> Going forward, I am probably just going to initiate a chargeback. They aren’t giving me many choices.
Give them a week to sort it out. Don't immediately chargeback, but call the credit card company and tell them about the irregularity. That way, you give Uber some room to sort it out, you don't have to worry about the charge in the process, and you established the timeline in case things do get hairy.
Chargebacks are a valid tool to use when a business doesn't act in good faith with you and is trying to take your money, but some people use them way too casually for the type of aggressive tool it is. Not getting an email response in 24 hours isn't an unreasonable or unusual situation. Chargebacks can have serious repercussions for small businesses; everything from being forced to pay an additional penalty to some faceless algorithm closing off their payment account and people ultimately losing their jobs because of it.
While responding to an email in less than 24 hours is ideal, many smaller businesses don't have a 24 hour per day customer service center and can't always respond to an email in that time frame. Some businesses say 48 hours - 72 hours on their contact page and I think that's pretty reasonable for anything that's not an emergency.
If a company decides to be faceless by not providing a phone number and not communicating on their support practices†, then being penalized by some faceless algorithm sounds like the kind of lesson they need.
† It's not hard to send automatic emails if there are no supporters in the office for a few days or if the queue is too long.
What makes you think he'd ever even want to trust them again when they happily take 80$ of him, make no movements to return them and leave him with exactly zero communication as to why that is?
They didn't happily take money form him. There apparently was a billing mistake or 2. And there has been at least one communication. I would be very surprised if he never wanted to use Uber again.
Agreed. At a minimum you should have a rep stay in contact and at least keep the guy up to date on what's going on. People will give you a break as long as they don't feel like someone dropped the ball.
90% of excellent customer service is simple communication. Even if it takes a week, if I get a call every two days letting me know what's going on and where they are with the credit or charge back, it shows the company cares and I'm not so quick with the chargeback call to my CC company.
It's 2013, companies shouldn't have a hard time communicating. With so many direct and indirect channels to get a hold of people, this should be easy.
IME credit card companies can't do anything until the charge clears (which may take a few days). So you'll see the charge is wrong, but you can't do anything about it because it's still pending. Given that it may also take a few business days to resolve the underlying problem (it may have been an issue with the driver misquoting the price initially, so there may be a back and forth there) a week is a reasonable amount of time to wait. But absolutely you should notify the credit card company immediately, in order to start the clock
24 hrs even over the weekend and major holidays? Most things I've charged on weekends don't even post to my account until at least a business day has past. Can you even start the chargeback process on an authorization?
Give them a week to sort it out. Don't immediately chargeback, but call the credit card company and tell them about the irregularity. That way, you give Uber some room to sort it out, you don't have to worry about the charge in the process, and you established the timeline in case things do get hairy.