Today, we have an interesting case forwarded to me from a Reader who got severely scammed by an UBER driver at Sydney Airport last night as after the trip, he found that he got charged AU$234 for the ride.
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This is one of the very few cases I have seen really severe scams by UBER drivers, although in the past few years, there have been serial scams that were exposed and documented online.
Last night, I got a message from a reader showing that he was charged about triple as much as the expected fare for a ride from Sydney Airport to their Coogee hotel, only visible after the ride was completed.
After inspecting the route, it immediately made sense to anyone familiar with the geography of Sydney and the way that you usually take when driving from the airport to Coogee – the driver was longhauling the passengers massively to the point where the ride took almost an hour and that after 11:30 pm at night.
Here is the receipt the passenger received after the ride:
The estimated fare when the ride was requested was roughly $70 AUD so this charge is more than triple the expected fare (and substantially more than any taxi would charge as well).
I recommended opening a complaint with UBER and explaining that the fare was incorrect, the route taken was poor, and giving the driver a 1-star rating. This is exactly what the reader did.
This afternoon, the fare was corrected, and a refund was issued:
It’s obvious that the driver was preying un unsuspecting foreign tourists who most likely didn’t know the exact way between the start and end point. Yet, this is an extremely brazen way of scamming someone. The app obviously gives an estimate and if there is such a massive deviation from the original quote it’s obvious that anyone would dispute it. Why even try, is this guy a complete idiot?
I think one of the big issues with UBER is that it allows such things in the first place. There is no way that the app should allow any deviation from the original fare, price it in. Or maybe set a maximum 5% range that would account for extra time/circumventing closed roads (which wasn’t the case here). For example, neither GRAB nor BOLT, which I regularly use, allow fare variations. What you get quoted is what you pay unless tolls are added.
In this particular case, there was clearly criminal intent, which would probably warrant a police report. As a local, I’d have recommended filing one, but as a foreigner who stays only one more day in Sydney before heading back home, it’s probably not the wisest time spent on your last day, plus if you’re required to testify you’re no longer in the country meaning the case would probably fall apart even IF the government decides to prosecute.
Conclusion
A reader traveling to Sydney, Australia, was scammed by a UBER driver who thought he could make a quick buck by longhauling the passengers to their scheduled destination and charging them 3x the originally quoted rate. This in addition to wasting a huge amount of their time, arriving at their hotel at 12:30 am rather than at least half an hour earlier.
He submitted a complaint to UBER, and after a review, the company decided in favor of the customer, reversed the extra charge, and refunded AU$163. Hopefully, this driver got severely reprimanded or his account suspended. I can’t imagine this having been his first (or last) scam of this kind.
UBER really has to change its system to better protect customers against such scams. There have been several devious methods over the years where rideshare drivers scam customers. Some include fake tolls, fake cleaning fees claiming the customer vomited in the car or otherwise contaminated the seats, longhauling, and bad reviews after low tipping. Of course, you can always file complaints and get it rectified, but it’s really a pain. These rideshare companies need to change their systems!
