Update Below:

On Sunday, we were returning back to the Bay Area from Anaheim after Blizzcon. We decided to take uberX to LAX from the convention center. UberX is the ride sharing service from Uber. It allows regular citizens like us to function as taxis without meters, taxi dispatch, special licenses, etc. I requested the ride from my iPhone like usual and we were picked up in 10 minutes.

After we arrived at the airport, I checked my email to see my Uber receipt. Unusually, I was only charged $5 for a 35 mile ride. Based on the map, it looked like the driver accidentally ended the ride early soon after we got in the car. Later in the day, I received another email with an adjusted receipt:

First, the fare was adjusted to $88. I’m not sure where they got that number. There is no note about how that amount was calculated. I’m pretty sure that they overcharged me because we were charged less than $80 for a trip that lasted almost twice as long on the reverse route through LA traffic. That however, isn’t even my problem with this bill.

If you look at my screenshot above, you can see that they have made a huge mistake in the calculation. The adjustment that they added should have been $83 ($88 – $5 = $83), but for some reason I was instead charged $166, bringing the total charged to $171. That is even more than if I took a black car or SUV! Looks like a bug in their software.

The charges as they appear on my card

That should be an easy fix, right? I could just call them and get it fixed, right? Uber is the premium service that they claim to be, right?

Nope. Uber doesn’t have a customer support line. The only customer support they have is over email. You probably saw that at the bottom of the email, they say “Need support? Reply to this receipt”. I did that. I also forwarded the email to [email protected] (the original receipt came from [email protected]). I also logged on to the Uber website and requested a fare review and submitted a help ticket. No problem, they will probably get back to me via email really quickly, right?

That was 3 days ago. I haven’t heard even one peep from Uber. I even tried tweeting. I got a quick response saying that they would “look into it asap”. Still nothing.

Uber, I really wanted to like you. When talking to people from outside the valley, I used to use you as an example of a company doing interesting things and solving real problems. Now, I’m probably going to close my Uber account and consider competitors. Am I ever going to recommend Uber to a friend again? No. Not as long as you have this sad state of “customer service”. How can you call yourself a premium service, yet have almost non-existent customer service?

Going forward, I am probably just going to initiate a chargeback. They aren’t giving me many choices.

Update: A Community Manager from LA got back to me via email. They refunded my trip and gave me a $50 credit. I’m happy that this was finally resolved and hope that this is just a blip and not part of a trend. The comments from the Hackernews thread prove that it might just be the case.

Transcript of that email:

Hi Arun,

Thanks for reaching out and so sorry for the delay here. We take customer support very seriously and the fact that it took a few days to get a response is definitely not cool or the standard. I’m working with my support team to make sure that emails like yours don’t slip through the cracks again like this.

As for your trip and adjustment, the driver accidentally ended the trip prematurely and our operations team went in to adjust the fare to the amount that our estimator shows for this route (you can see a full breakdown for the charges below). However, it looks like there was a bug here that duplicated the adjustment (creating an additional $83 charge), which resulted in the $166 adjustment. Our engineers have already started looking into this to see exactly what went wrong.

I understand this is a big inconvenience and you shouldn’t have to pay for this hassle, so I have refunded this trip in full (card receipt attached) — you should see the refund back on your card in the next few business days. Additionally, for the delay in our response, I have added a $50 credit to your account. It looks like you ride in San Francisco most often, so this should get you a few rides on us. I promise this is not the norm and hope you can give us another shot!

Please reach out if there is anything else I can do.

==== Price Breakdown =====

Base Fare
$3

Distance
32.5 miles x $2.55/mile
$82.75

Time
4:30 minutes x $0.50/minute
$2.50

Total
$88

Best,
James

Community Manager – LA
Twitter – @Uber_LA