I’ve been using Uber in New York City since October 2014. I live in Queens, which unlike Manhattan, isn’t a nice grid. It can be a rather confusing mess of highways, service lanes, two-way lanes and one-way lanes. It’s easy to make mistakes. The Uber drivers do make those mistakes and you will pay extra for them!

I will discuss two examples here. Uber was nice enough to credit me $5.00 for the one I pushed back on, even though I logged a support ticket for both. Uber’s reaction on both was to push back on my initial objection by saying that it lies within the estimated range. The first time, I just gave in. The second time I pushed back again, since the trip back was cheaper with surge pricing than the trip to the place I needed to be at by about $5.00. The case was escalated to a manager and I got the credit.

Hence, there is no doubt that Uber cares about it’s customers. However, there is currently no way to tell or detect if a driver is taking a poor route. Even when pointed out, their first reaction is to see if it lies within the estimates range. There is a problem with that logic. Here are the estimates for the two trips that I will talk about

Overcharged Trip 1 fare estimate: $42–55

Overcharged Trip 2 fare estimate: $17–23

That is a difference of 35.29% and 30.95% between the upper and the lower limits! Hence, theoretically, it’s possible that traffic was favorable and you should have paid $42, but the driver took a poor route and you ended up paying $55 ($13 extra) and Uber will simply tell you that it’s fair cause it lies within the estimate!

Now traffic is a natural part of driving here in NYC and those estimates are completely fair given the kind of traffic you can be hit with. On top of that, if you were to take a Yellow Cab and they took a bad route, you gotta pay what’s on the meter!

However, I judge Uber harshly, cause they take pride in making our lives better through technology (and they have for me, no doubt). I would expect them to be smarter about making a distinction between actual traffic vs poor route. I also expect them to be more forthcoming with refunds when it’s pretty clear the driver took a poor route.

I can understand how it might be hard to estimate the effect of traffic in hindsight, but I feel like in real time, it should be possible to log what’s going on, with reference to the traffic around the driver at that time.

Uber’s Charging Structure for NYC

Uber’s total charge is base on 4 different components.

Base Fare: $2.55

Distance: $1.75 / Mile

Time: $0.35 / Minute

Surge Multiplier: 1.0x (increased as ridership increases)

Again, these do look fair for a typical ride BUT if a driver makes a poor choice, you get hit twice i.e. for Distance and Time both. For Example an extra 1 Mile detour, which adds 5 mins can cost you an additional $3.50 dollars.

Examples

Here are a couple of examples from my own experiences. In both cases, I feel it’s pretty clear that a poor route was taken.

Overcharged Example 1

Overcharged by $4.50 — No Refund

This example shows a mistake that the driver made when coming from upper east side of Manhattan to my apartment in Queens. I’ve highlighted the mistake below

This trip cost me $30.89 (10.39 miles, 29 minutes). The trip was made on a Wednesday at 8:31 PM. If you try to get an estimate of the same trip at this time in the week on Google Maps, this trip, at best, could be 8.8 miles 24 minutes, which means a fare of $26.35, which means I was potentially over charged by over $4.50! You can clearly see in the map that the driver took a wrong turn and had to backtrack.

However, when I tried to request a fare adjustment, I simply got the response that this was within the estimate, sorry!

Overcharged Example 2

Overcharged by $5.00 — Initial Review, No Refund — Manager Review, $5.00 refund

This examples shows a trip that my wife and I took to & from our apartment in Queens to a Cuban restaurant. I felt the driver took a poor route taking us there. This hunch was confirmed when it was cheaper to come back home with 1.3x surge pricing !

Outgoing Trip — $15.53 ( 3.37 miles, 20 minutes) — I can confirm that there was no traffic at this time, it’s a weekday night!

— ( miles, minutes) — I can confirm that there was no traffic at this time, it’s a weekday night! Incoming Trip — $13.52 (2.41 miles, 10 minutes, x1.3 surge)

You can see that there is clearly something wrong here. You can see from the Incoming trip that the way to get there and back is actually pretty simple. The person driving on the outgoing trip clearly made more twists and turns than necessary. In fact, by the end, it was me who was giving him directions to get to our destination. He was completely un familiar with the area and was down right fumbling.

I felt that in this case, I was clearly over charged by $3.00 if not $5.00. As usual, I raised it with Uber support and their initial response was the same as the previous example i.e. it’s within the estimated range.

This time, however, I decided to push back, which resulted in someone with a “higher level of support & review” to get involved. Interestingly they still deemed the fare to be fair (pun intended!) but decided to give me a refund anyway for “the inconvenience”.

I expect better of Uber!