Taxi Driver Online

My thread title is totally different to the article here

He's disputing the cleaning fee, and no reason to doubt that. And there's a photo of a stained seat on the website.

On the other hand, the price stated for the job can't be right? Google says it's 4 miles, which sounds about right for 15 minutes in an semi-urban environment. And even if they were stuck in traffic and the job was fixed price, £5.91 just doesn't ring true, somehow.

Still, no reason to doubt what he says about the cleaning fee scam


Uber charges couple £85 for three-mile trip

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3g20exlp95o

A couple have been charged nearly £86 for a three-mile taxi ride home after attending a child's funeral, prompting an investigation by Uber amid allegations of a scam.

Rob Wright, 60, was at a wake in Kingswinford, Dudley, with his wife Kay when he booked an Uber ride to return home to Stourbridge.

He said the 15-minute journey cost him £5.91, but the next day, the driver charged him an additional £80 for a cleaning fee.

Uber has apologised, and Mr Wright - who denies any mess-making - has been issued with a full refund.

Mr Wright, who is retired, told the BBC: "[The money] was taken straight out of my account without even discussing the matter with me.

"This was my first time using Uber and I will never use them again.

"Me and my wife were returning home after a little girl's funeral and [the driver] probably assumed, because he'd picked us up from [a] pub, we'd had one too many."

They took the trip on the evening of 15 November.

Mr Wright said he informed Uber that neither he or his wife caused any mess in the taxi but the company refused to listen and sent him photos which he believed the driver had faked.

"This is a scam," Mr Wright alleged, and added he had seen similar experiences described online.

In 2018, the Guardian reported that an Uber customer was charged £60, external in cleaning fees after the company claimed the passenger had made a mess.

Uber said it was continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding Mr Wright's ride.

A spokesperson told the BBC: "For licensed drivers who use the app, their vehicles are their place of work and any damage or mess can mean they are unable to continue working.

"We are constantly reviewing our processes and technology and will take appropriate action whenever fraud is detected."

To be fair, I just put the basic start and finish points into Google to calculate the distance, which is four miles. However, because the available information is so vague, and the journey relatively short, it could well just be a couple of miles. On the other hand, it could easily be a couple of miles more than four miles

But, again, whatever the precise distance, £5.91 for a 15-minute run just doesn't ring true

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/kingswi ... ?entry=ttu

I was so fixated with the £5.91 for a 15 minute run that I didn't notice the headline says it was a three mile trip

But which underlines that the figures are nonsense. £5.91 for a three mile/15 minute run? Aye, right

it's just the all too common story of the soiling scam many uber drivers like to use to boost their income as for the price well the uber app calculates the fare in a different way to a meter so maybe it can come to the odd penny it's nothing to get worked up about is it ?

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Anyone got anything sensible and coherent to add to the thread?

And, no, you don't have to quote me to answer. Just click the 'Post Reply' button

Edders, having reread your post, it wasn't the penny I was questioning rather than the fare level per se. I mean, £5.90 for a three-mile/fifteen minute run doesn't seem very much. I would have thought that these days even Uber would be a pound or two more than that, but maybe my perception of Uber's fares is a bit higher than the reality

And, for what it's worth, our Fife HC tariff for a three mile run is bang on £10.00. Of course, our fares in Fife are on the high side, but I would have thought Uber would be a tad more than £5.90 for three miles distance and taking fifteen minutes. But maybe I'm just out of touch

But, I mean, even Bolsover (which is 340th/last place on the PHTM HC tariff tables) would be £6.20 for a three mile daytime run on the official HC tariffs.

it wasn't that many years ago that we were reading stories of uber drivers in los angeles being paid 99 us cents a mile

here's an example

https://www.insurancerevolution.co.uk/news/how-much-do-uber-drivers-make/

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Not surprised by that fare.

Uber's normal rates are bargain bucket rates, which is why some drivers try on the fake £80 charge.

And to think Uber's cut comes off that, as does the VAT.

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IDFIMH

Does VAT apply to the soiling charge? If not, could this be the latest way to avoid paying VAT by having a low price and bumping it up with extra charges?

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Grandad,

why would it be exempt ?

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

I don't know if it is. The argument would probably be "how does cleaning someones mess add value?"

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Grandad,

Grandad, I suppose that if someone's cleaning a house or office with a view to profit then they're adding value, therefore...

Yes, it is feasible for uber to charge £5.90 for a 4 mile journey.

In manchester they regularly charge £1 per mile and hackneys can not compete.

Fortunately, we still have people willing to pay our much higher prices but also it is getting a regular thing that people quote

''uber'' doing it much cheaper.

Yes, uber will charge their fee which can vary between 25-30%.

Thanks, CheshireBest.

Meant to post this from Uber's website when I was having a look around the other day for some concrete information.

Not sure if this is up to date, but even if it's a couple of years old it kind of underlines the kind of figures being cited above. So I think my perception was that Uber's fares had hardened a bit in the past few years, but I was maybe wrong. Or at least, maybe there's more surging and the like, and maybe fares in London are a good bit higher, but that's presumably not the case everywhere. This is from Oxford, apparently, and thus not an area you'd expect to be particularly cheap. Yet the running mile is little more than £1.

So the 'base' is presumably the flagfall, thus for a two mile run it's £2 and just over £2 for the two running miles, so little more than £4 in total. Then the commission

(Not sure if the time element is also added even if the car is on the move, but if the two mile run took five minutes then that's still only 5 x12p, so the total fare still less than £5 )