Using Uber for Business could cost you your personal Uber account
Update: thanks to some back channeling we managed to get Uber to act on this. Some of us had their account re-enabled on 17/9, while other are still waiting. Unfortunately Uber provided no information at all, so I have no idea why this all happened or why some of us are still suspended.
This is the story of how me and many of my coworkers had our Uber accounts suspended for something that had nothing to do with us and was completely out of our control.
Disclaimer: all our accounts, including our business account, are still suspended. As a result I could not double check all information, but I’ve tried to make it clear what was verified and what was based on memories.
My personal Uber and Uber eats accounts got suspended sometimes between the 18th of August and the 7th of September. I can’t be more specific than that because Uber never notified me of the suspension. I only realised it happened when I tried to book a ride on the 7th of September (after getting off a 23 hours flight… welcome home!). My last ride was on the 18th of August, so the suspension must have happened sometimes in between. It likely happened the last week of August, because that’s when my coworkers noticed their accounts had been suspended.
I’m not the only one in my circle who had this problem. Around 10 friends of mine were suspended at the same time. The only thing in common? We all work or worked for the same company.
Here’s what I could put together talking with most involved people and reading emails from Uber.
Our company has a social club which organises events through the year. In 2015 (I think) the social club opened a Uber for Business account. Many of us connected our personal accounts to our company accounts at the time. We stopped using this service in 2016. The credit card attached to the account was cancelled in 2017 due to some unrelated fraudulent activities, but it was not removed from the business account. Most of us forgot about Uber for Business… until a few weeks ago.
On June 15 the person in charge of our Uber for Business account received several emails from Uber. It started with a few emails about being charged for some cancelled rides in Ukraine (this is a guess based on the currency). He then received a receipt for 8 rides, all of them in Ukraine (still a guess). Every receipt was worth around $150. Every driver in the receipt had a perfect 5 stars rating. Every ride was booked by a person called “Rider”. As our company is based in Australia and no one of us is called “Rider”, the account owner immediately notified Uber of the fraudulent transactions.
Reporting the transactions wasn’t very successful. I don’t have access to the full report (we can’t access our accounts, remember?), but I was forwarded the email replies. It’s hard to judge a conversation reading only one side, but I thought I’d show them anyway because the response was pretty confusing.
My coworkers sent them a screenshot of the charges, and this was the reply:
Apparently “My account has an unrecognised charge” and a screenshot of said charge is not clear enough because “Your concern is unclear to me”. The final “Can you provide us with a screenshot of any error that you’re receiving?” suggests that the support member might have even replied to the wrong ticket.
As this was going nowhere, or maybe even in a completely wrong direction, the account owner just dropped it.
On July 10 the account owner received an email about a failed payment (the credit card on record had been inactive since 2017, remember?). Busy with other things, the account owner did not follow up. At this point the account still had around $1200 of unpaid (fraudulent) rides, but no one was using it.
I’m not sure what triggered it, but in August Uber decided to suspend the business account and all personal accounts connected to it. This included several former employees of the company. One of them had quit the company 4 years ago and still got caught in this mess (he’s also adamant that he disconnected his personal account from the business account, but due to his account being suspended we could not double check. Other former employees could not remember if they disconnected the account or not).
Now let me be clear. I have absolutely no problem with Uber closing this business account due to unpaid rides. Yes it’s at least partially their fault for not handling the fraudulent charges report. Yes they should have checked the tickets to see if there was something already going on. But overall closing an account with a balance of -$1200 is a reasonable response.
I also have no problems saying that the account owner should have managed it better.
But suspending all linked personal accounts? That’s just insane. No one of us had anything to do with those charges. No one of us even knew those charges existed. No one of us could do anything about those charges. No one of us was involved in it at any time at all. I can hardly think of a more absurd ban. Uber’s decision is just… unbelievable.
In other words, if you ever connected your personal account to a Uber for Business account you are at risk of getting suspended for something that has nothing to do with you. Apparently not even disconnecting your account will protect you (as mentioned before we could not verify that that account was disconnected, I’m just reporting my friend’s words).
If you think this is an unbelievable overreaction on Uber’s part you are not alone. As I write this I still can’t believe that someone at Uber thought it was reasonable to ban my personal account because there was an unresolved problem with my employee. Do they just not get the difference between a personal and a business account? I have honestly never heard of something like this.
The aftermath has been equally frustrating. Most of us contacted Uber using the “I want to reactivate my account” form, but 2 weeks later no one of us has heard anything from Uber. Their twitter support has been equally evasive. Contacting them by phone is basically impossible because they only offer phone support through the app, and suspended users have no access to it. Even reaching out directly to people who work for Uber has proven ineffective so far.
At this point it’s really not clear if we’ll ever get our accounts back. Some of us has given up and simply switched to an alternative service.
Only one thing is clear, using Uber for Business could cost you your personal Uber account.
Some other random facts about what happened:
- I only used that business account to book one ride more than 3 years ago (I didn’t even remember I had connected my account)
- I never had any fraud/payment/ride problems with Uber before, so Uber operates a single strike system
- There has been no communication from Uber apart from an automatic response that their team is “looking into it” (I’m talking about the affected people, so I’m ignoring their initial response to the business account owner)
- I only contacted Uber a week ago, but some of my coworkers contacted them at the end of August and they are all still suspended; none of them has received any update from Uber
A few personal considerations:
- You should think very carefully before using Uber for Business; while it can be convenient, I don’t think it’s worth the troubles you might get into. If I ever get my personal account, I will never link it to a Uber for Business account again
- If you are planning to take Uber always make sure you have a fallback option, because if there’s a problem their support team will not resolve it quickly; Uber might be fine for casual occasions, but it’s just not reliable enough for important occasions (had this happened just a week earlier it would have left me with very few options in a country where taxis are not considered very safe)
- I also find very annoying that I was not notified of the suspension. Thankfully it surprised me when I was already in my home city, but I can think of a few times when not knowing I was suspended would have really screwed me
- As a software engineer who has worked with both a fraud team and a payment team I just can’t understand how something like this happen. There is no way that Uber doesn’t know which connected account made the fraudulent charges, so why suspend unrelated accounts?
- Thankfully we are a small company, but what if the account was connected to tens or even hundreds of personal accounts? at what point using Uber for Business just becomes a liability because you might suddenly found all your employees grounded?
