picturegal

Cabs aren't always reliable either. Had requested cab day ahead for international flight. No one showed. Called cab company and was told no one available. Said I should have just called that morning! They had forgotten about my reservation. Now I get the card from a good cab driver and call the driver personally. Has always worked great. Even at 5am. Works in other cities too if wanting return trip via cab. Always tip well too and it's like having a personal driver.

diburning

Stripped down? Uber's customer serice was nonexistant to begin with. Unless you're top tier in their rewards program, all contact tickets go to an outsourced firm where someone copies and pastes a response that may or may not be relevant to your issue, and then closes your ticket.

arollins

This is the part I don't get. I used to be a driver myself, and also have used the rider option as well before the pandemic. When a trip is accepted, you can see the drivers progress to you, and no, Uber is not like American Airlines that gives you rolling delays in increments of 15-20 minutes. If I've seen a 66 minute delay for driver to arrive for a 5AM pick up, I'm already looking for an alternative.

JMorgana

OP, try the contact info listed here:

https://www.elliott.org/company-contacts/uber/

There is an 866 (toll-free) phone number listed.

serpens

What city was this? (I haven't taken a cab in Chicago for a few years, but I was always surprised at how inexpensive they were.)

n8-the-gr8

Agreed but I started using Uber in 2012 so I remember when they had actual employees responding to support issues in a customized way (and even had a means of getting in contact over the phone!). Certainly hasn't been like that in many many years but it was there before their growth exploded.

Watchful

(Once again I am an Uber driver but only an occasional customer.)

I don't know if this helps as an Uber customer - but sometimes as an Uber driver - replying back once or twice or thrice to "customer service" email will maybe bump it up to someone who can do more than copy and paste.

Don't give up on it. Sometimes I will say - "please pass this to a supervisor." The first line of customer service does not have a lot of discretion to handle tough situations in my experience.

(One thing that was strange to me in the original post - I have never never never had a pickup that was more than a 25 minute trip for me to go get them. Maybe that is an exception for a scheduled trip - but I have literally done 10,000+ rides and it has never happened over 25 minutes. This could be specific to my market, or it could have to do with extreme traffic congestion.)

Hoc

The $245 was the price for the Uber ride. Here in California, Uber has raised the prices punitively to punish residents for the recent law that requires them to hire their drivers as employees.
As far as a driver picking up the reservation, I booked it about 2 weeks in advance. Ultimately, Uber refunded $100 of the total $342 I paid for the ride to and back from the airport. ($245 up, $97 back).

Hoc

This was pretty much the only way. I could have driven myself, but at that time of the morning, I don't trust my driving (I'm not a morning person), and add to that the likelihood that parking for my trip would have been about $200, anyway. I'd never had this kind of problem with Uber in the past, and I thought that allowing 3 hours for the (roughly) hour and a quarter trip to the airport was safe. Unanticipated: late arrival, resulting in dealing with morning traffic around 6 to 7, which increased the time of the ride.

Hoc

There were no later flights. Due to COVID, AA has reduced the number of flights, and the next available flight would have been the next day. I would have been downgraded to coach for the 17-hour trip, AND they wanted another $1,200 to rebook me on that flight. It would have resulted in me being in Athens for 3 days, I would have missed 2 days of prebooked tours (which were the only ones I had), and I just figured that someone was telling me that the trip was not meant to be. So, I went home, made a claim against my "cancel for any reason" travel insurance (still waiting for a response to that), and used the anticipated $500 refund of the airfare to buy myself a bidet toilet seat. A vacation of another sort, I guess. ;-)

Hoc

Yeah, my wife and I had a bit of a fight this evening. We have another trip scheduled (to New York) this Saturday and I said I wanted to drive to the airport. She is the morning person, so she was going to have to drive, and she does not like driving in the dark. She wanted to take an Uber, and I'm too wary now. So, it looks like I'm going to have to drive while I'm still asleep.

Hoc

That wasn't really a possibility. At that hour of the morning, in my town, there are no cabs, Ubers or Lyfts less than 40 minutes or so away. That is why I prebooked.

Hoc

I did. They would not let me board because it was within 45 minutes of the flight's departure.

They would not. They said there were no other flights leaving that day to get me to Greece, and if I wanted them to rebook me on the next day's flight, they would charge an extra $1,200.

One was assigned.

Watchful

May not work for you but we often enjoy getting a room near the airport the night before as a way to reduce the stress - in some airport locations, the hotel will allow you to leave your car parked there and in some cases it can largely offset the cost of the room. GOOD LUCK!

arollins

This is true, many airport hotels have a "park & fly" rate, typically 5-7 days parking and their rates are very similar to just regular parking rates at the hotel. Free airport shuttle, and sometimes you can talk to the local hotel manager if your parking for longer time. I use this a lot in order to pad my stays at my hotel program.