Woman falls asleep in Uber, gets charged £84.95 for 35-mile detour
LONDON -- Remember that British guy who got charged £102 ($133) back in March for an Uber he took home after a night out? The one that should have taken about 20 minutes, but took considerably longer after the driver went on a very windy detour?
Well this one's sort of like that, only worse.
When London-based comedian Hannah Warman was heading home on Sunday night, she decided to skip the short walk in favour of an Uber.
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After she fell asleep on the journey home, though, things took a turn for the strange.
What should have been a very brief journey became a one-and-a-half hour, 35-mile detour around London. The total charge was £84.95 ($111).
Warman told Mashable she only realised what had happened the following day, when she saw the email receipt from Uber.
"First of all I was shocked and upset about how expensive it was because I thought the driver must've got lost and I shouldn't have been charged for his mistake," she explained. "Then I realised he couldn't have got that lost because they have Sat Navs and the map with the start and end point would've been in front of him. It looks like he went the longest way around possible.
"Then I started to worry why I'd been driven around and felt a bit shaken and unsafe."
Warman's tweet about the incident quickly wracked up well over 1,000 retweets. Others also chipped in with their own, similar experiences.
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A few hours later, Uber followed up.
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Warman eventually received a full refund from Uber, but told Mashable she wasn't impressed by its initial response.
"I had to email a few times to get a reply, then got a partial refund, but I wasn't given an explanation or the reassurance I felt was needed," she explained. "Since I tweeted about it, however, I have been fully refunded, but they said they can't tell me anything about the driver or the action that was taken due to confidentiality."
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"I think people need to be aware that stuff like this goes on because there's a blasé confidence everyone has with using Uber that maybe isn't warranted," Warman concluded.
"I still believe that most Uber drivers are good, hard-working people who probably have the customer's best interest in mind, but I think it's too easy for the less nice ones to get away with conning people, or worse."
Mashable has reached out to Uber for comment.
UPDATE: Aug. 30, 2016, 2:18 p.m. BST An Uber spokesperson sent the following statement to Mashable:
"We have given the rider a full refund and are speaking to the licensed driver to establish exactly what happened. However, our systems show that the requested destination changed 3 times during the trip. Unlike other transport options Uber's technology records every trip and sends riders a receipt with a map of the route taken. This transparency and accountability means if there is an issue it can be quickly resolved."
