Jonah Engler discusses about the latest Uber drama - a passenger was charged 16,000 dollars instead of 16 dollars after a horrible trip with Uber. Click on this presentation to learn more about the story!

1. 16k Uber Debacle
Uber is once again in the news after a debacle in New York City where a customer received a
$16,000 bill for a 7 mile ride. It all started on March 28 when Jaime Hessel decided to get an
UberX car to get to a charity pub crawl. The car service dispatched a vehicle promptly, but
things went downhill pretty much as soon as the taxi arrived. Ms. Hessel stated that as soon as
she got into the car, the driver appeared to be distracted and unsure of what he was doing. He
waited five minutes before taking off. Despite the fact that the driver had a GPS, he soon began
to ignore it and seemed to deliberately take a more complicated route for an unexplained reason.

2. The passenger claims that the driver was also performing dangerous maneuvers, such as cutting
across several lanes of traffic and driving down a bus lane. The driver also allegedly failed to pay
attention to the road and was taking phone calls and checking his voicemail all throughout the
trip. Ms. Hessel felt so uncomfortable that she asked the driver to be let off a block before her
original destination.
Initially, the 35-minute ride from her apartment in East Williamsburg to Midtown East was
billed at $56.40. The customer complained to Uber’s support department that she was charged
too much as the driver extended the ride for no reason. She got a reply from Uber shortly saying
that they agree the route was inefficient and that she would be refunded $15 for this reason.
Normally, this would have been the end of it. However, what happened next was very bizarre.
The next morning, the customer received a notification by email that stated she owed Uber over
$16,000 for the ride, minus a $4,000 refund, which would bring the total balance to just over
$12,000.
Obviously, the customer wasn’t too happy with the situation and got in touch with Uber again
regarding the 16K charge. In an email exchange, the customer support agent stated that he was
“not sure about the 12K charge” on her account and that it “might be a glitch.” Luckily, the
credit card she had on file with Uber has since expired and the company wasn’t able to charge
her this ridiculous amount. It took several additional email before the car service admitted that
the huge charge was due to a clerical error and they agreed to refund her the whole cost of the
$56.40 trip.

3. Jonah Engler is a New Yorker who works as a financial analyst in Manhattan. Engler has
frequently used Uber services to travel around the city.