Influencer gets taken for a ride after Uber slaps her with $321 bill for 3-mile lift
ByMatthew Sedacca
Published Dec. 21, 2024, 8:50 a.m. ET
This is highway robbery.
A New Jersey influencer got taken for a ride by Uber after the rideshare company slapped her with a surprise $321 bill — nearly quadruple her quoted price — for a lift home from Midtown.
Sophie Greene hailed an Uber XL just before midnight Saturday to take the social media stunner and her friends back to the Garden State after celebrating her birthday at Flaming Saddles Saloon on West 53rd Street.
3Sophie Greene was hit with a surprise, eye-popping Uber XL bill after heading home to New Jersey after celebrating her birthday in Manhattan.Helayne Seidman
Uber quoted $89 for a roughly 3.4-mile ride from Midtown to Weehawken via the Lincoln Tunnel. But when Greene, 28, checked her app afterwards — following a glacial, nearly two-hour crawl down 10 blocks — she was shocked to see the huge bill.
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“My jaw dropped,” Greene told The Post, just days after ripping Uber in a viral TikTok that’s racked up 1.7 million views.
“We didn’t have control over the situation. It’s not like we were telling him to make stops and doing all these things” to slow down their trip, she added.
Greene, who usually shells out for cars at night versus taking public transit due to safety concerns, noted the late night trip took much longer than the usual 20-minute sprint due to hellish midtown gridlock, possibly stemming from a partial closure on the Lincoln Tunnel and drunken SantaCon pandemonium.
But while Uber sent updates checking in on her safety during the bumper-to-bumper crawl to the tunnel, it gave zero warning about the triple digit surprise to come.
“They did text me multiple times, saying, ‘It looks like you’ve been stopped for a while. Are you safe?’… But there was no letting me know about the price change,” she said.
3Greene was initially quoted $89 but said Uber quietly jacked the fee by nearly quadruple the initial price.Courtesy of Sophie Greene
Greene immediately began trying to dispute the tab, but the ride share company didn’t budge until she posted her saga on Instagram Sunday morning. Within 30 minutes, they refunded the difference for her original quoted price of $89, she said.
“They’re probably thinking a lot of people won’t notice or … because of this time of year everyone expects it to be more expensive,” Greene said.
Other riders shared their own Uber horror stories on her TikTok video, with one recalling a $250 bill on a trip quoted at $80. Another said Uber tried to stick her surreptitiously with an additional $150 last week.
3Greene ripped Uber for not giving her a heads up during her trip that the price for the ride was going to soar due to heavy traffic.Jack Forbes The New York Post
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Last year, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was stunned to hear a journalist forked over $52, including tip, for a 3-mile ride across midtown to their interview.
Since the surprise bill, Greene said she’s pumping the brakes on hailing Ubers for rides home from after-hours outings in Midtown.
“I definitely opened up Lyft the next time we needed a ride,” she said.
Josh Gold, an Uber spokesman, said that Greene was one of several riders whose Uber trips were delayed due to construction on the Lincoln Tunnel and were hit sizable fare hikes due to the longer rides.
“We understand riders’ frustration and have issued partial refunds,” Gold said.