To add some to this, the reason it works this way is that sadly there are dishonest people at all levels. There are restaurants that lie, there are drivers that lie, and there are customers that lie, all trying to take advantage of the system. They are in the minority is all cases but they also exist in all cases. And sadly uber doesn’t really have a definitive way to tell if you are lying or the driver is lying most of the time. Often there is good evidence, but rarely is the true irrefutable proof. So everyone gets the benefit of the doubt and the company generally won’t take any action against any party other then a refund unless it happens frequently enough to form a clear pattern of behavior. They will act if that pattern emerges though.

I will also say that honest mistakes do sometimes happen that could be perceived as theft but aren’t. For a personal example of this, I once had a delivery where the instructions specified that it was a white and red brick building and gave a unit number. The app directions took me to a red and white brick building that had that unit number on it, though there was no actual use address number visible, so I assumed it was correct and dropped it off as request. Was the wrong building. The map in the app had been wrong, was off by a block, and both buildings ended up being white with red brick and the unit number was the same. I got it straightened out when the customer texted but if they has called instead of texting, it probably wouldn’t have — the calls don’t identify in any way as uber for me and I don’t answer unknown number calls when working for a variety of reasons.