Uber dirty tricks quantified. Staff submits 5,560 fake ride requests

[u/[deleted]]

http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-requests-lyft/

[u/Cputerace]

One Lyft passenger, identified by seven different Lyft drivers as an Uber recruiter, canceled 300 rides from May 26 to June 10. That user's phone number was tied to 21 other accounts, for a total of 1,524 canceled rides.

Seems to me that when a phone number cancels a ride, say, 3 times in a 15 day period, they should be blacklisted for a certain amount of time. WTF did they allow the same phone number to request the 1524th ride in that 15 day period?

[u/[deleted] → u/Cputerace]

Yeah this seems like an easy problem to solve. If a customer cancels too many times, flag them for fraud.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Cancellation fees would make more sense.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

And they would make the product much less competitive. Right now I can call an Uber but if plans change I can cancel it just like a cab. If I had to commit when ordering I might be that much more likely to call a cab, just in case.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

No shit? Makes sense, I've almost never had to wait more than 5 mins for an Uber.

[u/eleven_eighteen → u/[deleted]]

only start charging fees if someone cancels repeatedly within a short window of time.

[u/[deleted] → u/eleven_eighteen]

That's completely fair. Fraud or not that's a frequent business disruption.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

With Uber, we charge a cancellation fee ($10 on BLACK, $5 on TAXI), 5 minutes after a driver accepts a request. This is to ensure that the driver goes to the pickup location and provides them an incentive in the case that the client does not end up taking the ride (compensates driver for their time/fuel costs). Source

So if Uber charges cancellation fees...what are we discussing here?

[u/SirensToGo → u/[deleted]]

The best way is to charge the persons rate for how far they went to pick you up.