He took an Uber in England and the app almost charged him more than $38,000 to “take him to Australia”

For once, Oliver Kaplan, a 22-year-old living in Manchester, England, didn’t have a lot of money in the bank come in handy. Use one of your Applications favorite travel packages could have cost you dearly.

Kaplan finished work and, as he usually does, arranged to meet some friends at a pub for a few beers. Regular user of Uber, the transport service, asked for a car to take him from the Buxton Inn to the Witchwood, a pub 6.5 kilometers away from the other, on the outskirts of Manchester.

The car arrived and he got in. Kaplan traveled those 15 minutes to a beer destination knowing that, as the app informed him, the trip would cost him about ten pounds. Impeccable.

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After the trip, Kaplan arrived at his destination, had his beers with his friends, returned home, and went to sleep. The next morning he woke up, he says, with a hangover, and the discomfort did not improve after seeing an email from Uber informing him that it had attempted to debit £35,000 (over $38,000) from his account to pay for the ridethat Kaplan did not have enough funds, and please resolve the issue.

“It was a 15-minute ride tops, and the app said the fare would be between £10 and £11, charged to my credit card. But when I woke up with a hangover the next day, what he least expected was a payment of more than 35,000 poundsKaplan told the Manchester Evening News.

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Kaplan contacted the app’s helpdesk, looking for a solution: it was clearly a bug. At first, the person from Uber who attended him did not understand what was happening either, until after analyzing the case they realized that for some reason the app had targeted Australia, not Manchester.

Uber corrected the error and charged him what was expected (just over 10 pounds), and apologized for the case. It is not clear, however, why the app admitted a clearly impossible trip (even if he had wanted to, the driver could not take Kaplan by car to Australia, 17,000 kilometers away) and how it did not register that this trip had not been completedsince 15 minutes after the start, the driver must have recorded that he had left Kaplan about to drink what could have been the most expensive beer of his life.

GDA / The Nation / Argentina

Source: Elcomercio

James

I have worked as a journalist for over 10 years and have written for various news outlets. I currently work as an author at 24 News Recorder, mostly covering entertainment news. I have a keen interest in the industry and enjoy writing about the latest news and gossip. I am also a member of the National Association of Journalists.