Taxi Driver Online

Uber charged England fan £107 for £10 trip home after leaving meter running for 40 miles after he got out

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6716912/u ... don-luton/

AN Uber customer was furious after the taxi app charged him £107 for a trip to Luton – despite being at home in London.

Nick Brownridge, 32, got off the tube at Lancaster Gate after watching England beat Colombia and ordered a taxi for the five-mile trip home – which usually costs £10.

But he was stunned when he received an email from the firm which said he had been charged £107 for a 40-mile trip to Bedfordshire at 1am.

Nick, from Chiswick, West London, told The Sun Online: “I had just watched the England game and booked an Uber from the tube station to my flat.

“I got out in Chiswick and bought a pizza. I woke up the next day and saw I had been charged £107. “The driver hadn’t ended the trip and he arrived in Luton at 2am and I was charged for the whole journey.

“I contacted Uber on the app and told them I got home at midnight and bought a pizza which proves that I wasn’t in the car. “But bizarrely they said that judging by my trip history they think I made the journey – but I’ve never been to Luton in my life.

“I said ‘is this a joke?’ It’s shocking really. I’ve used Uber hundreds of times and their customer service has been appalling.”

Nick, a senior e-commerce manager at Sky, said there was “no way” the driver had done it by accident and added that he feels he was trying to “pull a fast one”.

He said: “I couldn’t believe it when I saw on the map that he had gone on the M25 and straight up the M1 to Luton. “I’ve paid £107 for a trip to Luton and I've never even been there. I thought I had been hacked or robbed - I didn’t know what was going on.

“I think it could have been done on purpose. I had been watching the England game and I’d obviously had a few drinks. “Maybe the driver thought I was drunk and that I wouldn’t have noticed in the morning. I think he was trying to pull a fast one.”

After The Sun Online contacted Uber the company confirmed they have given Nick a full refund and apologised for the mix-up.

An Uber spokesman said: “We’re sorry to hear about this. We have of course refunded the passenger and are investigating exactly what happened. “Riders always get an emailed receipt from Uber, so if an issue ever arises it can be easily fixed.”

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IDFIMH

Could this have happened accidentally? Many a time I've arrived home to discover that the meter is still running, although unfortunately I don't get paid for it

Although presumably if the Uber driver did accidentally leave the [whatever] running they should have realised this at some point before logging off, or whatever

Always nice to get a run home though

they don't have meters??

Not normal taximeters - the fare is calculated electronically, as far as I know.

But the software they use presumably has to be deactivated in some way at the end of the trip so that the fare can be calculated and the customer's account charged.

So it's presumably just like a more sophisticated version of a taximeter - if the driver doesn't end the hire then it will keep running just like a normal taximeter, whether it's a deliberate ploy by the driver, or if he leaves it running accidentally.

I think

Surely the law says no meters allowed in PHVs and the fare should be agreed before the journey commences?

Private hire vehicle in some areas can have a meter.

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Grandad,

I wonder if the driver lives in Luton?

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Grandad,

In London PHVs can't have taximeters fitted, but recall that TfL took Uber to court a couple of years ago to clarify the issue, and the court ruled that the Uber mechanism/software isn't a taximeter.

In the rest of England I think meters can be fitted under the legislation, but it depends on the locally set rules.

In Scotland if a PHV has a meter fitted it must be set to read the HC rate.


As regards the Uber/London case:



Full judgement here - one of the few cases I've ever read, and it's not one of the longest, but to be honest I couldn't remember a thing about it, except that Uber won

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cg ... /2918.html

My guess is that the driver went home to Luton after the run and didn't deactivate the app in the same way as a taximeter could be left running, whether deliberately to inflate the fare, or accidentally.

Of course, the real reason could be completely different

According to the judgement, the driver presses the "end trip" button on the driver app. So presumably if the driver doesn't press the button until after the passenger has disembarked then the fare can be bumped up in that way. So presumably the driver didn't press the "end trip" button until he got to Luton, where I'm guessing he stays.

Definitely a a try on,as all ph drivers using any sort of dispatch tech will know that their system cannot send a new job until it see's them as clear. And we all want the next job don't we? So 'forgetting' to end the fare when the passenger got out is total bull.

You are correct.

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IDFIMH

You are incorrect.

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IDFIMH

One other possibility someone else hijacked the account and made a trip to Luton

After all Uber accounts have never been hijacked before have they

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Which arguably underlines that he went home after the job - he wouldn't have been given a job to Luton because he hadn't cleared the job he'd just done.

So not sure how precisely Uber's system works, but hardly seems inconceivable that he forgot to press the "end trip" button at the end of the job and then went home.

Of course, even giving the driver the benefit of the doubt, he must have presumably become aware at some point that the fare was still active long after the customer had left the car.