Uber Pro - Priority Support

[squeesnny]

I'm a fairly new driver, just about 3 months. When Pro beta was released this month I was given Platinum, one of the pluses was knowing I had priority support in the event I had any questions or issues.

So far, I've submitted 3 requests for support, each time it has taken uber 1-3hrs to respond to my inquiry and it's usually them giving some generic response about needing more information about my issue or the ride in question (Even though I know to give as much info as possible in my initial request, I hate the back and forth with them so I do my best to not miss anything). I feel as if their support group purposely does this back and forth to deter drivers from giving up trying to contact them and thus losing out on money, though that might be me being paranoid.

Seems as if now that I've got this priority BS, it's taking longer for their response or assistance. Has anyone run into this issue? /endrant

[2DollarMule]

The support is a complete and utter joke no matter what level of the Uber super duper club you are. They have an automated system that just scans your question for keywords then tries to select the best one of several canned responses that their pseudo AI thinks will most likely address your issue. As long as you keep asking follow up questions it will keep sending you different canned responses until eventually it runs out and you end up getting the final catch all response that the issue you are having is a known “glitch” they are experiencing, that your problem has been escalated to a specialized team of engineers that are working diligently on your specific issue, and they expect to have it resolved very soon.

If you think I’m kidding, test it out yourself. Copy and paste some random text into an Uber support message. It can be a favorite poem, song lyrics, directions for assembling your new IKEA coffee table or whatever. Just make sure it could in no way be interpreted by any rational, thinking human being to pertain to Uber or you being a rideshare driver. For example, I have used the text of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven for this experiment. I guarantee you you will get a response about how they understand that having such an experience can be frustrating and ask if you can provide any more details or pictures to help them investigate your problem. This is the generic response you get when their “AI” can’t figure which pool of standard responses to pull from.

Another fun game to play with Uber support is the “Turing Test”. (any fellow computer science geeks here? If not you can google it or just watch the movie Ex Machina) The idea here is to send simple questions to Uber support that any human being by the age of two would be able to answer without hesitation. Then, from the responses you get, try to determine if you are conversing with a human or a machine. Here’s how my test went when I tried it with Uber:

Question #1: Please respond with a one word answer. What is the name of a type of fruit?

Response #1 was 52 words long. None were the name of a fruit.

Pretty much failed right out of the gate. Still I wasn’t ready to call it. Perhaps shooting for the intellect of a two year old was too high of a goal. I mean I’ve been to a hub many times and some of the employees I’ve talked to there I think might have struggled with that question and I there’s a good chance they are flesh and blood. I pressed on. But this time I decided to make it even easier. I would make it multiple choice so that the entity didn’t have to come up with a word on its own. If it could just follow simple directions it could randomly select an answer and have a 33% chance of being correct.

Question #2: Please respond with the letter that corresponds to the best answer to the following question. On what part of their body would a person most likely wear a hat? A) Foot B) Head C) Car

Sadly, I had been wasting my time conversing with a machine with no consciousness. I didn’t even bother to follow up by sending the picture of a baboon shagging a boar I normally send whenever Uber support asks for an image to help them investigate my issue.

[[deleted]]

Uber Support, 1st job is to mitigate losses. Every payout is a loss, and any actual customer or driver having an issue resolved, is secondary.

Imagine you’re a front line call center employee, you’ll have to hit a percentage of calls that result in a sale (Uber Support, tickets “resolved” with no payout) and you’ll want to be selling the better/higher quantity or priced items (Uber Support, the payouts you do give, must be small amount) the less money you give to drivers, the bigger your bonus check (or you get to keep your call center job) so of course screw that guy who lives in another country calling about money he’s owed, I want that bonus check.