Uber Has No Customer Support Number

by Paul Grimsley

I am not totally sure what the theory behind this decision is, but if it is purely an effort not to have field phone calls from customers with problems, it could end up back-firing.

The other day I was standing there waiting for my ride and my driver must have swiped on their app to indicate that the ride had started, and I obviously wasn’t in the car. The driver wouldn’t answer my call, and it wasn’t allowing me to cancel the ride, because as far as the app was concerned, I was already in the car and moving.

So, I looked then for some way to contact Uber — there had to be a support button, right? There had to be a way to call them from within the app? Well, no — it wasn’t immediately obvious where it was. I mean, I know if I have a problem with a ride that I have completed that I can complain about the quality of the driver and the drive, and then Uber will decide whether to compensate me or do something to correct the driver.

Locked out of being able to cancel the ride, what can you do? Sit back and wait for whoever is taking the ride in your stead to reach their destination and end their ride and then ask for a refund? Great — $30 bucks I can’t spend locked into a delayed transaction for at least a day, or so I’m thinking.

I Google to see if their is a number I can call to complain and all I can find is a 24/7 line for drivers — I was desperate, so I called it. 24/7 is a bit of an elastic truth — it receives calls 24/7, but it doesn’t mean that they answer immediately … you go straight to voicejail and get the promise of a return call that is measured in hours, not minutes.

I stab frantically at the app, trying to cancel it, or trying to get hold of the driver, who it appears I can only call and not text now (which used to be a feature) and only through restarting the app, do I finally get to a point where it allows me to cancel. From there I can dispute the cancellation fee, and I can order a new ride. In an app where speed of service is the prime thing, this is the last kind of experience that you want to have.

My driver that I finally sit down next to has a, if it’s not broken don’t fix it attitude — saying that Uber have been operating for nearly three years without a customer service phoneline, but three years ago the market was different. Locally we have Lyft, and then our local transport authority set up its own equivalent service.

When it is raining I don’t want to wait half an hour to handle something. I don’t want to be confronted by a system that is so inflexible that you can’t extricate yourself from a problem. What would I do if there was a real issue? What happens if someone else gets into my Uber and does something to the driver and I am trying to warn someone that I am not on the ride that is currently underway?

It’s not that I want to stop using Uber, but it definitely needs to step up its game.

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