The "UberBh" or what Customer Service does when you complain*
A recent article published in the Huffington Post doesn't surprise us at all regarding Uber's customer support services.
Caitlin Reardon, a 25-year-old resident of San Francisco, placed a usual order for Mission Style Burritos when entertaining an out of town visitor in her home on Monday night. Everything was great until the time ticked by, and frustration levels grew with hunger pangs.
After over an hour had passed she called up the UberEats service to find out why her order was delayed for so long and found out that it had been cancelled even though the Uber app showed it as being prepared. The service rep that took her call suggested she re-order, but Caitlin decided it was time to switch services. She also decided to write a complaint to UberEats about her experience since it seems that no drivers would deliver the order and the chances of being canceled were uncertain.
This is what she wrote:
I ordered food an hour and a half ago, called in to complain and the offshore call agent just kept saying I'm sorry to hear that you are upset the delivery service canceled. This is unacceptable - if they were going to cancel, why not cancel anytime in the first 89 minutes? Get better customer support and don't accept orders that you can't deliver on.
The next day Caitlin received a reply from Uber, which was a standard procedure but then she noticed something out of the ordinary. Someone had either hacked her account, or an Uber representative had changed her name to "Bitch," so all her incoming emails from Uber, all her Uber communications would be titled to "Bitch."
The worst part was yet to come, she had just made an UberX request for her sister, and that meant her sister would be received as "Bitch" by her driver.
Caitlin had worked as a customer representative in her past.
The first thing she did was record all the details, photographing everything and sending an immediate complaint to Uber, she also changed her name back, but that was "the last straw" for her.
Our observations on this are: Uber, as with any company doesn't have absolute control over all their workers all the time. This leaves room for "bad" workers to destroy a companies image in one quiet and quick change of a name. Even though Uber fired the employee, that is not enough, Caitlin has a right to sue the employee for quite a long list of misdemeanors and illegal actions including defamation of face, public humiliation, changing personal information without consent, accessing personal information with the intent to cause harm and much more. The company is responsible for the worker's actions in many cases, so they would also be put on the witness stand. However, when looking at this case we have to wonder, how do Uber place "customer Rep" requirements? It has a very long list of driver requirements; maybe they should put all their employees through a similar screening method. After all, if a driver is the face of the service, what is a customer support representative?