Taxi Driver Online

Leeds lads shocked to wake up in Liverpool after tipsy Uber error that cost them £210

Two Leeds lads were astonished to wake up in Liverpool after a night out after their Uber journey went horribly wrong.

Olly England and Jamie Baxter ended up in Southport after requesting a taxi to Moss Gardens - and not realising there were two.

The journey, which took the boys 80 miles from home, ended up costing £210 - and as they both fell asleep in the back of the car, they didn't realise their error until it was too late.

Jamie, 21, ordered the Uber from a friend's house in Royal Park Avenue, Headingley at 5am to take them to Moss Gardens in Alwoodley - but as he was ‘tipsy and tired’ he didn’t check to see if it was the correct address.

Their journey, which was supposed to be 16-minutes, lasted two hours after the pair fell asleep in the back of the taxi and were not able to correct the mistake.

The pair had been out for drinks on Saturday (July 18) at The Box, in the city centre and then at their friend’s house, got the shock of their lives after being woken up by the taxi driver telling them they had reached their destination.

Olly, a sales consultant, said: "It was an eventful night!

“Jamie had booked the taxi to his house and I was going to walk home from his. I took my contact lenses out before getting into the taxi preparing for when I got home.

“We were both slumped over and fell asleep, two hours later the driver was kicking us out.

“I woke up and thought it was a bit of a long journey.

“We were left on a long road in an affluent area. We got out and I asked Jamie where the hell we were.

“I knocked on one of the doors to ask where we were and in a strong Scouse accent, the man said we were in Southport. I had about three per cent battery on my phone and it even said we were in Southport, not in Leeds.

“I had to call my colleague about 10 times to ask her to swap shifts; no one believed me until I sent them a screenshot of my location. I was supposed to start at 9am!”

With the last of his battery power, Olly, 22, tried to book another Uber back to Leeds - costing £160. However, after telling a taxi driver the story of their eventful night, they were offered a lift back to Leeds for £110.

Jamie did pay Olly back for the mishap, but he was still out of pocket to the tune of £320 - money which could have been used for their trip to Alicante tomorrow.

“It was an expensive night out and that’s not even counting the drinks we had. Luckily for me, it was my idiot friend's doing so he sent me the money back,” Olly added.

“We got back into Leeds at 9:20am. I got showered dressed and got to work around 10.30am. I told my manager about it and they said only you can do that!

“Everyone I've told the story to has had a positive response or they’ve laughed about it.

“Jamie complained to Uber and they refunded him £5.”

Olly tweeted a screenshot of the trip, with the caption: "Taxi went to plan, apparently [sic] there is two Moss Gardens."

Unsurprisingly, they gave the Uber journey a one-star rating.

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IDFIMH

Very generous.

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IDFIMH

bet that's the best fare he's had in months

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

So is the £210 in the headline the normal Uber price for an 80-mile trip? Assumed they'd be a lot cheaper than that?

Surge-pricing at 5am in the current circumstances?

Or does the £210 include the £110 for the taxi back, in which case the Uber would have cost £100?

However, the piece also says they were '£320 out of pocket', thus suggesting the Uber *did* cost £210, and the taxi back was £110.

Of course, it would hardly be the first time that a story like this provided figures that don't add up

punters fast asleep in the back

driver not been earning much lately

shortest route taken or a little detour to bump the price up ?

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

But looks like it was the Southport address they keyed into the app, or they'd would have made more of a song and dance about it, and I suspect Uber would have offered a refund if Uber or the driver had been at fault.

Can't see anything in the article to suggest it was anything other than thier own drunken mistake, and the implication in what they say is that they accept that.

Would these lads remember what the quote for the journey was or just know the final price ?

ps spot the deliberate spelling mistake Stuart !

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

I'm assuming they were so pished they looked at neither the proper address nor the quote. I mean we all make minor mistakes like that on websites and apps etc, but of course normally the consequences aren't so dire.

But I often buy stuff that I'm sure someone at Tesco head office, or wherever, has pressed the wrong button for the price, and we all end up with a bargain.

I mean, one tinned food I buy regularly, it's cheaper to buy two small tins than one big tin, and you end up with more of it. So cheaper price for more food by buying two small tins, which is back to front, so I assume it's an error somewhere.


You mean when I wrote 'or they would have' but changed it to 'or they'd would have' but forgot to take out the unnecessary word 'would'?

Well I don't normally point out obvious typos, or we'd be here all day correcting spelling, grammar and punctuation errors

I sometimes do point out consistent errors, though. For example, if you finish a sentence with a question mark or exclamation mark then there's no gap between that and the end of the sentence!

But, yes, there's a few more spelling errors in my ramblings these days. Until a few months ago I was still using Internet Explorer, which had an automatic spell check, and auto-correct for some misspellings. Now I'm using Firefox, which doesn't (I'm sure there would be one available if I looked, but can't be bothered).

So if anyone's wondering why my spelling was always so good in the past, but not so good now, it was due to my web browser, not my spelling ability