Posted by The Destin Driver on 1/21/2023 to News
I got deactivated on Wednesday 18th, 2023 around 10:56am and immediately the thought that entered my mind was “why?”. I then started telling myself; “Relax, there is nothing wrong, there shouldn’t be anything wrong with the account.” But little did I know Uber had decided to deactivate my account without notice by stating that there was “fraudulent activity”. At that point I had (2) thoughts: 1). What was the fraudulent activity? And 2). I want to speak to someone.
I did what I had to do, I did not touch, nor said anything, because I knew inside there was no fraud however, Uber has done this before, yep! - They’ve done it before! They have tried to threaten me with deactivation and I’ve always been able to address the issues by being frontal about it. They have misspelled, mistaken, misinterpret, everything you can think of, Uber has made mistakes that cost people (regular hard working people) their jobs and their livelihoods. So I immediately did as the Rideshare Professor has always instructed the gig workers to do. Get yourself good representation and do it immediately, to avoid any more income loss due to wrongful deactivation and that is exactly what I did.I was very frustrated, anxious, demoralized, all the things you can think of that would make someone desist to work in an environment like that, where you do not get to be treated fairly, or even extended the courtesy to listen and/or to share exactly what went wrong in the first place that got me deactivated. A number of “supervisors” and “priority support” staff were going back and forth on the phone, not knowing anything about the deactivation nor any information on which was the “fraudulent activity” and it made me feel even more helpless because I knew at that point that I was on my own. From dropped calls to hanging up the phone in the midst of the conversation gave me a terrible sense of deceit and I was getting more and more frustrated. I finally decided to express the anger I felt and made this remark: “I need to know exactly what “fraudulent activity” (if any) was found so I can address this now” - and they immediately started the deflection protocol. From: “We do not have the tools available to support that”, to “I need to put your call on hold for (2) minutes so I can gather more information on this fraudulent activity”. - But the more I waited and listened to them, the more I felt helpless and demoralized by them repeating “fraudulent activity” the more I kept thinking to myself: “How?”, “What?”, “When?”, “Where”, etc., etc.
I reached out to the Professor, and he did what he had to do, and got me to understand what needed to be done and I established a timeline, a pattern, and most importantly gathered the truth and put it in writing. I submitted everything we needed to submit and followed every piece of advice and finally I was able to submit a “review” to their “special team” so they were able to review my case and allow Uber 5-7 business days to get back in touch with me, not to re-activate me, but to contact me.
After I submitted my “appeal to review”, they went “radio silence” for about (12) hours and started writing back to me through email that “We are very sorry that you are going through this at this moment” - (to which I call B.S.”) and after receiving the “appeal to review” with all the information I provided I received a message on Thursday January 19th, 2023 around 10:28am that read: “Your account is now active”. But that’s not all! - The account was active, but I was still unable to go online. My account was blocked! Blocked by the same “support specialist” that “activated” my account. He basically just “did not finished” (mentioned Priyanka from “Uber Support”).
I still had to go at it with a number of “supervisors” that did not recollect, nor didn’t had the tools to help me until around 9:23pm of January 19th (Thursday) I receive the following message: “Hi. It looks like there was a discrepancy on the backend that was preventing you from going online. We made an adjustment to your account, so you should be able to go online and receive trip requests right away. If you have any trouble going online, you can try signing out and back in again. It can also help to ensure your app is fully up to date. If you continue to experience the issue, feel free to write back in and confirm what city you are trying to drive in, as well as what vehicle make and model you are using.”
My thoughts on this: Deception, duplicity, double-dealing, fraud at it’s best.
Mr. Torsten, I would like to thank you for everything you have done for this industry, especially for the deactivation/activation process which to some is very stressful and sometimes even disheartening. We are truly blessed to have a professional like you that understands firsthand how to deal with these types of situations, and also how to address issues that are not even congruent with the information that Uber Support provides at the time of deactivation. My family cannot thank you enough because for a lot of us, Uber/Lyft or any gig work is our only source of income, thank you also for helping us transition to private so that I was able to work even when I was deactivated. Which was exactly what happened, I had (3) private clients during that period of time where I was deactivated from the Uber app.
Thank you Torsten,
Your friend.
The Destin Driver.
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