
Beware: Uber Has No Customer Service and Still Has Bugs - ddrmaxgt37
http://www.arunhasablog.com/2013/11/13/beware-uber-has-no-customer-service-and-still-has-bugs/
======
JumpCrisscross
> _Going forward, I am probably just going to initiate a chargeback. They
> aren’t giving me many choices._

I've had great email support from Uber in New York. That said, a few years ago
a lost iPhone turned into several phantom SUV rides in and out of New Jersey.
An email to Uber revealed a policy against reversing such transactions.

"Okay," I thought, "chargeback it is." But it is not that simple - the
chargeback prompted an account suspension. The issue was resolved a few months
later, but still leaves a stink in the mouth whenever I start to recommend the
service.

~~~
sliverstorm
_" Okay," I thought, "chargeback it is." But it is not that simple_

It never is that simple. As best I can tell, a chargeback should be considered
to be the ultimate burning of bridges with that company.

------
ddrmaxgt37
A Community Manager from LA got back to me via email. They refunded my trip
and gave me a $50 credit. Transcript of his 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

------
chrishepner
I am permanently banned from Uber.

About 6 months ago, I noticed I was unable to log in to my account. Resetting
the password did nothing, so I sent an email to the local support address.
Almost two weeks later, I finally get the following reply:

    
    
      I looked into this situation and it appears that this 
      device has been used on 25 different Uber accounts, which 
      is a major red flag for us. We will not be reactivating 
      your account.
      Uber Love,
      Sam
    

I have one of those "firewall" apps on my rooted Android phone that lets you
restrict individual permissions for a given application. By default, I prevent
applications from transmitting the IMEI. I assume at least 24 other people
have done the same thing.

I sent an email explaining the issue, and they eventually emailed me back
saying they would "check in with their engineering team and circle back soon."
In May. My subsequent emails have been ignored. There is, as far as I can
tell, no way to escalate the issue.

I used to really like Uber, but they sure did their best to keep me from using
it.

~~~
jrockway
If they don't know your real IMEI, how can they permanently ban you? They
don't ask for a copy of your social security card or anything.

I can see why you might want to permanently ban _them_ , though. Blaming you
for a bug in their software.

~~~
charleslmunger
It is absolutely NOT a bug in their code. The relevant API is here:
[https://developer.android.com/reference/android/telephony/Te...](https://developer.android.com/reference/android/telephony/TelephonyManager.html#getDeviceId\(\))

If that firewall app is making those methods return anything other than null
or a truly unique ID, then they are not a compatible android device, and
someone using such a device is not in any position to complain when apps
behave incorrectly.

It's worth mentioning that it's not required for the return value of those
methods to be the IMEI, but it is required to be either unique or null.

------
bicknergseng
Kinda tangential, but I think this social hacking that happens in the search
of customer support is really interesting. I've used and seen it used over and
over, normally following something like this:

1\. There's a problem. Generally it's a pretty big deviation from normal
service involving a non-trivial loss, like paying an order of magnitude more
for a cab than is necessary.

2\. The customer tries to notify the company, normally just to recover the
loss.

3\. If it's a start up, there probably is limited or isn't any customer
service. Larger companies will generally put people through a large,
automated, slow, and probably ineffective process with tickets and machine
answering systems. The issue isn't resolved either way.

4\. Next up is a tweet. Some complaint about the issue @somecompany. A lot of
companies large and small have embraced Twitter as a psuedo-support channel.

5\. If the subsequent tweets get ignored, some will take to writing a blog
post about the situation and lack of support.

6\. If the blogger has any connections or visibility, aggregators or media
might pick it up and republish it. Brief infamy ensues.

Reminds me of when that woman's AirBnB place got demolished. I'm not sure why
Uber doesn't have killer support with $300 million to spend (maybe they do and
this is an outlier), but I think the lesson for the start up community. People
expect customer service, and customer service needs to be easier and faster
than complaining publicly to a large number of people.

------
nostromo
I'm long on Uber and Lyft but their approach to billing is lacking.

Uber really should provide some sort of cost breakdown on your previous rides.
(They provide quotes, but not itemized receipts.) But at least you can get a
sense for how much they charge on their website.

Lyft, hilariously, doesn't tell you how much they charge! At all! What on
Earth is their thinking behind that? Is it miles? Minutes? Am I charged based
on my Klout score? It's a total mystery to me.

I hate taking cabs, but at least their pricing is 100% transparent.

~~~
mikeash
It's amusing that various local taxi regulations, which Uber and friends have
long decried as being unfair, inefficient, outdated, etc. are pretty much the
sole reason taxi pricing is transparent.

~~~
mjn
Not only transparent, but predictable: you don't have to read the fine print
on each individual taxi to figure out if this particular fellow is charging
you something absurd. That's something Sweden has run into with its
deregulation of taxis:
[http://www.thelocal.se/20120425/40476](http://www.thelocal.se/20120425/40476)

The gist of it is that some independent taxi drivers will legally post prices
about 20x the going rate. Of course nobody who both knows what they're doing
and reads the price will take such a taxi. But the business model / scam is to
snag just a handful of clueless rides each day, especially targeting tourists
arriving at Stockholm Airport. Then rack up huge profits on a small number of
rides. It helps that tourists arriving at the Stockholm airport typically: 1)
don't know what the going rate for taxi service is; 2) don't have an intuitive
conception of what prices in Swedish Kronor mean; and 3) don't know how to
quickly locate and read the posted prices.

~~~
aheilbut
Although being Sweden, there's a quick and efficient train from the airport to
downtown.

------
lnanek2
Ran into the same thing with AirBnb actually - really poor support and messed
up rule based billing. A host agreed to pick me up then couldn't make it for
hours after. She had a strict cancelation policy, but agreed to refund anyway
since it was her fault. She and I both contacted AirBnb to issue the refund,
but they never did anything, and later even sent an automated survey asking
how their support was. So they ignored what both I and the host wanted and
wasted 1k of my money.

They've probably still saved me money over the long run vs. hotels, but
honestly, I prefer to just call up previous hosts and offer them money outside
AirBnb now and other similar options since I know AirBnb won't back me up when
they screw up. The same option is available with cars as well. You can take
Uber or Super Shuttle or whatever the first few times, but the drivers will
usually give you a card so you can just call them direct and get a better
rate.

------
carbocation
In Boston, I had an experience with a driver who took us to the right street
in the wrong city, then drove the wrong way down a one way and was pulled over
by the police.

I gave a 1 star review and explained what happened. Without further action on
my part, the local Uber rep refunded the difference between the actual care
and what it should have been had there not been the whole detour. Very
thoughtfully proactive.

~~~
soperj
I've experienced something similar in San Fran, where a driver took me on a
really weird route, and I gave a 3 star review, and just said they could have
picked a much better route and they agreed, and refunded the difference
between the route taken, and the best route.

~~~
toomuchtodo
So why doesn't Uber calculate the route to take and display it to the driver?
Every Uber car I've taken, the driver has both the Uber driver app running on
their phone, and a separate GPS device.

~~~
soperj
That driver didn't have a separate GPS device.

------
mattzito
I experienced an exact opposite response. We had a fairly troubling experience
with an Uber driver late at night, and sent an email explaining what happened
and requesting a response.

The next day we had an email response, refunding our money, requesting more
information, and offering to talk on the phone. A little more discussion and
we were told the driver had been terminated and got another heartfelt apology.
It was great.

------
sleepybrett
NYE 2012 I got caught in the crash that brought down their system and lost all
their reservations. The driver who was heading to pick me up at a 1x
congestion rate probably got a brand new 5x faire after the system came back
up and made an easy decision. A decision that left me in sub freezing
temperatures waiting for a car that would never come.

It was my first uber experience and while it hasn't quite been my last, they
certainly aren't my favorite choice.

I don't have the email archive available but I seem to recall them taking
almost a week to get back to me. I imagine that the crash caused them quite a
customer service backlog though. At the end of the day, for leaving me in sub
freezing temeratures they gave me a $50 credit.

------
incanus77
This should probably be retitled "Man has problem with Uber on Sunday,
declares crisis mode on Tuesday".

~~~
dlgeek
It's also worth pointing out that Monday was a federal holiday. So, he didn't
even wait 1 business day.

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

Give them a week to sort it out. Don't immediately chargeback, but call the
credit card company and tell them about the irregularity. That way, you give
Uber some room to sort it out, you don't have to worry about the charge in the
process, and you established the timeline in case things do get hairy.

~~~
fleitz
A week... Why?

24 hrs is plenty... they should have a phone # at minimum. Chargebacks, etc
are how to get action.

~~~
throwaway420
Chargebacks are a valid tool to use when a business doesn't act in good faith
with you and is trying to take your money, but some people use them way too
casually for the type of aggressive tool it is. Not getting an email response
in 24 hours isn't an unreasonable or unusual situation. Chargebacks can have
serious repercussions for small businesses; everything from being forced to
pay an additional penalty to some faceless algorithm closing off their payment
account and people ultimately losing their jobs because of it.

While responding to an email in less than 24 hours is ideal, many smaller
businesses don't have a 24 hour per day customer service center and can't
always respond to an email in that time frame. Some businesses say 48 hours -
72 hours on their contact page and I think that's pretty reasonable for
anything that's not an emergency.

~~~
Mithaldu
If a company decides to be faceless by not providing a phone number and not
communicating on their support practices†, then being penalized by some
faceless algorithm sounds like the kind of lesson they need.

† It's not hard to send automatic emails if there are no supporters in the
office for a few days or if the queue is too long.

~~~
pbreit
Be careful, the lesson for the rider may end up being a ban from the service.

All because he couldn't wait a business day for a response (the ride was
Sunday around noon, Monday was a holiday, a Tweet reply came Tuesday).

~~~
Mithaldu
What makes you think he'd ever even want to trust them again when they happily
take 80$ of him, make no movements to return them and leave him with exactly
zero communication as to why that is?

~~~
pbreit
They didn't happily take money form him. There apparently was a billing
mistake or 2. And there has been at least one communication. I would be very
surprised if he never wanted to use Uber again.

------
encoderer
I've only had one serious issue w/ Uber requiring customer service. We were in
Berkeley -- which is not a city I know very well -- and asked to be taken to
the nearest BART station for our ride back into the city.

It seemed to take longer than I expected, and sure enough when I got the Uber
receipt, it was plain as day: We literally drove _right by_ the Downtown
Berkeley station north a ways to the North Berkeley station. It was galling to
see it presented on their trip map. I don't blame the guy for not knowing the
area that well I guess, I just didn't want to pay for it. They gave me a $20
credit to my account which was just a few bucks less than the entire ride that
night. All in all I was pleased. The response took a bit more than 24 hours.

------
loganfrederick
In Chicago, I left my phone in a Black Car at 9 Am. After realizing this half
an hour later, I put in a ticket to customer service with the name of the
driver. Ten minutes later, Nicole from Chicago's community management team
emailed back with the drivers number. I was able to call the driver and he
returned it immediately.

I was incredibly impressed by the response time and helpfulness of both the
driver whose name escapes and the Chicago community team/Nicole.

------
tlrobinson
I've used Uber 250+ times since 2010 and haven't had any issues that warranted
any action beyond occasional 3 or 4 star ratings of drivers.

------
athst
I really dislike these kinds of posts that try to dramatize things with
statements like Uber "has no customer service." It feels like you're trying to
hold up the company by stirring up the mob. You should have given them more of
a chance.

I had a problem where I rode in an Uber and the GPS tweaked out, causing the
distance to be 2x what it should have been. I responded to the email, and they
refunded me for the difference that was overcharged within a day.

------
jakejake
To have $180 taken from your account is certainly nothing to sneeze at. At
certain points in my life that could have seriously affected my ability to pay
rent!

It seems rather drastic to totally drop the service and do a chargeback after
3 days, though. Obviously something has slipped through the cracks.

Uber is a super slick system, but I'd bet money there's still people behind
the scenes scrambling to keep the gears spinning.

~~~
justin66
> It seems rather drastic to totally drop the service and do a chargeback
> after 3 days, though. Obviously something has slipped through the cracks.

That's the power of the chargeback, though. They might not have a customer
service number but they've got a number the credit card company knows how to
call. To avoid this situation in the future, an obvious solution presents
itself...

------
jfoster
It's not very accurate to say they have "no customer service" when actually
they just have slow customer service.

------
summraznboi
For those who are in NY, you should check out Whisk at whisk.me: it's like
Uber, but we have realtime pricing info during the ride, like a taxi! And our
prices are cheaper too.

Disclosure: I'm a developer at Whisk.

~~~
mrgoldenbrown
I'd say the question most germane to this post is do you have a phone number
for people who need support? or do you at least have an SLA on your email
support?

~~~
Mithaldu
They don't have a phone number and their contact form even has a silly
captcha. As such the above post constitutes mindless and unreflected spam.

~~~
summraznboi
We do currently only do email support, but we respond to each email quickly
and in a personable manner. We also have a process to check every single
transaction that occurs to make sure that no extreme or inconsistent charges
occur. And sorry about the captcha on the website; we are still growing
rapidly better fulfill the transportation needs of New York!

~~~
Mithaldu
Even if you don't do support via phone, you should have a phone number so one
can get an actual human being in realtime interaction in case your system gets
so fucked up that normal procedures break down.

As far as i'm concerned you're not a company that takes business seriously if
i can't call you.

And this is echoed by many people i know, even though we prefer most of our
communication to be online.

~~~
ericd
Come on with the phone number zealotry. It's very hard as a rapidly growing
small-medium sized business to provide great phone service (on the level of
being able to fix random problems on the spot), and if you can't provide great
phone service, it's generally better to stick to asynchronous online methods
where you can provide better service.

~~~
Mithaldu
I'm not sure if my post wasn't clear enough. Let me try and rephrase:

It's fine to deny phone support by default and demand usage of online tools.
However if you don't provide a phone number for emergencies and cases where
you fucked up, you don't take business seriously.

Doesn't mean i think you shouldn't do business. Simply means i won't trust you
with anything remotely important.

~~~
justin66
The trouble with providing a phone number which is only intended for
emergencies is that customers will learn that they can call it for ANYTHING.
And woe to the company that says "That doesn't sound very serious! This number
is only for emergencies, can you please send us an email? Bye now."

~~~
Mithaldu
That's a matter of bad training.

~~~
justin66
No. The situation of any phone support professional who is under management
pressure to both provide quality service and filter out "unimportant" requests
is untenable. The quality of support will end up sucking.

The "serious problem phone support only" thing is a nice, MBAish compromise
idea that won't work well. Everyone thinks their problems are serious. The way
to make this work is to provide a phone support number AND to make the web-
and app-based support tools work so well customers won't feel a need to call
it very often.

~~~
Mithaldu
I don't agree with your first statement, but i'm totally fine with your
conclusion.

------
richo
When I had issues I just put it through their "how was the ride" thing that
pops up after every ride, and they sorted it for me that day.

~~~
ddrmaxgt37
Unfortunately, it wasn't the ride that was the problem. It was how much they
charged me. I had already submitted the "how was the ride" form.

~~~
richo
Oh, now I see what you're driving at.

I'm still pretty stunned you weren't able to get in touch with them.

------
exogen
Another person with the exact opposite experience here: Uber has great
customer service here in Seattle. Everything from lost items, bad drivers, bad
routes – these happen rarely, but every time I've had a prompt customer
service response. And the occasions that warranted a refund were taken care of
without even requesting it.

------
jacalata
Yesterday my friends called an Uber to get home from a bar. The car arrived in
a few minutes as scheduled - and the driver put his head out the window to say
his last fare was still in the car, he was going to go drop them off and would
be back soon. They cancelled it and called another Uber.

------
manacit
I had a small billing error with an Uber a couple months ago (I had a free
ride promo that somehow got eclipsed by a $10 off Google account promo). I
tweeted, got a DM a few hours later that telling me to send them an e-mail. I
did, charge refunded same-day. No complaints.

------
mschaecher
I've only had to use uber support once, and it was for an extreme edge
technical error. I received immediate email reply from the SF CM at 2AM. She
followed up twice in the following week to keep me updated on the status
without me ever having to write back.

------
catilac
Uber has been great in my experience. In NYC I had a couple terrible drivers,
and I gave a couple terrible reviews.

Without me having to reach out, figured out the details, then they apologized
and provided a refund.

------
vocino
I had a couple Uber issues a while back. With a simple tweet to Uber SF, I had
everything handled quickly and easily the next day (just hours later, really).

------
princess3000
I've only had things mess up once on Uber and I wrote them and they refunded
the charge no problem.

------
nakovet
Camon, I understand being upset because of the overcharge, but it was just 3
days ago!! You definitely didn't pay the bill yet, if I buy a custom Macbook
it will take 3 weeks to ship, I asked my bank for cheques it took 20 days, I
contacted Kobo support it took 10 days to get a reply, just be f*cking
patience.

~~~
andyhmltn
Macbook: That's shipping. Irrelevant.

Asking your bank for a cheque: Again, irrelevant.

Kobo support: Well that's incredibly poor. Any support request that takes
>24-48 hours is shoddy and unacceptable. It may be okay for you to 'be
patient' and accept sub-par service but it doesn't mean everyone should.

------
corresation
Outside of the Google-like lack of customer service, I am perplexed as to the
software bug that led to such a bizarre calculation.

