A dissatisfied customer has made a firm decision to boycott Uber following an experience where he believes the driver deceitfully used a widely shared image of vomit to convince him to pay a substantial cleaning fee.
Adam Frame, 29, from Sunderland, was shocked when he realised he had been fined £80 after a Christmas night out in Newcastle last month.
And when he asked for evidence, Uber sent him a photograph of the back seat of the vehicle apparently covered in vomit.
But Mr Frame said this was ‘100 per cent not true’ and that he quickly found the ‘viral’ picture on Google and Reddit.
He told MailOnline: ‘We had been out for Christmas drinks and food and booked an Uber outside Dean Street in Newcastle.
‘Around a mile from the house my girlfriend felt a bit sick and the Uber driver pulled over.
‘He was super helpful at first, checking if she was okay and came over with the sanitiser spray.
‘At the end of journey we gave him some cash for stopping and he said thank you very much.’
Have YOU been caught out by this trick? Email: [email protected]
A screengrab of Adam Frame’s post on social media about his fine – showing pictures of the vomit photo on Uber and Reddit
Image appears to show the photo of the vomit on the Uber account
Image appears to show the vomit picture on Reddit
He said it was not until the next day that he realised they had been charged an £80 cleaning fee.
‘We requested a photo and I googled the picture. It was the first one that came up and had been posted on Reddit,’ Mr Frame said.
‘That was unbelievable.’
And when asked if he would order an Uber again, he added: ‘100 per cent I will never use Uber. A lot of taxi companies can’t compete with them.
‘I will definitely be supporting my local taxi service from now on.’
Mr Frame said he has now got a refund from Uber after raising concerns with the company about the cleaning fee.
MailOnline has contacted Uber for comment.
It comes after an Uber driver was accused of taking advantage of a drunk passenger by taking her on a 40-mile long detour of the M25 in the summer.
The woman was allegedly charged £156 for a journey that normally costs £25.
The unsettling situation reportedly unfolded when the passenger nodded off inside the Uber while traveling from Central London to their residence in East London.
Adam Frame, a 28-year-old individual from Sunderland, was taken aback upon discovering that he had been fined £80 after a night out in Newcastle during Christmas last month (shown in a stock photo).
It comes after an Uber driver was accused of taking advantage of a drunk passenger by taking her on a 40-mile long detour of the M25 in the summer (file photo)
Uber told MailOnline at the time that what was described is ‘totally unacceptable’, that they had launched an investigation and will take any ‘appropriate action’.
An image showed the route that the driver took, beginning at the pick-up point in central London before heading north on the M1 towards Barnet.
The driver, who was listed as a man named Amir, then turns onto Potters Bar and heads towards Epping in Essex before passing Brentwood and finally returning to the destination via Barking.
The journey was booked at 11.45pm with Amir arriving 14 minutes later at a minute to midnight.
A post of the journey map was shared online with the caption: ‘My friend took a taxi from Soho to Limehouse after a night out.
‘The taxi driver, seeing she was drunk and asleep in the back, decided to take a detour around the M25.
‘She has reached out to Uber and they’ve defended this driver stating that there were roadworks so he had to take a detour.
‘I’ve never heard of a detour requiring you to drive around the M25 to get from central London to zone 2.
‘I’m worried there are drivers out there willing to take advantage of vulnerable females, it makes me feel disgusted that Uber would continue working with someone like this.
‘How can I get them to take this more seriously?’
