$150 is an entire day’s pay for a lot of people. Why would that not be worth an hour or two of investigation?
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So, you throw up in a car , you would think the driver would hit the brakes and start to make a fuss. Or stopped, getting out you barf. the driver would make a fuss… basically, the driver would be made aware the moment you chuck, and he/she would yell at you , so the situation becomes something at that moment… not later, end of shift , the day after.
Do they try this on only drunk people who would be A) Prone to vomit and B) Forget due to the booze ??
In my city it is common for taxi drivers to demand fares upfront, sexually assault native customers and leave old ladies to freeze in snowbanks … the regulating taxi board is a farce who were pretty upset when ride-sharing (a stupid term) got approved. If you vomited in the back of a TAXI , there wouldn’t be a $150 charge… more likely a severe beating.
Fun times.
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So… the driver bought the ingredients for the ‘vomit’, poured them onto the seat, took a picture, and charged his most recent fare? How hard and/or expensive would cleaning the equivalent of a bowl of cereal and milk dumped into a passenger seat be? Is it worth it?
Dumb criminals.
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My impression was that it was days worth of back-and-forth. I could be wrong.
I’ve learned never to underestimate the amount of effort crooks are willing to invest in avoiding productive work.
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Would be less tempting if he got paid properly. Don’t use Lyft or Uber guys. Get a taxi.
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You say “to steal $150”, but you should be asking: what’s Lyft’s cut on the damage fee?
Also: why should he only get away with it “at most twice”? He could do it every other weekend night for weeks, especially if he chooses his victims. Who’s going to believe the drunken passengers?
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I’d flip this around: I’d argue Lyft owes the passenger for the time they spent dealing with Lyft’s employee’s slander and fraud.
(yes, I know Lyft doesn’t identify the driver as an employee. I disagree.)
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One would hope that Lyft would keep track of how often a given driver is filing damage claims and put the kibosh on it after the second in that short a time period. After all, if they just pay out the claims regardless, they’re inviting precisely this kind of bad publicity. Ride-share companies may be sleazy AF, but hopefully their PR and legal departments give management some useful advice.
In fact, I wonder if their change of tone toward the customer was at least in part because the driver tried the same scam shortly after this passenger and someone had noted the complaint on his account.
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Key to Lyft and Uber’s whole business model is they are a platform connecting drivers and passengers and nothing more. This is their key talking point, the one they go back to over when confronted with disappointed customers, suspicious regulators and angry drivers. They will go to the grave insisting on this point.
So when they say “you have to take that up with the driver”, that’s not just bad customer service (although it IS bad customer service) - it’s an intentional strategy of positioning themselves as a neutral platform.
To be clear, I’m not defending them. They’re despicable. But as long as cab services continues to suck, people are going to continue to use them.
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The service (Lyft or Uber) gets none of that fee, AFAIK; it’s a direct damage compensation to the driver. At least that’s what my buddy who drives for Lyft on weekends says ^^’.
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There has been one single case- this one- that hit the media.
You need three clear pictures that are time and location stamped- so they better be immediately after you dropped off the passenger and nearby. I have had four pukers in 20 months- only three did i get reimbursed for. The first time i drove home before taking the pictures and the passenger denied it the next day. They were almost blacked out drunk.
Also if you are a driver that regularly makes claims Lyft will get suspicious- and you will get taken off the platform. I have had passengers steal everything from an IPad I had for passengers to watch movies, to sunglasses, and car chargers stolen. It is tough out there. But I average twenty five an hour after costs. So i drive on.
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They are on top of scams and deactivate in a heartbeat suspicious drivers.
They do keep track- file two in a month and they will get suspicious. Plus it is harder to fake than this article makes out. Time and location stamped photos are needed- and they had better be within a couple of minutes of dropping off the passenger.
I do love her detective work.
“Enhance 224 to 176.”
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I’m a Lyft / Uber driver. This scam is something that is joked about in the forums. The one time that I know that someone bragged about doing this, several of us contacted the service with their name as well as the screenshot that they posted bragging about their payday. Folks may not believe it, but we police ourselves. There are far too many drivers on the road and that means less money for us – we do ANYTHING we can to get rid of the shit drivers. Snitches get better working conditions.
That said, if you want to know the truth, it is far harder on the driver than the pax. We are accused of fraud by Uber or Lyft more often than not. They don’t want to piss off their passengers – they have more than enough drivers, so it doesn’t matter if our working conditions are shit or not. I’ve been accused of fraud twice. I also had dash cams to back up my claim. No apologies for the accusation of fraud. No apologies for giving my phone number to a douchbag that threatened to beat the shit out of me and sue me. No apologies for accusing me of finding my still photo of the vomit from the internet. Nope. Send in the video and a snark-ridden email stating that in the future my account could be terminated for fraud but they are releasing $180 into my account for the vomit.
That said, on a good Saturday night I can make $400 between 10PM and 4AM. I lose money if someone vomits in my car. Even if I run home and get my Little Green cleaner, it will still take the rest of the night for the smell to disappear. Beyond this, even if I’m not accused of fraud, I’m been threatened violence if I turn in the vomit. I’ve had folks hand me $20 and tell me that they better not see a bill on their account. And guess what? Every single vomit has always ended up with a 1-star rating as folks know this is going to ding them badly.
And when our stars start to go down, our rides start going away and we are eventually deacivated.
Anyhoo…it is just more shitting on the poor folks that are doing everything they can to survive by folks upset that our service costs a quarter of a taxi – i.e., even at 4x Surge YOU ARE GETTING A DEAL. But please, everyone shit all over the drivers. Me? I have a great day job…I do this for fun. Which is it 90% of the time. The 10% when I have douchebags and vomiters and other assorted assholes? Yeah, not so much…but the other 90% of the time USUALLY makes up for it. Still, I don’t think I’m doing it much longer…I’ve got a few years in this game and it seems like too much.
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There is an idea (valid or not) that one can cut down on police corruption if cops are allowed to make lots of overtime by doing easy light-duty assignments, like standing around every time a utility company needs to climb a light pole or dig a trench on public roads.
Maybe if Uber and Lyft paid their drivers better, then they wouldn’t resort to trying to rip off customers so much.
Of course greed is greed, so you’ll never completely get rid of cons like this, but at least normally honest people wont be tempted out of economic desperation.
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I driver for Lyft/Uber and mostly at night to early morning. I have only had one instance where someone threw up in my car and warned me before hand and I handed him a plastic bag. He made it in there. I also hate when dishonest drivers give us a bad name. My two pet peeves are saying you arrived at a location a block before they actually get there and not calling the passenger if you can’t find them. Not all drivers are out to get their passengers. I am proud of my 5 star rating still after 2 yrs. I just wish the company wouldn’t take almost half of our fare and most tips are nonexistent no matter how nice and comfortable you make your car and cater to your passenger.
if they just looked at time stamps and required that “situations” be documented within, say 20 minutes of the passenger leaving the vehicle, would probably prevent a lot of fraud. Time stamp on the photo/video, time stamp on the trip transaction. it at least makes fraud more complicated
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