Today’s tip comes via The Points Guy, whose Emily McNutt recently reported on an Uber scam to look out for. It goes like this:
- You request a ride (typically far from home, as in Vietnam)
- Your car arrives to pick you up
- You get in and proceed on your way—only the driver has cancelled the trip on the app before it began, leaving you off the Uber script and subject to the driver’s whims
In the example cited by TPG, an Uber driver did just this to a reader traveling in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City. The driver canceled the trip before the reader got in, said nothing about it, and began driving to the destination. When the reader (already en route) received the notification that the trip had been cancelled, he asked the driver about it and was told he had gotten in the wrong car. This, of course, was not true. The driver wanted to charge his own (inflated) rate off the app. The situation was a sticky one, but the reader eventually got the driver to let him out to safety. Uber, for its part, didn’t do much to help later on.
Read the full account (and TPG‘s advice) here, and remember this story next time you use Uber (or any ride-sharing service). Of course this type of scam is rare, but it can’t hurt to know it’s happened before (and to monitor your rides on the app).
Related:
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