They also sweeten the deal so that if you cancel more than 5 minutes AFTER you accept the fare, they still charge you a cancellation fee.

So, they give you a pie-in-the-sky estimate, you wait ten minutes, realize it's still gonna be an extra 10 minutes and then cancel because you can grab a taxi right there and they want to charge you a cancellation fee.

I understood that when they were at least close on their estimate times, but now it just seems like they're intentionally being difficult.

I stopped using Uber after a couple of instances where a driver accepted my ride request and then drove steadily in the opposite direction for quite a while before canceling and triggering a charge to my account for not 'being where I was supposed to be'.

Each time this happened on a busy Manhattan avenue where I watched empty yellowcabs fly past for 15 minutes. Totally infuriating. Used to take a few per month but now haven't taken an Uber since September.

I've had this a few times too. I assume it's a driver trick to drive in the wrong direction so the rider has to cancel, pay the cancellation fee, and you don't even get to rate the driver in that case so it doesn't affect their score.

I'm not sure why they don't just decline the fare, but maybe they don't see the destination until they accept and they don't want to go there, or maybe Uber penalizes them for declining too many fares and this is a hack around that.

In my experience Uber is quite good at refunding the cancellation fee when you tell them what happened.

I live in NYC. That used to be a frequent problem, but I haven't had that happen to me recently. Whenever it did happen, I would cancel, contact support, and get my $5 back. It only takes a few minutes to contact support from within the app.

I was able contest the fee each time (with an extra step to get it actually refunded rather than a credit for future rides), but the reason I started using Uber to begin with was largely about accountability and convenience, both of which seemed to be on the decline when this was happening. Plus there's something especially insulting about being charged a fee for the privilege of being stood up.

Maybe things have improved recently but their corporate behavior hasn't given me much reason to start using the app again.

Having lived (and survived!) the NYC dating scene it took me until the "I would cancel, contact support..." part of your post to realize you were talking about Uber and not the lunatics you encounter during the NYC dating experience.

That is not going to win the driver a good rating - or do you not get to rate the driver in that case? Either way, a pattern of such events (with the same bogus reason given) would suggest that someone - the drivers, Uber itself, or both - has found a way to screw customers.

It's the drivers. If you read /r/uberdrivers one discovers that there are a host of tricks designed to game the system.

Uber presents itself as the alternative to customer-unfriendly taxis and cab companies. So much for that.

Maybe its worth having a cup of coffee in hand to drop on the upholstery if the driver tries that trick.

Seems only fair if the system is rigged against you.

But the drivers' beef is with Uber, not the customer.

Right. Regardless of if their sentiment is justified or not generally what you see from the drivers on that sub is a sentiment of "damn the man" against uber itself.

Occasionally this behavior will be described as linked to riders in annoying locations or with low ratings but usually it's uber they're targeting

This seems like something that could kill Uber eventually. Their whole setup is pathological, most of the drivers and riders I know have an array of tricks to use or watch out for, and the results are deeply unpleasant.

I suppose the bar set by cabs is really low, since I've never worried about an Uber driver mugging me or kicking me out in an empty industrial park, but it's still ugly. I'd pay more for something that was just "cabs, but we actually don't scam you".

Since you cancel, you don't get to rate them, which is why the trick works.

You can contact support for a refund, but I don't know if that data is connected back to the drivers doing it - I doubt it if the trick is still popular.

Complain to Corp

On the other hand, I haven't had good experiences with other services. Coming home from my last trip to Texas I landed at LaGuardia and there was a guy there asking if I needed a car. I was super tired, so I just said, yeah, how much to get to <my address>. He says 60 bucks, and I can smoke in the car.

Okay fine. Whatever. Get to my place, and oh, it's 80 bucks. Seriously?! Okay fine. I tipped him anyway because that's what you do. Threw 20 bucks down for an even 100. Not the worst I've been screwed. And getting to smoke in the car on the way home was kind of nice.

Fucker charged me $140.

Uber also won't tell you when they charge you a cancellation fee.

They'll pop a message saying something like "Sorry about that your driver had to cancel. But don't worry there are other drivers". But then you check your ride history and you've been charged $5.

Downright unethical and should be illegal.

They usually refund the cancel fee if you ask. I've had issues with both uber and lyft where cancel fees were charged when I wasn't at fault (driver went to wrong place, etc) and just reported and got refunded.

They don't refund, they just credit your account. It didn't count for much after I switched to Lyft entirely.

In general, I find Lyft is wholly more pleasant, both as an app and as a customer.

If you push enough, they will. Once I had an 18 hour layover in Honolulu and I decided to go to the Pearl Harbor memorial (sentimental, I know) and Uber was a mess. I got cancelled on, and I cancelled one...both times I was charged the fee. After a few emails of back and forth they actually refunded my credit card instead of just giving me "Uber credits."

They will put it back on your card if you ask. It's a dark pattern for sure though.

You should not have to ask for a refund if, after reasonable time after the original estimate has passed, the cab has not appeared. Of course, Uber is also free to screw around with the customers to the extent that they will acquiesce to it.

No argument there.

I've also had times where the charge was more than it showed upfront. I think what's going on there is I'm let off and the driver marks it as the location I left, which is a tiny bit away from the original destination, so it recalculates the fee and no longer uses the fixed fee. They should be able to tell if the dropoff location is within say 1000 feet of the expected destination and not charge more.

I've requested a refund multiple times and never been rejected.

Furthermore, when the estimates are more than a couple of minutes off as GP suggests, Uber waives the cancellation fee.

I don't think that's true unless you specifically request it.

With pool at least, I've had them charge me a fee when I cancel immediately.

I was in a rush to the train station and accidentally booked a pool. I cancelled within a few seconds and booked an Uber X, but they still charged a cancellation fee.

And I was in a rush because the first pool I booked that morning didnt show up (he called and asked me to cancel).

i wonder if you could dispute through credit card. they would have paid more for such stupid system.

It's faster and easier to just get a refund through the app first, and then try a credit card dispute. %99 of the time they do it. I've never had something not refunded when it should of been.

> %99 of the time they do it.

This would need to stop - how many of the clients file a dispute? Maybe a large percentage of HN readers - but not so much from the general public. Uber wins money it never was entitled to. No service provided, no pay.

I see now why legislation might have been the better choice, after all.

I don't think that is correct. I'd wager that people outside of HN would spend more time to make sure their $5 is returned.

If you're suggesting that lower-income people would be more likely to dispute the charge due to it having a larger impact on their bottom line, I strongly suspect you're wrong.

People in that demographic tend to, in my experience, not put forward the effort to get things like that refunded. Even though the money is important to them, it's frequently conditioned that it will take hours of time and effort to recoup the $5, and that's hours and effort they simply don't have.

Whether or not it actually takes that amount of time is irrelevant. The problem is that people expect it will take too much of their time to deal with and simply let the money go.

This is yet another example of Uber treating their customers like shit. If it's easy enough for them to determine that the cancellation was legitimate and issue the refund, they should do so proactively. Waiting for customers to complain before returning money they collected for a service they did not provide is as user-hostile as anything else they do.

I will never give another dollar of my money to Uber.

As others have pointed it out - they don't even return the money. They credit your account which is even worse than taking it the first time.

I reckon a class action regarding this scummy behaviour will be filed soon.

filing through credit card would cost uber money. consider it a punishment (For the lack of a better word) by the consumer.

Whether it works out in favor of consumer is a question. I would probably not use uber in the first place.

Filing a charge back with a credit card company is painful compared to complaining about something in the $rideshare_company app in 2 minutes, and then getting refunded in less than a day. It's your life / time.

the downside is it's in terms of "Credit". With dispute, it's as good as cash.

The difference between the two might be less than many would think.

Also with dispute, you are sending business a message: if they charge you for their mistakes (in scheduling), you'll look for disputing (which costs them around 25$/dispute, i believe?).

In Vietnam, Uber required a credit card for the longest time. This is a silly position to take, given most Vietnamese do not have credit cards. You can now use Uber without a credit card, but Uber's position had a cost.

Grab Taxi has now taken much of the market and do not require a credit card. I will never use a hailing service requiring a credit card, and as such I can never be charged a cancellation fee.

That's almost as bad as the Taxi companies!!

How so? If I book a taxi and then don't show up they can't charge me a thing. Quite the opposite, they send me a text saying "driver couldn't find you, reply YES if you still need a cab".

I've been required to give a credit card over the phone to book. When the taxi didn't show up thirty minutes later, it was a chargeback to avoid their fees. Uber is becoming a horrible company. But in most cities (e.g. Silicon Valley, Austin, D.C., New York) they replaced something much, much worse.

Wow, that's awful, sounds like a blatant cash grab! You're basically guaranteed money from everyone that calls, there's no incentive to have enough drivers to cover demand.

---

It's been my experience that, when calling, I've never waited less than 20 minutes for a cab and often have waited an hour. It's amazing that taking the bus is quicker than calling a cab. Once I actually was unable to even get through. I was in a small hotel lobby and the owner offered to give me a ride instead. Later on, in another hotel lobby, I paid it forward and offered to give a lady a ride to the airport when she was having trouble getting a cab on the phone.

I guess my point is, for all its flaws, Uber is still better than a taxi in less populated areas....

I did say almost. In place of an app, a charge and a process to ask for a refund I have to call someone to order a car. Then it shows up more or less on time and costs some money.

Read all the other complaints here. There is very little difference​ between Uber and Lyft and the age old cab companies.

I've noticed this so much that I've recently started a spreadsheet of estimated arrival times, actual arrival times, estimated trip duration, and actual trip duration. I currently only have 4 entries so the results don't really hold weight (though right now the average wait is ~4 minutes estimated with ~12 minutes actual). Uber's time estimates have been simply atrocious lately.

Me too! I have roughly ~35 entries and I observe, on average, that actual times are ~2.5 times the estimate (roughly what you have seen as well). I am sure that there is some strategy here, estimates that are consistently 2.5x off are just ridiculous... With the amount of trip data that they have, they could easily build a fairly accurate ETA predictor. Even google maps would do MUCH better...

This makes me think that drivers aren't the only ones whose mental circuitry Uber is trying to master. "Well well well, looks like users don't notice if our ETA is off by 10 minutes as long as we show them an interactive map..."

This smells like the prototypical A/B-tested product 'optimization' that has become widespread these days. Sure the data probably makes it look like an unequivocal win in the short term, but it compounds ill will towards the platform every time someone goes downstairs to meet their car 10 minutes too early in a downpour.

This reminds me of Schlitz beer and its downfall [0]. Schlitz went from battling Budweiser for domestic supremacy to a case study in how to ruin your brand by repeatedly cheapening your product coupled with a belief that your customers are stupid.

Uber has been like Teflon so far, and Lyft is no Budweiser, but do I wonder if there's a tipping point.

[0] http://www.philcooke.com/the-schlitz-mistake-and-what-beer-c...

I think it's the exact opposite of "users don't notice". I think it's more that people are annoyed but Uber can't measure that easily, so they don't realize. Anecdote: my friends and I have frequently experienced this recently and the result has just been frustration - "it said 3 minutes and now it says 10 minutes" or "why's he driving over there?!". I hang on for the Uber, but if there was a taxi driving by I probably would have hailed it.

Thanks for mentioning this.

I've stopped using Uber because this happened to me the last 4 times I've tried to book one.

I feel like it's bait and switch. I have better luck to just walk toward a busy road and hail a taxi.

Yeah, I noticed this for the first time a few weeks ago when I was ordering one. Their time estimates are already pretty horrific in Midtown NYC traffic, assigning me to someone that is "5 minutes away" from dropping someone off "5 minutes away" from me can easily be 15+ minutes of wall clock time before a car gets there.

When the driver is on another trip the app tells you "Joe is completing another trip".

I don't think this feature has much to do with behavioral science, more to do with combating the previous behavior which was drivers starting a Lyft ride as they get near the end of a Uber trip and vice versa.

Yes, but they only point that out AFTER you've requested the ride.

They give you 3 times that are all not the same thing (but are obviously insinuated to be).

1) It gives you the 3 minute estimate. 2) Then says that Joe is completing a ride 5 minutes away 3) And then he drops the person and they say he's 5 minutes away (this is 5 minutes after you initially requested).

You could make a case that they're technically not lying because [1] is an estimate, [2] is a truth and [3] is the actual, real ETA but the whole thing is obviously confusing, deceitful and makes for a terrible user experience.

I've also seen the opposite - 10 minute estimate and the car shows up in less than 3. This is just as bad...maybe I ordered the car early because of the long projected lead time, now the driver has to wait for me while possibly blocking traffic.

Consider yourself lucky. It's never happened to me. I've only been charged numerous cancellation fees. Im starting to think i can just walked there faster.

"estimate ends up staying at "10 minutes" for 5-10 minutes straight and 15-20 minutes after I booked"

this is the type of organization uber likes to run. these are the types of experiments they're comfortable with green-lighting. i wonder what else they're concocting.

I was in Charleston this weekend. On East Bay Street, I was connected to a driver who was 11 minutes away and had another fare. I canceled immediately and tried Lyft. After agreeing to a 450% surcharge, it reported a 12 minute wait with the driver also carrying another fare.

I looked up from my phone and found a cab within 10 seconds. $8 ride. Nice guy.

Unfortunately, we are starting how easily small changes to the business model can impact user experience at companies like Lyft and Uber. Ride surcharges, cancellation charges, getting connected to over-busy drivers...It seems simple in concept but the execution is really hard, as taxi cab companies are aware. They just don't have billions in VC money to cover up the problems.

> So, what's happened multiple times is that the 10 minute estimate ends up staying at "10 minutes" for 5-10 minutes straight and 15-20 minutes after I booked, the driver shows up.

I have noticed this over the weekend as well. Got an estimate of 15 minutes (which is much more than usual). After 7 minutes the car was still 15 minutes away and it was even further! Had to cancel, got charged, used my own car as I was already late.

This has happened in Vilnius. What fascinates me most is that how a single shift in software behaviour has an instant impact on people lives around the world. Makes me think what economical impact would happen if it unexpectedly stopped working (or worse behaving as expected).

I've observed this too, where the driver accepts your trip but he is yet to drop his current passenger. While this may be 'optimization' from a business point of view, it's actually bad from a user perspective. We have cancelled so many trips because there is a mismatch in the expected time of arrival! I have a feeling sooner or later they will have to either stop this or show longer wait times.

Just use Lyft, its a better experience all the way around.

I hate Lyft, if Uber is evil then Lyft is just dumb.

I started using Lyft because they allowed me to tip the drivers after a ride. So I preferred Lyft whenever I knew I would be a difficult passenger (like when I have to take my cat to the Vet or my wife is sick and she might have (and did) throw up in the car). The idea was that I would just tip the driver at the end of the ride for the extra trouble caused.

Months later when my ratings were tanked, some driver told me that I had really low rating on Lyft and that I seemed like a nice guy to have the low ratings. It turned out Lyft pooled the tip money together and paid the driver at the end of the week. So now tipping had no meaning other than 'just give your driver some extra money anonymously'.

I attribute this behavior to simple stupidity on the part of Lyft. Since then I just use Uber and pay all my tips in cash everytime I think it would be a problem.

Lyft now does this too. It just happened to me two days ago after requesting a pickup at SFO.

I try to domestically. They do not seem to have the network effect internationally though :(

They seem to operate only in the USA, but form an "alliance" with other services in other countries (Didi Chuxing, Grab Taxi, etc.), for which you need the respective app though.

Wait, does that mean Uber charge you if the car doesn't turn up? There must be an upper limit on how long you have to wait before that's a non-delivery of service.