claimed the drive went from start to finish (even though I wasn't in the car), so no refund.

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Same thing happened to me, and the support system automatically decided nothing was wrong whatsoever despite my phone certainly sending a very different location from the driver. And the madness was I couldn't even book another ride as I was technically in one.

So I ended up getting it resolved via the security panic button which did put me through to a real person who was empathetic to the issue.

Is this some sort of a scam? The driver cannot even mark the ride as completed without being in the area right? So they have to drive it anyway. I can’t imagine they would be on the platform for long if this happened on a regular basis. I would say it’s probably an accident but how could this behavior be accidental? Someone might accidentally say that they picked you up, but they couldn’t accidentally then drive an empty car to the destination.

Maybe they picked up the wrong person and neither of them realized?

Entirely possible, people do get into wrong rideshare vehicles. Especially late night after people have been drinking. A decent driver will confirm the name when you’re in a place with a lot of pickups happening but if the language barrier is strong that might not happen.

Has anybody tried "driving" for one of these companies using GPS spoofing? You could fake the location of your phone. I suppose it'd only work a few times before the number of reports gets you banned, but I wonder whether on a laragr enough (and automated) scale it would be profitable for scammers

I had to go in person to verify my documents to drive for Uber

I had a driver commit GPS spoofing on me: I was standing outside and there were no car to be seen anywhere even though the app showed the driver was there and had been "driving" to it

I tried to report a security incident to Uber, but not sure what happened. It would likely be easier to complain today, as now all taxis (which Uber technically is in Norway) need to be part of a Taxi dispatch central

Given that they track you every inch of your route, it'd be a pain in the butt to attempt to fake it.

I've gotten a refund on food before because my driver picked up my food and then went spend a half hour in a gas station before returning to their route even though my home was 2 minutes away.

>Given that they track you every inch of your route, it'd be a pain in the butt to attempt to fake it.

Pain for a single app developer when no such app exists, but a spoofing app will dutifully draw anyone any number and length of travel.

My experience in DC is GPS can be spotty due to the buildings and the app glitches when it says you are in one spot but you are not there.

Also DC has rules for certain streets on what side of road you are allowed to be picked up on.

> ended up getting it resolved via the security panic button which did put me through to a real person who was empathetic to the issue

For both Uber and Lyft this is what I do. Which is wild since the only other company I auto-escalate-to-cancellation with is Comcast.

Waymo isn’t winning because it’s automated. It’s winning because the major players left the premium segment of the market for grabs.

Comcast gives you the illusion of being able to talk to a human being if you are persistent enough.

What ends up happening is at some point they send you a link to talk to their support bot and tell you they are hanging up on you.

Threatening cancelation is the only way. The only reason they will not care is because of their captive markets. This is what you get with no competition.

Can it be both? Maybe semantics, but a lot of folks are taking Waymo because there's no human driver. Now "no human driver" may now be considered "premium," but saying that automation is not a significant factor doesn't quite ring true. As a single point of reference, the automation is a big part of what makes it attractive to me as a rider, both because there's no human driver (not super critical to my experience, but I prefer being in the car solo) and, more importantly, because of the driving behavior; it just feels like a better driver than most drivers on the road and that's due to the automation.

Uber lets you enable a PIN for each ride. The driver can't say they picked you up until they punch in the random 4 digit PIN the app gave you for the ride.

This is good, but why can't these firms determine when your phone and the drivers phone are far apart?

Too many people order Ubers for other people so it won’t work.

It's not unusual to call a taxi for another person. Or to make a multi-stop journey where some people get out before others. You can even send a parcel across town in a taxi.

Checking phone proximity might be helpful in some cases, but it's not a silver bullet.

GPS does not work everywhere, and not every device support BLE beacons.

I never give location permissions to any app if I can avoid it (indeed I don't even have the spyware app if I can avoid it; e.g. I use the web to order an Uber)

I don’t know why they don’t require it. Every Uber in Porto Rico uses the PIN but I’ve only had one in the mainland USA ask for it.

You need to enable it on your account.

Exactly - I believe it should be required for safety, limits shenanigans, etc. Apparently, it is required in Puerto Rico, but I don't know if drivers have to enable it themselves or if the app knows where the driver is operating. Are you saying the rider can also turn it on all the time? If so, that's good - I've only ever it seen driver's request it (all in PR, and one in mainland US, everywhere else, no PIN).

Right, YOU need to enable it. I assumed it was always up to the rider, since they're the beneficiary of it.

I waited 40 minutes for a Lyft at an airport because the driver made up a story about an accident and traffic, in the airport. No one else seemed to be affected by this traffic- so eventually I tried booking an Uber. It arrived 3 minutes later.

20 minutes after that the Lyft driver keeps texting me “where are you?!”. Their turn to wait!

Saw later they just started the ride without me and drove to my hotel.

Lyft said “this trip was completed, no refund”. Welp, app deleted.

I've had several cases of drivers just not picking me up. Reading their time to move anywhere at all, driving away and keep getting further and further away, it driving towards me only to turn some other direction. I always just cancel on them and have never had to pay a cancellation fee. I think once or twice they "picked me up" a block away. I'm pretty sure I was able to cancel or end the ride on that too, definitely was never charged though I don't recall if I had to use the support. But I never let it actually complete the trip when I wasn't riding. But I was always very miffed when anything like that happened as I did not appreciate them wasting my time.

On Uber I paid for priority pickup and watched as a driver drove within two blocks of my home and then sat in a neighborhood for 10 minutes. I finally message "Everything OK?" and get no reply but they finish their journey to my place.

The car reeked of weed.

That's must be annoying to say the least. In India drivers require an OTP to start a ride.

The OTP is the same for a user across rides, so I have mine memorised which is nifty. No fiddling with the phone during boarding.

On security: exploiting this would require the driver to stay in my vicinity the next time I book a ride, and also get the ride assigned to them. In a high population density area, it's rare - I've never had the same driver twice.

An OTP that's reused?

I mean it _technically_ isn't an OTP, but you know what I mean - just a code only the user knows that they need to share with the rider.

The threat model is sufficiently low to justify the much better UX of not having to look the code up everytime.

The acronym you are looking for is "PIN", a Personal Identification Number.

It solves the problem for 99.99% of the time. Drivers are not going to memorize your OTP; and it is unlikely that an OTP list will be leaked/used anytime soon.

Maybe, but there's OT in OTP. So if it's not changing then it's not OTP, just P.

It changes every time. You can also just have it at night, which I have. Prevents drunk wrong riders.

For that driver, it's effectively an OTP although probably not very pseudorandom.

An MTP

Omni-time password

Uber in India gives me a different OTP for each ride. A different ride-hailing app I use occasionally uses a PIN tied to a user.

OTPs are a simple solution to fraudulent rides that it's surprising it's not implemented universally, given all the complaints in this thread.

Charge back with your credit card if Lyft isn't willing to help you. Keep businesses in check.

In my experience, you should prepare for retaliation when you do a charge back.

Whether one cares depends very strongly on what "retaliation" means. If they ban your account, not a big deal - you were getting bad service and didn't want to do business with them anyway. If they send an armed hit squad to kill you, that would be worth being concerned about though.

I "purchased" a digital game once on the PlayStation Store. It wasn't clear from the description that it was completely useless without an active subscription to PSN, so I tried to return it. They said no way, sales are final and you've already launched the game. I did a chargeback, and they basically locked down my account until I filed a support ticket and had to lie, saying someone else made a purchase on my account.

If they don't want you as a customer, it's not wise to fight them on that.

If you really want to delete the app, a chargeback is the surest way to permanently remove yourself from the platform.

The business was in the wrong, so unless they rectify and refund my money I wouldn't use their platform again anyway.

I’ve heard the story from the other side as well: App reports ride is arriving, people get in, they go the wrong way and see their original ride stating that you are not there and leave again.

So it may not be intentional. Just coincidence and poor verification.

Companies that cheap out by not performing the basic obligations of business end up paying more for small claims court - provided their ripped-off customers actually take them to small claims court. Did you?

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