Uber Will Pay $20 Million For Exaggerating Drivers' Earnings (engadget.com)

Uber is paying $20 million to settle allegations that it duped people into driving for its ride-hailing service with false promises about how much they would earn and how much they would have to pay to finance a car. From a report: The FTC claimed that Uber was advertising an annual median income of over $90,000 per year for uberX drivers in New York and more than $74,000 for uberX drivers in San Francisco. But, as the commission found out, less than 10 percent of all drivers in those cities actually make that much. The complaint also alleges that Uber was inflating the hourly earnings on job boards like Craigslist. New drivers who financed a new car through Uber's Vehicle Solutions Program found out the company's claims were too good to be true as well. Although Uber told new drivers they would be able to lease a new car for around $119 per week, the actual lease rates never dipped below $200 from late 2013 to April 2015. And, despite its promise of delivering "the best financing options available," it turns out that Uber's rates were actually worse than consumers with similar credit scores could have gotten elsewhere. Adding insult to overpriced injury, Uber tacked on mileage limits to lease agreements that were advertised with unlimited mileage.

Comments

Uber caught lying?

[smooth wombat]

Why should we not be surprised? This is the same company which claims it's a "ride sharing" company, not a taxi company, yet as far as I know, not a single one of their drivers is picking up people who want to go the same direction as the driver.

Instead, the people contact some random Uber driver to pick them up at a specific location then be driven to the location of their choice, all for a fee.

That certainly is an interesting definition of "ride sharing" especially in one of the more recent incidents where an Uber driver drove someone from Virginia to New York and back. I highly doubt the driver was already going that route.

That Uber should now be found guilty of duping people into believing they could make X dollars a year by driving for them (isn't that the way a cab driver works, they drive for a company?), or that Uber was deliberately fudging numbers on the costs involved to lease a vehicle from them shouldn't surprise anyone, especially when this company, despite all the money they're bilking from people, still can't turn a profit.