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Uber Charges Rider $14,400 For A 20-Minute Trip Through Rush Hour Traffic

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Eric Lieberman Managing Editor
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Uber recently charged a rider $14,400 for a simple, 20-minute trip in what seems to be a manual accident, according to the company.

Hisham Salama ordered an Uber ride in Toronto Dec. 8 and was expecting it to cost around $20, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The system used for that particular ride in that city was a metered taxi fare, rather than the popular Uber X option which guarantees a certain price point.

Salama and his driver apparently hit a lot of traffic, but no amount of gridlock could likely cause such a surge in pricing, so he thought it was merely a glitch when he ultimately saw his virtual receipt. But once he realized the inordinate charge was pending on his credit card account, he contacted Uber, which eventually told him that the charge was right.

“Based on the pickup and drop off locations of the trip you took, this fare is correct,” he was told, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Eventually, after highlighting the large expense on social media, Salama was reportedly provided a $150 refund — a proportionally tiny amount.

Days later, the charge was finally removed.

“If it takes an army of people to tweet and post online to interest you and for you to respond, that is a serious issue,” Salama told the San Francisco Chronicle. Uber has since apologized for the stark error. (RELATED: Labor Dispute Costs Uber Millions Of Dollars)

“We believe there was an input error with this fare,” an Uber spokeswoman told The Daily Caller News Foundation, referring to the metered-fare process in which “Uber works with taxis and fares are calculated with meters then manually entered into our system by the driver.”

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Tags : toronto uber
Eric Lieberman