[HN Gopher] UberEats took unauthorized amount (and not willing t...
___________________________________________________________________
UberEats took unauthorized amount (and not willing to pay it back)
Author : boros2me
Score : 130 points
Date : 2021-12-18 18:34 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| chrischen wrote:
| Similar thing happened to me with Square. I used their debit card
| and applied a boost for grocery shopping. This promised some
| percent discount if I shopped at a grocery store. I did a sizable
| purchase (>$50) and at checkout withdrew $20 in cashback. Turned
| out, they had hidden conditions for denying the boost if the
| transaction involves cashback (no way to know this at all). I
| contacted support who just gave the templated "can't do anything
| about it sorry" and they force closed the ticket. I would have
| accepted if they just applied the promised discount on the
| grocery portion of the bill (since they can clearly detect the
| cashback), but this seems beyond their ability to program... and
| at the consumer's expense?
|
| These big companies power themselves by automation, losing sight
| of the fact that they should be designed to serve humans, not
| harvest nickel and dimes off of them. It's so easy for them to
| profit off of massive scale but they can't find any port of the
| budget to cover their own programming errors and bugs (as rarely
| as they do occur)??? It's easy to prosecute companies on
| egregious scams, but these small programming errors that probably
| affect a non-trivial amount of customers in small ways probably
| add up to big scams in scale but fly under the radar.
| dubcanada wrote:
| This is one of the reasons I've only used SkipTheDishes or try to
| avoid UberEats as much as possible. SkipTheDishes the customer
| service at least somewhat tries. UberEats doesn't give two
| anythings about you or your food.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Meanwhile trending on Reddit:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_...
|
| > Bill's Kitchen couldn't complete your order and has to cancel.
| We're sorry we couldn't complete your order this time but thanks
| for continuing to support restaurants.
|
| > You'll still be charged
|
| Commenters are saying this is flat-out illegal and OP should
| contact their bank.
| molszanski wrote:
| If you contact the bank or a card company for a chargeback they
| will likely block you on Uber. Which might be PIA when
| traveling. All hail monopolies.
| everfree wrote:
| At least there's also Lyft. The same can't be said for the
| broadband internet market, for example.
| cpcallen wrote:
| Not outside the US!
| silisili wrote:
| Wow. I initially thought before clicking that you'd kinda mixed
| two sources of info...but nope...right there together in your
| face. Sorry we're not going to give you anything, but you're
| not getting your money back. The nerve honestly leaves me a bit
| speechless.
| oceanghost wrote:
| I had a similar issue with GrubHub. I ordered a pizza from a
| local shop. Got charged for it, drove there to pick it up and
| the pizza shop was closed.
|
| I opened a support ticket but GrubHub kicked me out of the
| support chat claiming my issue had been solved, and I couldn't
| open a new one.
|
| I meant to file a charge-back but never got around to it.
| wackget wrote:
| You can open chargebacks for years after the fact. Do it.
| nojs wrote:
| > We understand you are not happy with your recent experience
|
| > [Tick] no response needed!
|
| I think companies really shoot themselves in the foot with
| responses like this. Surely it's worth 4 bucks to avoid the
| potential PR shitstorm.
| shmel wrote:
| Oligopoly. There are very few popular food delivery services.
| If you are petty over 4 bucks, you end up cooking at home.
|
| It is like saying that people outraged by FB will change
| anything. What are you going to do? Move to TikTok?
| bserge wrote:
| Cause a stink then quit for good... ideally
| djakaitis wrote:
| Your post history is basically all complaints about losing a few
| dollars or glitches in software that are annoying but ultimately
| not that big a deal.
| spuz wrote:
| There is currently a thread on Reddit where hundreds are
| reporting having their orders cancelled but still being charged.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rj0a19/made_...
|
| A similar thing happened to me. I still have an email that says
| "your order was cancelled but we'll refund you in 3 weeks". Three
| weeks later I still had no refund but since so much time had
| passed, their support refused to consider my complaint. After
| trying everything I could think of I eventually reversed the
| charge with my bank which took another 4 weeks or so. Then
| shortly after that I tried to book a taxi through Uber (not
| UberEats) and was unexpectedly charged the original amount for my
| cancelled food order. Again I had to get that amount refunded
| through my bank which again took weeks.
|
| Most people will not bother to get their money back. Uber's
| business model is literal theft.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I have never had to do this, but I always figure that I can
| just cancel the transaction as fraud via my credit card.
| Possession is 9/10 of the law and all that.
|
| Is there some limitation to this approach that I'm not aware
| of?
| stefan_ wrote:
| It depends - can you do without whatever account you are
| disputing a charge for? Amazon, Uber, Apple, Google and so on
| will basically just immediately close your account when you
| dispute any transaction. No more access to apps or books or
| movies associated with that account.
| stathibus wrote:
| Typical modern tech approach to user problems. Sorry we tried,
| most customers are happy though so we're winning, move fast and
| break things etc
| stefan_ wrote:
| Haha, what is that screen?! "We didn't keep our part of the
| contract, but we are charging you anyway"?
|
| How on earth did that make it all the way into the app.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Here you wonder what the programmers implementing this were
| thinking
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| They were implementing what they had been asked to.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| I'll share my less dramatic experience, on the off chance
| others have seen the same:
|
| Every few weeks I get an email from Uber Eats with a generous-
| looking promotional code, to the tune of 25% off. If I line up
| an order on the website and enter the promotional code, no
| discount appears on the order. If I refresh the page and re-
| enter the code, it tells me _That code has already been used_.
|
| This has happened to me 3 times now, if I recall correctly.
|
| It's not as if this can be blamed on my using a peculiar
| browser. Last time this happened I was using Edge, with no
| plugins or funky configuration changes.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Yeah, I never use Uber eats it sometimes do when I get one of
| those big discounts... but every time I do, I have issues
| like this. I usually get it to eventually work by following
| the email link and retrying a bunch, but the fact that it
| fails so often is always suspicious to me... are they hoping
| I don't notice, or that I will say fuck it and order anyway?
| duxup wrote:
| I had the same experience with a couple food delivery
| services.
|
| At first I figured it was a bug, after a couple more rounds I
| wondered if they counted on me deciding "whatever I'm
| hungry".
|
| Had similar issues with coupon codes from other non food
| services too...
| ajaimk wrote:
| Funny enough, I encountered the is issue earlier this week. I
| assumed it was a bug and didn't place the order.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| Go get a poster board and stand in front of the restaurant "Uber
| Eats stole my money."
|
| Contact Google or Apple and tell them their App is fraudulent.
|
| Contact the police about the theft, non emergency line.
|
| Charge back from your bank.
|
| File a complaint with the town chamber of commerce.
|
| Contact your state's attorney general office.
|
| Contact your town's newspaper and tv.
|
| Remember that pounds are not US currency and the advice doesn't
| apply.
| gtsop wrote:
| I regret the moment I signed up for uber eats. When things don't
| to well you are completely on your own. It is a legit scam. If
| there was a fundraiser to get a lawyer to sue them i would chip
| in.
| Kinrany wrote:
| We need a standard protocol for the customer-restaurant-delivery
| market. UberEats has no business owning both the app and the
| delivery service.
| pgrote wrote:
| This is the one thing I cannot wrap my head around. How does
| anyone make any money on orders this low? Based on the screenshot
| the total was 12.28. UberEats takes 1.00 for a fee and I think
| some from the vendor. The delivery person gets 1.29.
|
| Does UberEats pay a minimum for the delivery to the delivery
| person and the tip is addtional? If so, whose end does it come
| out of?
|
| Are the delivery services trying to make it up in volume?
| wyre wrote:
| UberEats is making money from VC and isn't profitable [1]. They
| charge the customer a fee, and take 30% from the restaurant as
| a middleman fee.
|
| [1] https ://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/if-uber-eats-isnt-
| profitable-now-when-can-it-be.html
| monkeybutton wrote:
| 30%. Thirty freakin percent. Plus a delivery fee. And they
| can't turn a profit? That's not a business model that can be
| fixed by optimizing some conversion rate or efficiency factor
| by any reasonable percentage.
| potatolicious wrote:
| > That's not a business model that can be fixed by
| optimizing some conversion rate or efficiency factor by any
| reasonable percentage.
|
| Many, many people made this exact case during the heyday of
| gig economy companies. Many a VCs and investors (including
| those who run this illustrious site) mocked this criticism
| as that of know-nothing haters who simply could not
| understand the brilliance of the minds behind these
| operations.
| Zanfa wrote:
| They don't. All of the delivery companies are massively (as in
| billions) unprofitable with no reasonable path to profitability
| due to competition from other equally unprofitable VC funded
| companies.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| The monopolization of the market has been much worse here in
| Germany.
|
| Delivery Hero controls everything, and you can tell. Nonexisting
| support, double charges if you happen to break their frontend (no
| nonces here), addresses, phone numbers and emails leaking to
| spammers without any consequences or even acknowledgement. (I
| only know this because I use unique data)
|
| Please consider cutting these services out of your transactions,
| or at least the ones that are too big to care about consumers or
| providers having a good experience.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| UberEats are shockingly bad in my experience (London, UK).
|
| They constantly try to tempt us back with 40% promos, but we have
| sworn off ever using them again.
|
| Last time we used them, every driver allocated to pick up the
| order abandoned the delivery when they got to the restaurant. I
| assume something was going wrong at the restaurant. This happened
| maybe 10-15 times, to the point that we were joking that the
| restaurant was murdering the drivers. The app didn't offer any
| ability to contact customer service, as it only seemed to unlock
| customer service after the order is actually delivered. None of
| the phone numbers online would get through to a human. We didn't
| want to order from elsewhere in case that order ended up getting
| delivered. It took 5hrs (!) before the app auto-cancelled the
| order.
|
| Additional to that, the drivers rarely find my house, always turn
| up in different vehicles to what is claimed on the app and quite
| frequently a different person entirely. The order time is always
| longer than what it claims (much like Uber itself). The app is
| terribly unstable and frequency crashes, displays errors or loses
| my basket.
|
| Deliveroo are so much better it's not even funny.
| potatolicious wrote:
| Similar experience in the US for me. I wrote off UberEats
| completely after a truly abysmal experience where Uber accepted
| the order, and the restaurant made it, only for Uber to fail to
| find a delivery person to deliver it.
|
| Except the app gave no errors or notices about this, no "sorry,
| we can't find a driver right now, hang on..." prompt. Nor did
| it update the ETA for the order. It just happily kept pushing
| the ETA back, 5 minutes at a time, with no notice of any sort.
|
| After about an hour I contacted the restaurant - I'm a regular
| there and they were puzzled - the order had been ready for
| quite some time and no one had shown up to pick it up. The Uber
| app on their end showed no errors or notifications to indicate
| something was wrong. So I contacted UberEats CS, where the
| agent revealed the "can't find a driver" part of the story, and
| then announced that there was nothing to be done about it.
|
| That part really pissed me off - Uber charges surge pricing to
| customers to incentivize more drivers, but when push comes to
| shove on a poor customer experience is unwilling to increase
| the payout for a delivery to expedite it? Given the absolutely
| _usurious_ rates Uber charges restaurants to use their service
| they weren 't even willing to sacrifice a small part of their
| margin to try and get a stuck order moving?
|
| The craziest part of this is how apologetic the restaurant was
| for something that absolutely had nothing to do with them. It
| sounds like UberEats fucks up regularly and customers take it
| out on the restaurants - meanwhile UberEats runs away to the
| bank with their absurd per-ticket commissions for failing to
| fulfill their role.
|
| Oh wait, no, they're not running away to the bank at all.
| Somehow despite running a truly shitty service and charging
| usurious fees to restaurants they are _still losing money hand
| over fist_.
|
| I will say - I have misgivings generally about the gig economy,
| but I now exclusively use DoorDash. I've had a couple of
| screwups with them but they have _always_ responded promptly in
| a no-bullshit way.
| imrankhan17 wrote:
| If you're a regular at the restaurant (and willing to speak
| to them on the phone), why not order from them directly?
| [deleted]
| cbhl wrote:
| In the US one would consider escalating to the Consumer Financial
| Protection Bureau, since this seems like lying (the price before
| the button press is different from the price after).
|
| Not sure if the UK has a similar ministry you could appeal to?
| Though one would consider the risk of being banned from Uber Eats
| over $4.
| SllX wrote:
| Risk being banned from a service that stole your money and
| refused to give it back? You chargeback and move on with your
| life.
| runnerup wrote:
| I thought chargebacks also result in bans typically? If
| anything, I'd expect CFPB arbitration to be less likely to
| result in a megacorp ban than a chargeback. But I don't have
| any first or second-hand experience.
| paulgb wrote:
| Yeah, this is a slam-dunk chargeback; the user has documented
| the disparity and documented their attempt at going through
| the businesses' preferred channel. Assuming that what's
| presented is true, of course.
|
| I guess chargebacks are less of a thing in the UK?
| cabalamat wrote:
| Chargebacks are a thing in the UK, and the only time I've
| ever gone to my credit card company with one they resolved
| the issue properly.
| bserge wrote:
| They're not a problem in my experience. At worst you'll get
| banned by the merchant. Bank never required proof or
| anything the few times I charged back (for not delivering
| the items for over a month, pre Covid).
| petesergeant wrote:
| https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/get-more-help/rep...
| throwaway_2009 wrote:
| This sort of thing is why I still use cash as much as possible.
|
| That way you have an atomic transfer. I get food, you get money.
|
| It could easily work with card, just pay on arrival and show the
| driver the payment confirmation.
|
| But that would mean Uber taking a small risk of fraud (e.g.
| people ordering food they didn't want before their account gets
| banned).
|
| So it won't happen unless people force it. It's the sort of thing
| that makes me wish that everyone else just, well, had a backbone.
| There are so many minor examples of bad systems all over the
| place that continue to exist because most people just put up with
| bad practice.
|
| Not an advert, but I predominantly use Just Eat in the UK for
| this reason, or just go directly to restaurants. Their fees are
| lower too.
| cortesoft wrote:
| That is funny because I always use credit cards because I want
| to protect myself... if I give you cash for something and then
| you fail to give it to me, I have no way of getting my cash
| back. If I use a credit card, my bank can get it back for me.
| throwaway_2009 wrote:
| Right, except with an atomic transfer this is impossible.
|
| You can literally stand at the door, check that the food is
| there, done.
|
| The worst case is that the restaurant scams you and it's not
| good food. This happens far far less than the middleman scams
| or pseudo-scams like oversubscribing delivery drivers so that
| everything is cold or late.
| curiousgal wrote:
| Sometimes I've had the same intial screen with the code applied
| only to be told after trying to place the order that my account
| was not eligible for the promotion. I was sent back to the same
| screen with the appropriate amount (without the promo applied).
|
| Judging by the screenshots, this could be the case so I will hold
| my judgement.
|
| Edit: Just wanted to make this clearer, a way to reproduce this
| would be:
|
| Take screenshot of code applied.
|
| Place order.
|
| App tells you the code didn't apply and sends you back to the
| order screen with the full price displayed.
|
| Place order.
|
| Take screenshot of receipt.
|
| Boom UberEats scammed me!
|
| Not necessarily saying that OP is lying but I am too cynical.
| spheroidmethod wrote:
| I once worked on a reasonably complex e-commerce system with
| millions of products, add-to-cart, taxes, promo codes, etc. Every
| so often, an order total changed between the time that the user
| saw the total on the confirmation screen and when they actually
| hit the button to place the order (which seems to be what
| happened here). This happened because of promo applicability
| changes, product price changes, products being de-listed, etc.
|
| But it was relatively easy to prevent problems with this. When
| the user clicked the button to place the order, we sent along the
| expected order total, the expected item IDs to purchase, the
| expected tax, etc. In the backend, one of the last validation
| step before the order was finalized was just to compare the final
| order details against those expected values. If there were any
| differences, the order was rejected with an error message to try
| again. There were then monitors on these types of errors which
| would go off if there was a higher-than-normal frequency of these
| sorts of errors, so we could track down any bugs causing price
| discrepancies.
|
| I'm kind of surprised that UberEats doesn't seem to have a
| similar validation step.
| dmurray wrote:
| > Every so often, an order total changed between the time that
| the user saw the total on the confirmation screen and when they
| actually hit the button to place the order (which seems to be
| what happened here).
|
| I don't see any reason from the post to believe this kind of
| race condition is what happened here.
|
| Uber's CS says the promotional code used was not valid for this
| restaurant, but presumably the app accepted it anyway. That's
| also likely a validation error, but of a different class.
| dboshardy wrote:
| > I'm kind of surprised that UberEats doesn't seem to have a
| similar validation step.
|
| That's what OP was saying.
| iamleppert wrote:
| The irony here is that through your own laziness and sloth (who
| has a $10 order delivered) of wanting your food delivered to you
| like a machine needs a top off of oil, you become scammed by a
| tech company seeking to enrich itself and hide behind a cloak of
| none other than the only thing it knows --- technology.
| webkike wrote:
| Laziness and sloth are the same thing
| tdeck wrote:
| If I buy a jar of peanut butter made in a factory and it
| contains a shard of glass, is that my fault for being too lazy
| to grind my own peanut butter?
| MrWiffles wrote:
| I bailed on ubereats a long time ago due to abysmal service and
| zero support. Switched to DoorDash, who has had phenomenal
| support and even automates refund requests while giving you the
| option to talk to a human if the proposed credit/refund isn't
| satisfactory (I've done that only a few times and they always
| hooked me up, sometimes beyond what I asked for). I highly
| recommend them over UE.
| donkarma wrote:
| Thought it was going to be that post about the resturant that
| cancelled and Uber Eats took the money anyways, funny that it
| happened more than once
| shmel wrote:
| I believe the case you are describing happened with Just-Eat.
| spuz wrote:
| No, it was UberEats: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/c
| omments/rj0a19/made_...
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is comically bad. "Thank you for supporting local
| restaurants"? Hahaha. Wtf.
| boros2me wrote:
| Probably no one cares as it's only PS4, but posting on HN has a
| therapeutic effect.
| stemlord wrote:
| I care. I've grown very embittered by big tech I want people to
| continue call out their bs.
| new_guy wrote:
| PS4 over a million customers soon adds up.
| lozenge wrote:
| Luckily, they all signed the class action waiver and didn't
| mail in their opt out with the address in green ink like the
| terms and conditions said.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| This is exactly how these companies think.
| razakel wrote:
| PS4 times the millions of people they pull the same trick on,
| though.
| BossingAround wrote:
| Why should a customer pay for bad app design? The app allowed
| the code to be applied to that specific restaurant. Then
| backend refused it and customer pays the difference. In what
| world is that acceptable?
| paulgb wrote:
| I recently(ish) discovered a legitimate billing error with
| Lyft/Bay Wheels that caused a few bucks of overage[1]. It
| wasn't a lot of money to me, but I pointed it out to them as
| it was an obvious error. To their credit, they refunded
| several entire trips, not just the disparity, and I believe
| they refunded others' affected rides as well. I think that's
| a satisfactory approach: mistakes happen, but companies
| should make an effort to ensure that they don't benefit if
| they make an accident that favors themselves.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/paulgb/status/1449779457200300033?s=21
| berberous wrote:
| This is so bad I can't imagine even Uber Eats really thinks
| it's acceptable. Probably a bug.
|
| The problem is that tech support are useless automatons and
| there is no way to really escalate to those that can see it
| clearly should be fixed other than shouting on Twitter. Very
| frustrating when there's no avenue for real review and
| redress other than chargebacks.
| jcheng wrote:
| After seeing https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comment
| s/rj0a19/made_..., I don't think Uber Eats deserves the
| benefit of the doubt.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Uber has always been generous with refunds to me. Anyone had this
| come up and then asked for a refund and not gotten it?
| fpgaminer wrote:
| Similar thing happened to me. Uber put a random charge on my
| card. I totaled up all my orders/invoices and made sure it didn't
| belong. Then fought with them for a month, every time they either
| refused to help or told me it must have been someone else in the
| family. Luckily Discover had my back and refunded the money
| immediately when I asked. Never used UberEats again.
|
| Either way, just lay these transgressions on the heaping pile of
| Uber's toxic business practices. Stealing self driving secrets
| from Google, maliciously targeting politicians and police, and
| now just petty theft.
| bargle0 wrote:
| > maliciously targeting politicians and police
|
| I hadn't heard anything like this. Can you provide details?
| razakel wrote:
| They were tracking reporters and regulators using a "God
| View" function.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-12-18 23:00 UTC)