A Canadian man was greeted with an unwelcome surprise after learning his 21-minute Uber ride to St. Joseph's Health Centre in Toronto last Friday cost him $18,518 ($14,392.24 USD), Vice reports.
Hisham Salama said he requested an Uber at 5:14 p.m. Dec. 8 to visit his friend at the hospital. After the ride, he noticed a significant charge pending on the credit card linked to the app.
"My first reaction was to just laugh because I thought it was probably just an error but then about 20 minutes [after the ride], when I was with my friend, I thought I should probably check my credit card to make sure everything was OK," he said.
Mr. Salama said he proceeded to call the ride-sharing company for assistance, but was unable to reach a live representative. An Uber employee called him the following morning and said, "based on the pickup and drop-off locations of the trip you took, this fare is correct," according to the report.
Mr. Salama and his friends posted the story on social media. He said an Uber manager contacted him, refunded the cost of the initial ride and gave him $150 in credit to use on the app, stating the previous employee Mr. Salama had spoken with "was confused with the trip and issue," Vice reports.
"If it takes an army of people to tweet and post online to interest you and for you to respond, that is a serious issue," Mr. Salama told Vice.
Uber did not respond to Vice's requests for comment, but a spokesperson for the company issued a statement to Slate Dec. 10: "There was an error here and it has been resolved. We have provided a full refund to this rider and apologized to him for this experience. We have safeguards in place to help prevent something like this from happening, and we are working to understand how this occurred."