Missing gift card and almost no response from Uber
 

A few weeks ago, another person bought a $50 gift card from Uber and sent it to my email address. I was there looking at the screen when he bought the gift card. His card was charged and the charge posted to account. But the gift card never showed up, neither in my account, nor in his account. Neither of us received an email, whether for the gift card or as a receipt of purchase and no track of purchase can be found in his Uber account. Yet the $50 charge from Uber is right there in his credit card statement.
The only way to contact Uber is by email or messages through an online form. We sent them messages and received a response that the issue will be investigated. Several days have passed and we received no update and Uber is not responding to follow up emails. I understand that the worst case scenario would be to dispute the charge with credit card company, yet I am puzzled why a company as big as Uber handles issues so unprofessionally and ineffectively.
Their decision on not having a call center does not make sense. Even then, not having a call center does not mean they cannot initiate a call to customers to resolve complicated issues. But they don't do so.
I am having a hard time to believe I can rely on Uber for a timely help and support when something goes wrong.

Submit a dispute with the credit card company and forget about Uber

That would be a resolution for this incident, but there are two other issues:
1) This was my first experience with Uber gift cards. I need to buy further Uber gift cards, but I don't want to deal with this hassle again. I have no idea whether this problem occurred because of a one time technical glitch? Or because of an issue with my account or my friend's account that needs to be fixed? or whatever ...
2) I feel Uber does not care about its customers at all. I am leaning toward not using them in future, if I have another viable alternative.

Then don't use them? Have they refused your refund? A technical error which means a GC wasn't sent isn't a complex problem needing a phone call, an email should be fine. If that doesn't work contest the charge.

They haven't responded in days? Really, and you've already sent several follow up emails?

Ubers entire business model is not using call centers.

Uber is great until something goes wrong. Then it's just unresponsive. I would dispute the charge and not buy any more gift cards from them again.

I said about that!

They are unresponsive.

If it was supposed to be solved by email, it should have been solved by now. Moreover, is there any complex problem in the world that needs a phone call? At that time, where is Uber phone number?

No. Yes.

Which makes it sneaky and unresponsive.

I'm certain somewhere at Uber there is a phone.

It's not sneaky or unresponsive, they have responded that they are investigating what happens. I would say maybe 2 weeks is adequate time to do that, which you haven't given them by far.

If they still haven't answered dispute the charge since you obviously didn't get what you paid for.

It is about 10 days after we first contacted Uber and then we sent two follow up emails in 5th and 8th days.
Uber doesn't have a known phone number, they even disabled the "Message" function in their facebook page, they don't have a chat option, their twitter team does not respond, and they don't respond to emails promptly, and so on ... Does it sound like a responsive business?

Tweet at the Uber community manager for your city. I've always had good luck getting a quick resolution. "Traditional" approaches to contacting them are useless.

As an aside, I've increasingly come to rely on Twitter for making companies do things. Their very real fear of social media sh!tstorms tends to motivate proper customer service.

Well, 10 days isn't a couple in my book, but still I would give them a few more.

I haven't tried to contact them, but I'd say they aren't trying to be a responsive business?

I would give them to Friday and then let my CC-company and Uber hash it out. It doesn't take more time than that to solve a simple "did we give him a gift-card or not" which I'm assuming would be available digitally.

Geez, I was going to purchase a gift card today but am having second thoughts. Potential hassle wouldn't be worth it.

mizzou1, did you get your issue resolved?

Hi there!
I have had this same issue with Uber not once but TWICE! Shame on me for allowing it to happen a second time. They need to get on their job and tighten up, no doubt.
Anyway, it makes even more upset now knowing that they'rer clearly not taking their customers seriously and leaving, not only myself but many other folks in the dark regarding these egiftcard issues.😠

I purchased a couple of Uber gift cards from Staples yesterday. I couldn't scratch the cover off over the code as it was some type of plastic material. I had to put my fingernail under it and lift it off the numbers. This worked for the first card but on the second card it took off the numbers making it impossible to get the code. I looked on the card to see if there was a phone number and there wasn't. I called Staples and they told me to bring the card back. I did and then waited in the store for over half an hour while the manager tried to cancel the card so he could get me a new one. He couldn't and told me I should log into my Uber account and request credit which I did when I got home. This morning I received an email from Uber customer support in India telling me they couldn't help me and I was stuck with their defective card that was unusable. I emailed back and they responded twice with the same message telling me they were aware of a problem and were working on it. The email looked computer generated. I called Staples and spoke with the manager. I explained that they were selling a defective product and should pull the Uber gift cards from all their stores. He told me that decision was above his pay grade which I understood but told him he should inform upper management that they were selling a defective product. He's working on getting me a refund. If he can't I'll ask my credit card company to deny the charge. Uber customer support for their gift cards is horrible. I will never buy another one.

Uber gift card
 

I am having the same problem. I bought in cash an Uber gift card For $50.00 I needed to use it right then. I could not get in touch with ANYONE!!! It’s a real horrible feeling that I basically threw $50.00 away. I can’t accept it I’m so pissed off!!!! And I had to end up walking at 2am!!!