Uber Charges Customer $200 for Fake Vomit in Car

Uber Charges

While Uber has proven to be quite a popular and useful service, they’ve also made the news for some negative reasons.

An Uber driver was arrested for injuring a service doganother driver drove through the closed Lincoln Tunnel in December 2015. Last summer an Uber driver was accused of rape. In May 2015 a driver with an Uber sign in his car window sexually assaulted a woman.

I’ve been overcharged by drivers on a few occasions always got the appropriate refund. I just read a story which is pretty crazy: Uber charges customer $200 for fake vomit!

This has got to be one of the crazier scams (if true) that I’ve read about in a while.

According to Gothamist, a frequent user of the Uber service was accused by a driver of vomiting in his car. Along with the accusation came a $200 cleaning fee charge. There were even fake photos used to show what happened.

After a late dinner in Brooklyn, Meredith Mandel took an Uber back to her apartment with her boyfriend and a friend. The trip ended at 1:30am with her fare being $19.

When she woke up, she saw a $200 Uber fee added into her fare in her PayPal account. There was no explanation for the additional charge.

After some contact with Uber customer service, she heard some stories that the driver reporting a mess in his car which required cleaning. One version of the story said that Mandel and her friends were drunk!

An e-mail from Uber let her know that the cleaning fees all go to the driver. It also included “the alleged staged vomit crime scene” according to Gothamist.

Uber Charged
image: Gothamist

Mandel looked further into the matter and noticed that one of the photos included vomit in the front seat. The ironic thing is that during the ride, Mandel, her boyfriend and friend all sat in the backseat!

She also noticed that all of the puke was located on areas which could be easily washed- “plastic surfaces, mainly floor mats and the plastic dashboard and a driver’s- side door“. And if you look at the color of the vomit substance, it appears to be a bright yellow. Mandel says that they all ate dark foods like meat!

It also turns out that these vomit scams have happened before.

Crazy stuff. What kind of scams will people come up with next to make some extra money.

Find out more from Gothamist here.

On that note, if you haven’t yet signed up for an Uber account, consider using my link and you’ll get a free ride, up to $15. (After you take your ride, I’ll get credit for a free ride too.)

4 thoughts on “Uber Charges Customer $200 for Fake Vomit in Car

  1. You missed the negative press about the uber driver who was randomly driving around Kalamazoo and murdering random people in cold blood and also giving uber rides between murders. That is messed up.

  2. Ang- Definitely a crazy story! In NY I agree unless I have a credit to use or am in a huge rush. I’ve seen the value at times though.

    PSL- Wow- that is crazy! The things people will do to scam some $…

  3. A fellow passenger in a Via car in Manhattan told me basically the same story about a $200 charge from Uber, except it was dog poop instead of human vomit that was allegedly left behind in the car.

  4. Whoa! This is crazy. Haven’t heard of this before. I’ve also never used uber. I just can’t do it as a New Yorker…MTA all the way or my car haha.

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