Woman Tries To Scam Uber Driver, He Maliciously Complies With Free Ride

From funky costumes to unexpected fluffy companions, rideshare drivers are full of surprises. However, so are the passengers, and as Reddit user smkAce0921 learned, they're not always pleasant.

In a post on the platform's 'Malicious Compliance' forum, he explained that a couple of years ago, when he was Ubering, people started increasingly employing a scheme that was meant to get them out of paying a significant portion of the journey cost.

Not to be outdone, the Redditor began fighting back at the dirty practice.

Image source: smkAce0921

Sergio Avedian, senior contributor at The Ride Share Guy, an online platform dedicated to helping drivers with their job, has also heard of this scam.

"It is the older rider trick in the book!" Avedian told Bored Panda. "What [the passengers who try it] do not understand is that the second the trip is canceled so is the commercial insurance coverage that legally must be provided by the rideshare companies and from that point on neither the driver nor the rider is protected, since the driver's personal insurance takes over and they will not cover trips that are commercial."

"Another problem with cancelations mid-trip is that if the driver stops the car and kicks the rider out (rightfully so since it is their private car), the rider then can complain to Uber with a false claim and the driver potentially can get deactivated (fired) for it since the rideshare companies shoot first ask questions later. It happens all the time!"

Naturally, this isn't the only problem rideshare drivers face on the road. "What did our parents tell us when we were young? Do not get in a car with a stranger. What is rideshare? Exactly that, a full-time driver picks up and drops off a rider up to 30 times a day, a total stranger!" Avedian added. "In the US, a day does not go by that we do not hear of a driver getting carjacked, physically assaulted, injured, or killed by a passenger.

You'd think that the in-app rating systems would prevent such incidents. But arguments have been made that they're ineffective. In June 2023, the Wall Street Journal announced that the average Uber passenger in the U.S. was a 4.9 out of 5.

Apps introduced ratings to reward high performers and help users with making choices but instead, marks have become almost meaningless.

Confusion over what constitutes 5-star behavior combined with the guilt of potentially hurting someone has people defaulting to perfect scores — rating padding is particularly rampant for services involving personal interactions. Just like the children in the fictional Lake Wobegon, everyone is "above average."

Uber riders in New York had the lowest average across the country—4.8. But news from the Big Apple often makes you question the validity of this figure.

For example, in February 2020, a trio of passengers in Queens allegedly left an Uber driver in a coma when they sucker-punched him for asking them to stop drinking alcohol in his car. A year later, another Queens driver was reportedly left in critical condition after a group of strangers bashed him in the head with a bottle.

"Rating systems are a joke," Sergio Avedian of The Ride Share Guy said. "We are not in high school, a thumbs up or down would be a better choice, in my opinion. The problem with the rating system is that a driver must rate the passenger as soon as the trip ends with no chance of adjusting it afterwards. If a driver does not rate the passenger immediately after the trip ends, they are not allowed to receive another ride request! However, at least in the US, the rider has 24 hours to rate the driver or adjust their rating in a retaliatory fashion. This stays in the driver's record for the next 500 trips and if a driver falls below 4.60 out of 5.00 stars, they could get deactivated! It is one-sided, like everything else in rideshare, cards are stacked against the driver."

Just as the responsibility. "Rideshare driving is a more dangerous job ... than being a firefighter or a police officer. Besides the safety issues mentioned above, if a driver chooses to [work] late at night (drunk hours), the risk of a rider puking in the car is exponentially higher," Avedian explained. "Then there are medical rides that hospitals and doctor's offices order for their patients. Drivers are not trained to handle these if there is an emergency with those people." He stressed that for all this, the pay is the same.

smkAce0921's experience underscores the importance of standing up for oneself.