Imagine going about your day, calling an Uber for a short $20 ride only to discover that you’ve been charged more than $14,000.
Yes, this is one of Uber’s latest honest mistakes.
The company did refund the money eventually, but not immediately. And this isn’t the first time its system has overcharged customers by thousands of dollars.
The whole thing happened in Canada, where a user was charged CAD$18,518.50, which is about $14,418.69 for a 21-minute ride that should have cost around $20. Per Slate, the following screenshot was shared on Telegram, before a friend of the Uber user posted it on Twitter:
My friend was charged 18K for a 20 Min ride (!), and they are sticking to it. What in the world??? This is insane! @Uber_Support @badassboz @Uber pic.twitter.com/RjFihVLKIC
— Emily Kennard (@emilykennard) December 9, 2017
The crazy part of that tweet is that tidbit about Uber sticking with it.
“There was an error here, and it has been resolved. We have provided a full refund to this rider and apologized to him for this experience,” an Uber spokeswoman told Slate. “We have safeguards in place to help prevent something like this from happening, and we are working to understand how this occurred.”
Well, obviously, the safeguards do not work if these things keep happening, and if corrections aren’t instantaneous.
Furthermore, similar mistakes have happened in the past, Buseness Insider reminds us. In 2016, Uber charged a Philadelphia resident $30,000 for a ride due to a glitch. A year before that, a woman in Manhattan got a $12,000 charge for a $56.40 ride.
Uber refunded these charges, but it’s still surprising to see them happen. You’d think Uber found the time to improve its safeguards. Then again, Uber may have been working on more pressing matters. Like preventing from stealing user data, keeping such hacks secret, or killing its programs that helped it spy on drivers working for competing services.
