An Ontario student who turned to crowdfunding to ask for help paying his more than $600 bill from an Uber ride on Halloween is actually really close to reaching his fundraising goal.

Despite receiving more snide comments than sympathy, campaign creator, “Loco Daniel,” had raised $621 by Thursday evening thanks to four donations, including a person who gave him $5 to go “buy a brain.”

The standout donation, however, was from his latest contributor Lisa Stilborn, who gave him $600 and did not leave a comment.

Daniel wrote on his GoFundMe page it was his first time using the app for a long ride, and he thought it would be a safe way for him to get back home to Brampton after partying until 2:30 a.m. in downtown Toronto.

What he didn’t understand was that Halloween was bound to be a crazy night. Uber’s “surge pricing” kicked in, a rate that it charges when the demand for rides becomes higher than usual.

The normal fare for the 58-minute ride from downtown to his Brampton location was $184.27. With surge pricing, the bill came to a whopping $663.37. He had also ordered an Uber Black car.

The idea of crowdfunding to pay for a shockingly expensive Uber ride is nothing new, and perhaps Daniel drew inspiration from Gabby, a Baltimore woman in a similar situation who managed to raise $512 to cover her $362 Uber bill last Halloween.

Many blamed Daniel for probably being “drunk” and not reading the Uber agreement before accepting the ride.

“It's your own fault, man! You very clearly have to state you accept the surge by typing it. Mine was 6.0 surge at one point on Halloween therefore took a taxi,” commented a user by the name of Brian Wilson.

The bill on the page says the user accepted the listed surge charge 10 minutes before he was picked up. According to the Uber website, users must agree to the charges before they even send out a driver.

Some even went as far as to form an Uber conspiracy theory.

Lauren Miller commented, “Either this person is not very smart or, more likely, this is a story engineered by someone working for the cab industry to generate anti-Uber press.”

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