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I need you to do me a favor. Look inward and be honest with yourself. When you order an Uber, do you judge your driver immediately by how they look in their microscopic head shot the app gives you? I’m man enough to admit that yes, I judge the hell out of those photos and the way I perceive the driver may even impact if I’m going to ride shotty or not.
But have you ever cancelled a ride because of how your driver looks in their photo? My guess is no.
If you were calling Ubers in China, though, you might be cancelling all the time. That’s because there’s an issue in various Chinese cities with drivers looking like scary clown zombies in their app photos. Fucking terrifying shit. The goal being for you to cancel your ride, granting the driver cancellation fees without actually driving.
Numerous Chinese publications, including The Sixth Tone and NBD News, have reported that ‘ghost drivers’ are frightening Uber passengers into paying for trips they didn’t even take. Some passengers in Tianjin, Qingdao, Chengdu, Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou have been canceling Uber rides after seeing creepy driver profile pictures pop up in the app. The photos depict horrific zombie-like faces, which turn users off instantly and prompt them to ditch their trip, thereby incurring a nominal cancellation fee that goes to the driver.
When I saw the headline about ghost Uber drivers, I laughed. The thought of drivers pulling up but somehow hiding from view (maybe they’re crouching down, low riding, Detroit leaning) and then just having people cancel on them was funny. Humorous. All in good fun. But then I read this and realized they’re not pretending to be ghosts. They’re pretending to these terrifying-looking clown zombies.
The only way they could make this worse was if they went full killer clown and showed up in their Hyundai Elantras with a battle ax. It’s shit like this that doesn’t get me any more enthused about potentially traveling to Asia. One minute you’re eating dumplings trying to find your way to the Terracotta Soldiers, and the next you’re ordering a zombie Uber. No way, man. No effing way.
I will say this: I now understand how we can be in so much debt to China. Even the damn Uber drivers are business tycoons. Blue collar drivers rolling out dirty business mogul practices. One of your children will be going to college with some Chinese kid who’s got more money than God, and when they ask how the family made their nut, the Chinese kid will respond by saying his dad was a zombie Uber driver who got inundated with ride requests. He scared all his customers off by being a zombie and built an empire one ten-dollar cancelled ride payment at a time..
[via The Next Web]
Image viaWorawee Meepian / Shutterstock
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Boston Max
Spending my retirement fund at Trader Joe's and trying to remember to check my mailbox semi-regularly
@BostonMaxG
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Did you hear? Taco made his nut!
Can confirm – Taco did in fact make his nut.