Uber charged a US couple ₹24 lakh for a single ride. Here’s what happened next…

Douglas Ordonez and Dominique Adams were shocked to discover the staggering mentioned above, instead of the expected charge of around ₹4,500 ($55) due to a currency conversion mishap. 

According to a report by the New York Post, Douglas Ordonez took to Twitter to express his frustration, stating, “Uber charged me $29,994 USD for an Uber ride in Costa Rica. They did not convert that into the Costa Rican currency $54 USD. Altura Credit Union allowed this charge to process, and Uber is not complying. Now I’m in Guatemala with a negative balance on my five-year anniversary.”

After investigating the incident, Uber acknowledged the mistake and attributed it to a bank error in the currency conversion process. They promptly addressed the issue and released the mistakenly applied authorization hold.

As reported by Business Insider, the ride-hailing company said “At Uber, we take every report seriously. As soon as we received the user’s report, our support team promptly addressed the issue and released the authorization hold mistakenly applied due to a bank error in Dollars and not in Colones.”

Altura Credit Union, the couple’s bank, informed Dominique Adams that the charge went through despite her daily spending limit on her debit card. This was due to a travel notice they had placed on their account for the trip.

After four days of communication between Altura Credit Union and Uber Support, the couple finally witnessed an adjustment to the $29,000 charge, ultimately resolving the issue. Douglas Ordonez provided an update on Twitter, stating, “AlturaCU and Uber_Support are blaming each other. AlturaCU stated that the 29k amount bypassed security & daily charge limit because we put a travel notice. ABSOLUTELY NO REASON why this amount should have cleared. After 4 full days, the 29k was finally adjusted.”

Updated: 10 Jul 2023, 03:33 PM IST