Today I ordered an Uber. There was some confusion about pickup location so I tried to call the driver. Rang for a while and eventually someone in a very noisy environment answered. They spoke broken English. Eventually I managed to communicate I was trying to get hold of the uber driver and he told me I had the wrong number.
When I eventually found the car, I mentioned to the driver that I tried to call him and it went somewhere else. He told me that this Uber id is his son’s. I looked at the image in the app and indeed it is not the same guy.
So now I am torn about whether or not to report. One the one hand, these guys are trying to make a living. On the other hand, this flies in the face of the safety systems uber tries to put in place. What should I do?
Report, let Uber sort it out. usually when ppl drive under a relative’s ID, they (or the relative) have license issues and aren’t legally able to drive or have background check issues…
Or he was covering for Dad. What else could he realistically have said at that point?
Regardless of which it was, I agree w the consensus that this must be reported; drivers impersonating somebody else, whether that somebody else knows it or not, is a Very Bad Thing.
I had a similar but different sort of issue a few months ago where the right guy showed up in a different car than I expected. Which of course complicated the rendezvous.
He explained in his limited English that his car was in the shop so he borrowed a friend’s car to drive today. Is that the truth? Hell if I know. The car was adequate and he was the person I expected to see. So no immediate skin off my nose, and no security concerns. Perhaps an insurance concern, but I’m not greatly agitated about insurance in general.
I did not report this event, but I did consider it.
Highly irregular at best and much closer to “shady”. You should report it for the sake of all consumers who use their services. Remember, even guys with guns and masks are “just trying to make a living”. That doesn’t excuse their unacceptable methodology.
This is beside the point. You have no control over what they did with the information you gave them. You did the right thing and your responsibility ends there.
I’d bet like any complaint system, each leads to an automated “Don’t do that” message to the driver.
But more than a couple, or a bunch in rapid succession, leads to Uber simply cancelling them as a driver. Uber’s attitude to anyone they see as a troublemaker is simple: You need us waay more than we need you. Goodbye Problem.
Regardless of what Uber did or didn’t do, or what they still may do in the future, it is not sensible for you to expect to receive any feedback at any point in their process. Therefore it is also not reasonable for you to draw any conclusion whatsoever from that lack of feedback. You’re just not gonna be privvy to whatever flows from this.
I agree with reporting, but my argument is different. You can completely ignore the morality of father subbing for son or vice versa. The underlying issue is that you tried to call the driver and were unable to do so. And that resulted in issues.
Regardless of the morality, the driver needs to be reachable at the number that Uber has for them, as you need to be able to contact them. That’s why that feature exists.
The driver in the OP most likely has a reason he doesn’t have the ability to drive for Uber and that could be something that puts other passengers at risk (and there is a good chance other passengers won’t notice the discrepancy). So as others have said, reporting him is the right thing to do.
In this situation this seems like the most likely explanation, there might me some other sketchier one, but “my car is at the shop”.seems the most obvious one. I don’t see any reason you should report him.
I’d argue the underlying issue is that the father does not have the ability to drive for Uber. This could be a completely innocent harmless reason, like “his form ABC1234.5 is stuck in processing”, or it could be something that would put the next passenger at risk like he lost his license because his eyesight is failing or a criminal record.
Theres a good chance the next passenger won’t have to call him and so will never discover the discrepancy. So you have duty to report IMO
For whatever reason I encountered more sketchy Uber drivers (including one who was obviously inebriated and driving erratically, who I did report) in one trip to Atlanta than in all my time using ride shares over the years.
I dunno I’d imagine someone other than the driver using the drivers account is taken very seriously, simply because the liability it gives Uber. Any other hideous thing a driver does Uber can say “we aren’t to blame they passed our screening tests there no way we could know he would do that”. But if there is evidence they knew someone other than the screened driver was driving for Uber, and they didn’t do anything then that opens up their liability.
There is no way the OPer will ever know what happens of course.
One reason I prefer Lyft (aside from lower prices in my area): people I’ve talked to who’ve driven for both say Lyft has tougher screening, so I feel just a little safer. I have filed reports on Lyft drivers whose driving struck me as less than safe (tailgating, fussing with a phone in heavy traffic, etc.), but have been fortunate enough to not have encountered anyone obviously chemically impaired or who wasn’t the person shown in the in-app photo.
It’s unnerving enough when a DoorDash or Instacart driver is an obvious mismatch (wrong gender/age, etc.), and I’m not betting my life on them.
This reminds me of when I first tried to create an account on Uber for a ride to the airport back in 2016. I was a little stressed, because my mom (who was originally supposed to take me) instead had to go to the hospital with my grandfather, who we found in bad shape when I stopped by to say goodbye to him on the way.
I was stressed out over my grandfather, and likely going to miss my flight at that point, so I hurriedly signed up for an Uber account, and tried to find a ride. The app asked if I wanted a car, to which I selected “yes.” Then it wanted my drivers license and a copy of my insurance.
It was only then that I realized I had signed up to be a driver and to purchase a vehicle through Uber.
It took weeks to get this untangled, and I couldn’t create a rider account in the meantime. I got my brother-in-law to drive me to the airport that day, and eventually cancelled my driver registration. They had to formally reject me as a driver for failure to supply the requested documents. So now I have a strike against me if I ever want to drive for Uber.
You’re 100% correct it’s a fundamentally different situation even though superficially similar in that I didn’t get the experience uber thought I was getting.
Uber has standards on how ratty your vehicle can be. This wasn’t that.
I find that to fit under the moral part I was trying to avoid. But I guess I’ll cover it.
Yes, it’s possible this guy is dangerous. But I don’t think anyone would choose to do something like this unless they needed the money. Reporting them might deprive them of a source of income, and possibly unnecessarily.
As such, I would feel morally conflicted on reporting. But throw in the phone thing, and the guy clearly can’t do the job fully. That puts it over the top. I can ignore any moral issue entirely.
Not only is it how my mind works, but it was also a position I hadn’t seen put forth yet – that not being able to reach the driver was a problem worth reporting on its own.
