FTC takes action against Uber for deceptive billing and cancellation practices
103 comments
·April 21, 2025paxys
bz_bz_bz
Earlier this month Uber sent me an email that they “discovered that [I was] charged for an additional period of Uber One membership after [I] contacted customer support. This was because [my] scheduled payment was already in process before [my] cancellation request was received.” I knew they must have gotten in trouble with a regulator because the incident they’re referring to was 2+ years ago.
How did they rectify this issue they “discovered”? They gave me Uber credit…
teeray
The worst thing is that you can't even do a chargeback, otherwise you get banned. There is no recourse for the consumer. If this is their solution for fighting chargebacks, they should get banned from accepting Visa / MC / AMEX.
csharpminor
Another sketchy practice: if you get Uber Cash through a card like Amex, when you go to use it the price for the ride is automatically $15-$20 more than someone who doesn’t have an Uber Cash balance.
I’ve checked this side by side with colleagues at the airport getting ride quotes to the same hotel. When you have Uber Cash they will quote you more. You can find numerous Reddit threads on the topic as well.
This feels very illegal to me, but not a lawyer.
c420
Here's a story today about this practice:
Bay Area traveler says Uber gift cards boosted fare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43751945
radicaldreamer
Send in a complaint to your state attorney’s general
vecinu
I notice this with my Uber cash credit I get from my AMEX Gold card. The prices are always higher.
paxys
Who is Visa / MC / AMEX going to side with? The company that gets them hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue every year or a random account holder? It doesn't really matter who is right or wrong.
dghlsakjg
If it becomes a systemic problem, the CC companies will absolutely drop merchants or entire industries.
CC companies, especially in the states, almost always favor the cardholder over the merchant.
hammock
Submit a credit card chargeback. They cannot charge you for a service not rendered
alfalfasprout
Then you can't use it anymore... that's kind of a problem when there's a duopoly in the rideshare space.
MrDarcy
What’s the threshold for getting banned? I’ve done a few chargebacks against Lyft since they removed all forms of customer support and haven’t gotten banned yet.
acdha
The answer to that problem is not giving them more money. They’re going to use that money to try to drive competitors out of the market and lobby for laws which harm riders and drivers.
tristor
The worst part is I have never figured out a way to spend any of my Uber credits. I have hundreds of dollars in Uber credits I've accumulated over the years, and I regularly use Uber, and yet have never spent any credits.
darkwizard42
When you choose your payment method in the ride selection screen you should be automatically using credits (unless those credits are for something specific, like Eats, or something else).
I'm able to see this in my Uber app today (set a destination, then at the bottom of the screen is a row for payment options, clicking that will show you Uber balances (uber cash), payment methods, and vouchers) and am located in the US.
If you are not seeing this, I'm thinking you need to reach out to support via email and have a long (probably frustrating) conversation.
tristor
I do not see this, it always direct-charges my Amex. The only credits I get auto-spent are my $15/monthly Amex credits. Definitely will reach out to Support at some point (whenever I get fed up and have time to burn, probably while sitting waiting to board a flight).
laweijfmvo
> Users can be forced to navigate as many as 23 screens and take as many as 32 actions to cancel.
bradly
Both Uber and Lyft's pay-to-not-wait is about as dark as I've encountered recently. It makes it extremely hard to get an reliable wait time.
NoTeslaThrow
Not to mention they don't refund you you when they fail to deliver the car on expected arrival.
cameldrv
This is my biggest aggravation. They consistently underreport estimated pickup times. Dropoff times are essentially universally significantly later than the estimate before booking.
It's things like this that make agents potentially exciting. So much of enshittification is wrapping an essentially good service in a crappy and misleading UI to drive extra revenue. If you can replace the lying UI with a more honest one, and then do a fair and automatic comparison between Uber and Lyft, a lot of the annoyance goes away.
redbell
This isn’t just a dark pattern — it’s dark matter. The kind where it says 'cancel anytime,' but when you actually try, it throws up a screen like: 'Please proceed by faxing us from the moon.'
gruez
I'd take that with a grain of salt. I've went through the process to cancel an uber one trial recently, and I would say it's not anywhere near "23 screens". Maybe the user in question got unlucky and got hit with all the A/B trials, and they're being super generous with what counts as a "screen", but the process was relatively painless.
ceejayoz
I mean, in my case, I was literally forbidden from canceling. I got a screen saying I couldn’t cancel within 24 hours after the monthly renewal.
Very clearly intended to combat “oh shit I need to cancel that one” when the charge shows up in hopes you forget again.
radicaldreamer
Pretty sure that’s straight up illegal in many jurisdictions
rideontime
I'm trying to play Devil's Advocate, but I literally can't think of another reason they would do this.
cogman10
What was the process?
In my mind it should be something like 3 or 4 screens/prompts max.
Account (1) -> Cancel (2) -> Are you sure (3) -> Why did you cancel (4).
scoofy
I’ve literally experienced (not with Uber, probably around 2010):
1: Account
2: Cancel
3: Call this number.
4: Call number.
5: Welcome to Customer Service press… … …press 9 to cancel.
6: We need to confirm who you are. Give birth date, etc.
7: Are you sure?
8: Agent gets on the line.
9: Why do you want to cancel?
10: We are offering you a discount to continue and not cancel, how about that?
11: Cancel
12: Are you sure again? (This time for real)
13: Cancelled, but we are offering you a BIGGER discou… this is when I hang up.
gruez
The complaint has some screenshots starting at page 15, which I think is representative of the cancellation process I went through. If you're being super generous (ie. start counting from you first launched the app, and also scrolling down as a "screen"), I can count 9-10 screens. I'm not sure how you can get 23.
zeroonetwothree
Still better than having to call
dec0dedab0de
Or go in person, like many gym memberships.
3D0MR3991N
Just tell them you moved, that's why you're canceling, and you live nowhere near any of their other branches therefore it would be physically impossible for you to come in.
This works for me, and I have no qualms lying to circumvent stupid tactics like these. I have turned into a LIAR when speaking to customer service for stuff like this because it just makes me more sympathetic as a customer, even though it's insane and unfair that one has to do this as a sort of social hack instead of the business just doing the right thing.
ohgr
Was in my local gym trying to set up a membership and someone was in there screaming that it’d be easier to “burn the gym to fucking ashes” than cancel the sub. Turns out the cancellations person was only there on a Tuesday at 10AM or something useless.
I walked out before I became another victim.
m463
I had to send a registered letter to hq.
null
stogot
yes and have to do 2 months before end of plan, and they’ll still bill you for the next full month
oyashirochama
Fuck onstar to hell for their shit, you HAVE to call and theres no way to digitally cancel.
cogman10
Sirus wasn't bad, but it was still a call which is annoying.
The worst I've experienced was equifax. I signed up for a free trial to see where my credit sat and what was up, then cancelled. It was a phone call, 30 minute wait, and SUPER weaselly behavior in the call center script. Something to the effect of Them: "Hey we want to give you this free gift", Me: "Will that gift keep my subscription active?" Them: "yes". Repeated several times as they tried just a bunch of avenues to not cancel my account. I literally had to say "No, I just want you to cancel my account" or "Are you going to cancel my account" like 20 times. It took over an hour.
_Algernon_
Unless I had to call to make the order in the first place I'd just chargeback at that point.
jonathanlydall
UberOne is why I almost never use UberEats any more and instead use a local competitor.
Shortly after it was introduced it seemed every order of mine would get surprise delayed after pick up as the driver would have to first drop off a different order at >90° different direction from me, no doubt for the user who would get priority for being on UberOne.
I don’t order food often enough to justify a subscription, so I just switched to Mr D(elivery), a local South African company where the delivery time is at least almost always consistent. I also feel a bit better about less of the money leaving the country.
ProfessorLayton
Similar to CA's requirement for online cancellations if a subscription is purchased online, there should be a rule that requires the same amount of steps to cancel as it takes to subscribe.
Yes it could still be gamed, but anyone who's worked on user funnels knows that every added step reduces conversion, so it would be self-balancing.
m463
"same amount of steps to cancel as it takes to subscribe"
I wonder... what if you artificially padded the signup process with feel-good stuff?
- screen: Did you know, <picture of Scarlett Johansson> Scarlett also uses this service?
- screen: Since you are signing up, we are adding a Free 10% off voucher for <stuff!>
- screen: Our customer Service Representative (attactive person) is always standing by!
etc...
- screen <n>: click [Yes] to sign up!
ceejayoz
Someone’s gonna try interpreting that as actual keystrokes.
“We made you enter your name and address and password and credit card details. That’s 204 steps!”
9283409232
This is a good way to lose a sale. Like the person you are responding to said, I have done user funnel work and every step between the desire to purchase and completing the purchase is dropping users out the funnel. This is the idea behind retailers like Amazon introducing one click purchase. If someone has the impulse to buy you want to get as out of their way as possible.
kmeisthax
The current head of the FTC's first act was to kill that exact rule.
oyashirochama
God I wish OnStar held that standard.
ivape
Anecdote:
Uber Eats markets a 2 for 1 deal that I would have only ordered due to the deal. They always add both items when you take the deal to the cart, but they suddenly changed it. I didn't realize I had to manually add both, and only had one delivered. I called them up and they only refunded a portion, and not the whole thing without accounting for the fact that it was an opportunity cost for me. I would have just bought something else, or not at all. It's tin-foil hatting, but they coerced a purchase imho.
gkapur
I’m convinced I get more “deals” (temporary discounts) from Uber without Uber One/after canceling it, which offsets the benefits from Uber One.
I don’t see those deals on Uber Eats so it feels like the real value of Uber One is for heavy Uber Eats users.
PS. Worth going through the cancellation flow when you are up for renewal as they will probably offer you 50% off Uber One.
paxys
Uber's sales reps convinced my company to sign up for a business account for employee travel. Soon we started noticing that advertised fares for the exact same ride were 20-40% higher when the business profile was activated. Now the guidance for employees is to always book rides using the personal profile and file for reimbursement. I'm convinced that Uber is only able to survive by scamming customers.
gruez
FWIW I used a business profile a few years ago because that's the only way to not use your uber gift balance (we couldn't expense gift balances), and didn't notice any discrepancy between personal and business rates for the base fare. Selecting "business" disables any promos, which is likely where the discrepancy is coming from.
xeromal
My brother did this for about 6 months. I can't remember exactly how but he was always getting cheaper meals than me on uber one. lol
zeroonetwothree
It’s only worth it for Eats, yes. (I’ve had Uber One since 5 years)
candiddevmike
The deals for any of these meal services are bullshit in my experience. There's a lot of hidden fees or minimum order amount stuff that isn't apparent until you get to the checkout, definitely not the great deal they have you believe you're getting.
cogman10
It's markup on markup on markup.
We have a restaurant where I can order a $10 meal and pick it up myself. The same meal done through uber is $30. Everything has a percentage added and there's at least 3 extra "you used us" fees that get tacked on. All the menu items can have anywhere from a 20->100% markup. It's quite insane.
YVoyiatzis
I've long suspected these shady practices, and I'm relieved they're finally being exposed. Utilities and others aren’t far behind, sending invoices no reasonable person wouldn’t question.
Since 2019, I've relied on ride-shares and delivery services, consistently questioning their fee structures. During this time, I've spent an unconscionable amount on Uber and Uber Eats alone.
A big shame both to the ones running the show and the ones who trained them to think this is acceptable.
Animats
But they paid the bribe!
"CEO donors who gave $1 million include Sam Altman, head of OpenAI; Tim Cook, head of Apple; and Dara Khosrowshahi, head of Uber."[1]
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/rich-people-and-corp...
kayodelycaon
> Some users are told they have to contact customer support to cancel but are given no way to contact them
A company can save a lot of money by not handling edge cases.
jannyfer
In my experience, when you’re within 24 hours or so of an upcoming renewal, you have to contact support to stop the renewal. And there isn’t a prominent way to contact support, because the contact form is hidden until you view a past order. That’s not really an edge case…
On another note, an actual edge case that happened to me is that I was in a different country when my Uber One was about to renew, but I had no way to cancel because the app kept geolocating me and displayed a UI specific to my visiting country. I got no Uber One benefits in that country anyway. So I had to send an email to stop renewal, and while I was waiting for a reply, I got charged. Support said they can’t refund me, and I ended up having to do a chargeback.
Loughla
Have an issue with my business listing on Google. They say I need to contact support.
There is no support. It does not exist.
Why do they do these things?
lenerdenator
Because 1) it's cheaper 2) fuck you, that's why.
kayodelycaon
> Why do they do these things?
Because they can get away with it. Nestle has gotten away with killing nearly ten million children since 1960. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Nestlé_boycott
Companies have no morality. Unless someone holds them accountable they're going optimize for making money.
candiddevmike
But I get called all the time from Google saying my business listing isn't up to date! Google has fantastic, proactive support. (/s)
ethn
A welcomed development in these consumer subscription services.
JohnMakin
I’m disabled and rely heavily on food delivery apps and stopped using uber/postmates about a year ago. I somehow got tricked into paying $40 on a $6 order. I went back through the flow to see where I messed up, the screen did show my order amount that I expected, but after many many emails and messages with support, this discount didnt apply because I didn’t hit some “minimum” on the order, so they went ahead and charged the full amount (not what was displayed, or if it was, was done in an extremely dishonest/obfuscated way).
I am far from a novice computer/device user. you’re already making a decent amount of money off me and the slave labor wages you pay your workers, why try to aggressively milk every penny I have? I stopped using it after their joke of an outsourced customer support would not do anything but run me in circles. How much did losing my business cost them in revenue vs. the blatant petty theft in dark patterns would have gained? There has to be a day where all these user hostile apps triggers some response from people like “no, enough of this.”
acdha
For us the line for several of those companies was when we had several massively late orders where they lied and blamed the restaurant rather than the fact that they were trying to keep their costs down by underpaying drivers. I think the underlying problem is that companies like Uber pitched themselves as tech companies like Google or Facebook and locked in expenses like compensation at correspondingly high levels, but there just isn’t that much margin in food delivery or unlicensed cabs not matter how hard they squeeze, and it’s an inherently local service so they’re always vulnerable to competition in their most profitable markets.
null
sailfast
Now please investigate their teaser rates to get you to choose Uber as a transport option when they know your driver is vapor and/or will cancel then charge 3x congestion pricing on the next refresh when it’s too late to pick another option. Infuriating practices, and the drivers seem to keep getting screwed on the gigs.
The latest dark pattern in all these apps is that they will mess up your order/ride and then "refund" you in the form of account credit. There's no way to actually get your money back. Trying to contact support results in an endless loop of help screens and chatbots. If you are able to figure out the magic combination of options that will get you to a support agent they will say "sure we will refund your money" but that is still only going to your app account. The last time I had an issue I literally had to ask them 3 times "I want you to confirm that you are refunding my credit card the amount it was charged" for them to finally agree to it. It is crazy what they can get away with.