> <i>Going forward, I am probably just going to initiate a chargeback. They aren’t giving me many choices.</i><p>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.<p>"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.
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:<p>Hi Arun,<p>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.<p>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.<p>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!<p>Please reach out if there is anything else I can do.<p>==== Price Breakdown =====<p>Base Fare
$3<p>Distance
32.5 miles x $2.55/mile
$82.75<p>Time
4:30 minutes x $0.50/minute
$2.50<p>Total
$88<p>Best,
James<p>Community Manager - LA
Twitter - @Uber_LA
I am permanently banned from Uber.<p>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:<p><pre><code> 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
</code></pre>
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.<p>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.<p>I used to really like Uber, but they sure did their best to keep me from using it.
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:<p>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.<p>2. The customer tries to notify the company, normally just to recover the loss.<p>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.<p>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.<p>5. If the subsequent tweets get ignored, some will take to writing a blog post about the situation and lack of support.<p>6. If the blogger has any connections or visibility, aggregators or media might pick it up and republish it. Brief infamy ensues.<p>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.
I'm long on Uber and Lyft but their approach to billing is lacking.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I hate taking cabs, but at least their pricing is 100% transparent.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>It was my first uber experience and while it hasn't quite been my last, they certainly aren't my favorite choice.<p>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.
> Going forward, I am probably just going to initiate a chargeback. They aren’t giving me many choices.<p>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.
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.<p>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 <i>right by</i> 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.
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.<p>I was incredibly impressed by the response time and helpfulness of both the driver whose name escapes and the Chicago community team/Nicole.
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.<p>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.
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!<p>It seems rather drastic to totally drop the service and do a chargeback after 3 days, though. Obviously something has slipped through the cracks.<p>Uber is a super slick system, but I'd bet money there's still people behind the scenes scrambling to keep the gears spinning.
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.<p>Disclosure: I'm a developer at Whisk.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Uber has been great in my experience. In NYC I had a couple terrible drivers, and I gave a couple terrible reviews.<p>Without me having to reach out, figured out the details, then they apologized and provided a refund.
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).
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.