A woman went out to dinner with her boyfriend and friends and decided to take an Uber cab home. The quick 2-mile ride through Brooklyn was uneventful, she says. Then she saw her bill the next morning.
Meredith Mandel found she’d been charged more than $200 for the short ride. She challenged the fee, and was told by the company that a $200 cleaning charge was applied to her $19 bill. The driver claims that Mandel threw up in her car.
Mandel denies having thrown up, but the driver provided photo evidence of the mess. The passenger is now outraged and believes she’s been the victim of a scam. “At first I was trying to actually give them the benefit of a doubt, but I realized [it] because all of the money goes to the drivers,” she said.
The photo shows the vomit (or whatever it is) splattered on plastic parts of the car– parts that are easy to clean with a quick wipe of a rag. As the dispute with Uber was ongoing, the driver tried to charge an additional $200 installment. Mandel finally got her money back from the company, but says she’s done with Uber for good.
The tale is not an unfamiliar one. One Reddit user who says he was ‘completely sober’ took a cab, only to find the driver charged him a cleaning fee. The man, known only as Bill, did some investigating and found the photo the driver provided was taken off another website.
Some Uber drivers argue such a scam is just not worth the headache of a dispute. They say they could make the same amount just by driving for a couple of hours.
Before passengers step out of that Uber car, they might want to snap a few photos of their own.
