Comment by z2

Comment by z2 a day ago

12 replies

Same thing happened to me, and the support system automatically decided nothing was wrong whatsoever despite my phone certainly sending a very different location from the driver. And the madness was I couldn't even book another ride as I was technically in one.

So I ended up getting it resolved via the security panic button which did put me through to a real person who was empathetic to the issue.

SOLAR_FIELDS a day ago

Is this some sort of a scam? The driver cannot even mark the ride as completed without being in the area right? So they have to drive it anyway. I can’t imagine they would be on the platform for long if this happened on a regular basis. I would say it’s probably an accident but how could this behavior be accidental? Someone might accidentally say that they picked you up, but they couldn’t accidentally then drive an empty car to the destination.

  • firesteelrain a day ago

    My experience in DC is GPS can be spotty due to the buildings and the app glitches when it says you are in one spot but you are not there.

    Also DC has rules for certain streets on what side of road you are allowed to be picked up on.

  • dgoldstein0 a day ago

    Maybe they picked up the wrong person and neither of them realized?

    • SOLAR_FIELDS 10 hours ago

      Entirely possible, people do get into wrong rideshare vehicles. Especially late night after people have been drinking. A decent driver will confirm the name when you’re in a place with a lot of pickups happening but if the language barrier is strong that might not happen.

  • Thorentis a day ago

    Has anybody tried "driving" for one of these companies using GPS spoofing? You could fake the location of your phone. I suppose it'd only work a few times before the number of reports gets you banned, but I wonder whether on a laragr enough (and automated) scale it would be profitable for scammers

    • eisa01 a day ago

      I had a driver commit GPS spoofing on me: I was standing outside and there were no car to be seen anywhere even though the app showed the driver was there and had been "driving" to it

      I tried to report a security incident to Uber, but not sure what happened. It would likely be easier to complain today, as now all taxis (which Uber technically is in Norway) need to be part of a Taxi dispatch central

    • aianus a day ago

      I had to go in person to verify my documents to drive for Uber

    • MisterBastahrd a day ago

      Given that they track you every inch of your route, it'd be a pain in the butt to attempt to fake it.

      I've gotten a refund on food before because my driver picked up my food and then went spend a half hour in a gas station before returning to their route even though my home was 2 minutes away.

      • carcinklko a day ago

        >Given that they track you every inch of your route, it'd be a pain in the butt to attempt to fake it.

        Pain for a single app developer when no such app exists, but a spoofing app will dutifully draw anyone any number and length of travel.

JumpCrisscross a day ago

> ended up getting it resolved via the security panic button which did put me through to a real person who was empathetic to the issue

For both Uber and Lyft this is what I do. Which is wild since the only other company I auto-escalate-to-cancellation with is Comcast.

Waymo isn’t winning because it’s automated. It’s winning because the major players left the premium segment of the market for grabs.

  • harmmonica 18 hours ago

    Can it be both? Maybe semantics, but a lot of folks are taking Waymo because there's no human driver. Now "no human driver" may now be considered "premium," but saying that automation is not a significant factor doesn't quite ring true. As a single point of reference, the automation is a big part of what makes it attractive to me as a rider, both because there's no human driver (not super critical to my experience, but I prefer being in the car solo) and, more importantly, because of the driving behavior; it just feels like a better driver than most drivers on the road and that's due to the automation.

  • RajT88 21 hours ago

    Comcast gives you the illusion of being able to talk to a human being if you are persistent enough.

    What ends up happening is at some point they send you a link to talk to their support bot and tell you they are hanging up on you.

    Threatening cancelation is the only way. The only reason they will not care is because of their captive markets. This is what you get with no competition.