The 7 Levels of Uber Support Hell!

If you’ve been a driver for any length of time, you’ve had to deal with Uber and Lyft customer support. Jay Cradeur had a really bad experience with customer service that he calls the “Seven levels of hell for drivers.”

In his video, he shares the seven levels of hell most of us go through, and at the end of the video he shares whether Uber was able to take care of his issue or not. If you prefer to read, scroll to the video transcript below the video.

This is an experience that I recently had, which I’m calling Uber supports seven levels of hell for drivers. I gave a guy named Gary Ride from an area called the Presidio to the San Francisco airport. It was about a 40 minute ride. Later in the day I looked and I could see my numbers weren’t quite right. Something was missing.

Level 1: Calling Uber phone support

For some reason his ride was not showing up, it was showing up as ‘processing.’ Let’s jump right into the first level. Level number one was a phone call through the app to Uber support. I told the woman that I was missing a ride, and that it wasn’t showing up on my pay. She looked it up. She said, it’s here, it’s $28.70, give it a couple of hours. It should show up.

Level 2: Messaging Uber support

I’m thinking, okay, well level two the money didn’t show up. This time I sent a message through the app and as you can see here, I included a screenshot to show when I was shocked at what I was seeing, which was in fact that it was processing and that I was not getting paid for it. Let’s take a look at Uber’s first response.

Uber said, “Sorry to hear about that. We would like to inform you that we found the trip and notice that you have been paid correctly for the trip.”

Well, that really pissed me off because I know I wasn’t paid. Sometimes you’ll send a message to support and what comes back seems like they’re speaking jibberish, or they just didn’t look at the message, or maybe there are bots that are responding. Clearly I wasn’t paid, and they were telling me I was paid.

Level 3: Groundhog day

For Level 3 of support hell, I sent another message and explained that it has now been 48 hours and nothing was showing up. Here’s how they responded to this one. “They understand my disappointment and I’ve confirmed that you received the full fare for this trip.”

Oh my God, what is going on here? It’s like I’m in the twilight zone.

Level 4: Having to repeat yourself…again!

For the fourth level, I took a screenshot from my dashboard and it showed them that in fact nothing was showing up for that trip. I had not gotten paid. I made it really, really clear.

Level 5: Hope is dimming

In level five, I said to support that it had been 48 hours again. I’m still waiting on my money. They told me how much I was going to get paid. And even though, even though it had been almost 72 hours at this point, they still said it’s going to be another 48 hours.

Somebody doesn’t seem to be paying attention that I didn’t get paid. I’m a driver, I work for you and all I’m asking for you to do is pay me for this ride.

Level 6: Frustration reaching a boiling point

I actually got on the phone, and the support person I was talking to was not paying attention. She couldn’t seem to look up my dashboard. She couldn’t do anything. Out of a 20 minute conversation, I was about on hold for 15 minutes. And finally I realized I had the wrong person and I wasn’t going to get any satisfaction. At this point, my frustration level was through the roof, so I decided wait a few days.

I told myself, I’m going to wait whole week, then I’m going to contact them. They can’t say it’s been 48 hours, they can’t say 72 hours. They have to take me seriously!

Level 7: Unexplained resolution

After waiting, I sent the dashboard image so that they could see I did not get paid. I said that it’s been a whole week. Look what happened: There was a back door in level 7! I got a message that said, “I’ve added your full fare to your account as a miscellaneous payment due.” I had to check to see, and there was in fact a $28 payment under other promotions.

Lessons to learn from Uber support hell

What a frustration! In summary, what do we learn here? One: be very patient. You don’t need to contact them every single day. Make a first contact, wait a few days, make a second contact, wait a week, make another contact. I didn’t need to keep going back and forth.

It was after a week of time that had passed that they actually could see I had not gotten paid. Do not expect Uber to take care of you! You know, if I hadn’t followed up on that on that seventh level after a week, I wouldn’t have gotten paid.

I wonder how many times drivers don’t follow up and lose money. Be proactive and take care of your own business, because it’s your business and not Uber’s.

This is Jay Cradeur with The Rideshare Guy. Thanks for watching the video!