An Uber Passenger Stole from This Driver! Now What?!

Many of us provide extra cables for so passengers can charge their phone while they’re getting a ride from. It just adds to the right experience and it’s something generous that some drivers do. But what if that passenger accidentally takes the cable, or what if they steal it? What if they take something of even more value from you?

Take a look at our video on this issue, and scroll to the video transcript to read all the points covered in the video.

There are systems for passengers who lose items, but not for drivers

When a passenger forgets an item, like a cell phone, there’s an immediate process that they can go through to try and get that item back. What about for us drivers? Say a passenger accidentally takes one of our charging cables or what if they actually steal from us?

Whether that item was accidentally taken or actually stolen, you’d think that Uber would do everything they could do to try and help us get that item back.

Can drivers contact Uber about stolen items?

One of our readers recently had their iPhone charging cable taken and as soon as they realized that the cable was gone, they contacted Uber and the response from Uber was not ideal. The first thing that driver did was called Uber, and apparently the call was about 15 minutes long.

They talked to a support specialist as well as a supervisor, and basically she came away from that call with Uber telling her that they could not contact the passenger. So the call didn’t work.

She then figured that she’d try to create a support request with Uber, and that actually went well at the beginning. Uber did respond by saying that they would help her try and retrieve that item, that lost phone cable from the passenger.

She actually went back and forth with Uber support for a little bit and then she received this message from Uber: “So thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately we are not able to reach out to your rider at this time. Partners are responsible for securing their own belongings in the vehicle. Please ensure all belongings are kept securely within your vehicle.”

They’re basically telling her that it’s her fault that a passenger took something from her, she needs to secure her belongings better and there’s nothing they can do. They can’t contact the passenger any more. So following that ridiculous and random response from Uber support, Uber did continue to insist that they were contacting the passenger, but had yet to hear back from them. To this date, that driver still has been unable to recover her iPhone charging cable.

There is no process in place for drivers who lose items

This is the willy-nilly approach that Uber took in this situation because there isn’t a process in place for drivers, like there is for passengers, to recover lost or stolen items, but there should be one.

We posted a question to our Facebook page about things being taken and many drivers spoke up, so this is a frequent issue, but now that we know that there is no process in place, what if this does happen to you? What can you do?

What you can do about lost or stolen items

The first thing you should do is go back to the drop off or pickup location and try and find that passenger and see if they still have the item and try and get it back. Also, if the item is of high value enough, you could possibly involve the police if you want to.

Maybe there are reasons that Uber doesn’t help much in these situations. Maybe they’re dealing with fraud issues. Maybe they’re dealing with privacy issues with not being able to contact the passenger. If you do provide items for your passengers or if you even have items of value in your car, you’re going to want to be pretty vigilant of those.

And for me personally, I will provide passengers with my iPhone charging cable every once in a while. That’s the only cable that I have in my car. But this whole situation has me actually second guessing whether or not I should be doing that or not because I don’t want to create a headache for myself in trying to retrieve the cable if it is actually taken by accident or stolen.

Stay vigilant!

For those of you that do provide those cables for your passengers, you want to continue to stay vigilant. You want to try and scan your back seat every time you drop off a passenger to see if anything’s been taken, to ensure that you don’t have to deal with the headache involved in trying to reclaim a taken item.

Has this happened to you? And if it has, how has your correspondence gone with Uber? And for those of you that currently still provide items, are you second guessing yourself like I am? Leave a comment below and let us know. Thanks again for watching. Please like, comment or subscribe and drive safe. Thanks!