Last weekend, I was back in Guadalajara as I had a friend from Europe who wanted to see the city, which actually ended up morphing into a bigger trip to Puerto Vallarta. Both are in Jalisco state.
You can fly between these two cities using one of the Mexican low-cost carriers, and there should be frequent bus service that I first considered. After consulting the prices that Uber quoted, we decided to use the ride-sharing service.
The hotel offered a driver through an agency for 4,500 pesos, but that was close to triple what Uber quoted, and Uber Black service should have been roughly 3,200 pesos.
I tried to order Uber Black on Sunday morning, but there were no cars available, and we chose the standard Uber. The first driver was aware that our destination was outside of the usual area and he canceled the trip after consulting with us.
The second driver showed up and was somewhat surprised about the trip’s length, but off we went.
The trip took at least an hour longer than initially quoted, and I paid many cash tolls along the way. I remembered that I had had some issues with Uber and paid cash tolls previously, and I decided to save most of the receipts (I believe that I lost one or two).
The original quote:
The final price:
I am not sure how the price ended up roughly doubling from the quote? We didn’t have extra stops along the way or changed the destination. Also, at least two tolls were on the receipt, and I had paid them all in cash.
I messaged Uber with the copies of the toll receipts, and eventually, they honored the original quote and refunded the difference.
Conclusion
The drive took longer than I had planned, and I will choose another transportation option in the future if I need to travel between these two cities. I felt terrible for the driver and gave him a 500 peso cash tip when we arrived at the destination.
Uber’s response implies that the price change would have been the driver’s fault and blame him for the case. Uber’s quote was just incorrect, and the tolls were added automatically to the final charge.
If Uber givers a quote and the passengers don’t change the route, the original quote should stand and not double like what happened here,
I have not had much luck with Uber’s customer service lately (I remember how good it used to be), but at least they fixed this issue.
