Uber / Amex fraud

#1

So, in an earlier post I was looking for an alternative to my Amex plat charge after I’d got annoyed about poor customer support. Well to redress the balance - this just happened to me:

Sitting at my desk and I get £1 Uber charge alert on the amex app, then another £1, then £22 and then £27. Well I haven’t used Uber for several days so I called them straight away.

The customer service at Uber was not very impressive. I gave them my phone number and last 4 digits of card. They then ran their checks and said, no nothing seemed amiss on their side. They then asked for the first 6 digits of my card - I objected to this - why would they need it ??? ANyway, they then put me on hold and whilst on hold I get a text from Amex - fraud alert someone just tried to charge £113 to my Amex as Uber.

Uber guy comes back on the phone and I explain about the fraud alert - he says “Oh, I better send this to our special team” and that was it - says they will call in 24 hours. I was not impressed at all.

Then I call Amex they immediately agree it is fraud and say they will refund the 4 charges and get me a new card within 48hours. Also go on to explain that I should delete the card from the app and then delete Uber app and reinstall with new card when it arrives. I felt the Amex agent was handling it intelligently - delete from app etc is obvious, but maybe not to everyone, so good that he says it.

So it has renewed by faith in Amex being professional - I’ll be keeping my card.

Also shows how useful having the Amex app alerts are as you straight away see something is up.

With Uber - so far very unimpressed - but lets see if they call back and what happens.

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#2

Just as a general point for the future, and for others potentially reading this: your first (and ideally only) call is your card provider. Your contract is with them. Not with the retailer/merchant whatever where your card was used.

Your card provider then needs to contact the merchant but that’s between them. You should always contact your card provider first so they can block the card from further fraudulent use. And that should also really be it.

(Incidentally the reason that uber couldn’t help you was presumably that you were going through the wrong channels. They wouldn’t be expected to deal with this in this way.)

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#3

good points

but what I found is that the Uber rep really didn’t have a clue - he didn’t state what you just have and said you need to call Amex etc

#4

I really wouldn’t expect them to, to be honest. It’s not what they deal with :slight_smile:

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#5

That’s very normal, I’m not aware of any company that allows customer support staff access to anything more than basic information, the data protection issues there would be huge. When you contact Amex, they wouldn’t be contacting Uber, they would be contacting the acquirer.

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#6

Thanks for raising this topic. I’ve just cancelled my Uber account on the basis that I’ve only ever used it once and it still had a ‘live’ credit card attached to it. No point in keeping an account I just don’t use. It’s one less App taking up space on my phone.

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