An Uber passenger who was charged $700 during the Virginia interstate shut down has received a refund.
Earlier this week, the state of Virginia made headlines after its I-95 highway was shut down following a snowstorm that caused several vehicular accidents and roadblocks. Thousands of people were stranded for over 24 hours, and some of those people were in ride-shares.
One of those people was Andrew Peters, who landed at Dulles International Airport in the Virginia suburbs, Yahoo! News reports. Peters was coming back from San Francisco. While on his way to Richmond, he and the driver ended up getting caught in the massive traffic jam.
“We hopped on the first exit and then it was just, we stopped moving right there. There were cars behind us. There was nowhere to go,” Peters said to NBC Washington.
After spending 14 hours in the car, the bill came out to $200. Peters gave the driver a $100 tip, but after that, Uber added a $400 surcharge, causing the bill to rise to $701.47. And Peters wasn’t having it, despite Uber’s website mention of “heavy traffic” incidents. “Heavy traffic may cause your trip to take longer than expected and to compensate your driver for the additional time, your fare may change,” the ride-share company website states.
“I had no way of knowing that I would be stuck in this traffic jam for that long, and I don’t feel like that’s fair because they have the directions. I have no say in which way the Uber goes,” Peters said.
Luckily, Peters was given a refund after disputing the charge. The traffic died off 30 almost 30 hours, the news outlet reports. In a statement, a spokesperson for Uber said: “We recognized that the prolonged highway shutdown was extraordinary circumstance for him and the driver.”
