Kate Hawkesby: Uber service is crap, it's time to drop it

I’m pleased to see the 21 year old woman in Wellington who got shafted by Uber is finally calling the ride share out for the crap service it is. 

We’ve told our kids to cancel their Uber accounts. It’s just not tenable or safe anymore to catch them, because they never turn up. 

The most common thing they do is cancel on you. This woman in Wellington was trying to get home after a night out and was left in the dark on the side of the road because three Ubers in a row cancelled on her. 

She’s not alone in having that experience and I can’t work out why they’re doing it. 

They make no money from cancelled rides, they only upset the riders and it makes people lose faith in the service and in our case, winds up with people cancelling the app.

The last time I asked my daughter to Uber home after a school event, she had Uber after Uber just cancel on her. Over and over again. No explanation. She’d waited half an hour – longer than the trip home was – and still no Uber turned up. Just a string of cancelled rides. 

In the end she walked home. We now suggest our kids taxi places instead. It’s too dangerous to order an Uber if you’re out late, and then risk it never coming.

And the other infuriating thing is how often they charge you for the cancelled ride. Even when it wasn’t you who cancelled it. If the driver cancels on you, with no explanation, after making you wait, then it’s not a cost you should bear. 

But to contest that automatic cancel fee payment which gets deducted from your card, you have to wade through the app’s contact form section and fill out generic questions with pre-formatted answers. 

There’s no one you can actually pick up a phone and talk to or email. 

So they have your money, you have no Uber, no service, and no one interested in compensating you. The onus is on you to chase them down online, via the app, to wait for a response – which can take days – and then wait again for a resolution whereby they decide whether they will or won’t refund your card with the unfairly debited cancellation fee.

As this woman in Wellington rightly said, it makes you feel unsafe. 

My last experience with Uber was after a concert when we went to hop into the car, someone else had already hopped in to take it. 

When that happens, the driver is supposed to check the booking name and if it’s not the rider who ordered it they’re not supposed to take them. 

But this driver didn’t do that, he just said, ‘no, they’re in the car now, so I’ll just take them’, and drove off. 

That left me, (a) ride less on the side of the road, but more importantly, (b) that ride was ordered by me therefore on my credit card, so I was potentially paying for their trip home! 

I had to spend God knows how long on the app trying to find a way to resolve it and get my money back. I deleted my Uber account after that and haven’t been in one since.

Some may argue you get what you pay for and it’s a cheap service - but it’s not that cheap anymore at all.

Now that I’m taking taxis I’ve discovered they’re the same price if not sometimes even cheaper.

So I’m not sure what Uber’s up to in this country or what it’s playing at but it’s fast running out of fans.

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