Check Your Uber Fees for Bogus Vomiting Fees
The next time you take an Uber, especially after a night out in bars, you might want to double check your account afterwards.
Fraud has become quite common on the ride-sharing network, in which drivers falsely accuse a passenger of vomiting in their car, sometimes even with fake photos, in order to get a hefty cleaning fee, according to the Miami Herald . One of the reporters was even charged a ride fee, which they never charged for service, as well as a fee to vomit for the same trip.
I remember reading a few tweets about this a couple of years ago, but it looks like the practice has deteriorated significantly, especially in the Miami area.
As we can all (hopefully) agree, if a driver really needs to get vomit out of your car, he deserves a decent amount of change. This means that they not only have to clean up other people’s vomit, but they also skip trips while cleaning, and well, they have a car that smells like someone’s vomit.
Whenever a driver reports someone because of vomiting or some other nuisance, Uber pays him a cleaning fee, which is charged to the same credit card you paid for the ride with, based on the amount of cleaning required. If you are not paying attention, then this is an accusation that you are not even aware of as it comes after you receive the original travel receipt. There is an entire thread on Reddit dedicated to discussing this practice.
The chances of this happening to you are slim, but as with most things, it’s better to play it safe than sorry. I personally recommend that you just check your credit card statements regularly, not just when you ride Uber. I raise mine every few days and look at the recent allegations, just to make sure nothing unexpected happened. I was never accused of vomiting at Uber, but I was accused of stealing a hat from a hotel a few weeks after I was checked out, which was never in my room; a tip of $ 100 for a server that was supposed to be $ 10; and my personal favorite, the $ 5,000 charge for a $ 500 hotel room.
Bottom line: Pay attention to your credit card statements and try not to ditch any Ubers.