My first terrible Uber experience

Being someone who travels often, I am no stranger to good ole Uber. Typically the drivers are pleasant, responsible and sometimes even entertaining with no complications. Smooth sailing! That is until it’s not…..

We are all familiar with the term “girls trip”, yes? Some friends and I attempt to get together annually to do just that. This year the plan was for AllieCat (aka one of the friends, aka my travel mate) to fly into San Diego. Where we would spend a couple days and then we would both fly to Texas together. WOOO WHOOOO!!

And so it begins…

There is this place called Barrel Republic in north county San Diego that many people have recommended. It is a sports bar with local craft beers, BUT you get a wrist band and self pour from the taps. How awesome of an experience, huh?!? Our thoughts exactly, so we decided to call an uber like responsible adults.

As we were attempting to get in I realized my lanyard was missing. SHIIIIIIIIIT. What’s a lanyard you ask??? Well it’s like a tiny wallet on a long wristlet that just so conveniently held my car key, house key, dependent ID, license, and bank cards. Basically my entire life. Immediately I began to freak out and we retraced our steps with zero luck. That left one place unchecked….the Uber. After navigating through the app, ring, ring!!! He said, “oh yes I have it already. You left it in the backseat”. THE BIGGEST SIGH OF RELIEF! After explaining how important it was, I requested him to bring it back. He reluctantly agreed to do so only if I paid him extra. Slightly confused, I verified with him the app already charged an extra $15 (I think that’s what it was) for this. He insisted that an extra payment on top of the 15 or he was not going to bring it back. Whatever, at this point I did not care what I had to pay I just needed it. The time frame he gave was one hour. Okay cool…kinda sucks to be stranded for an hour, but “beggers can’t be choosers”.

An hour passed, nada!!! It was getting dark and the area was not exactly ideal for two ladies at night, so we attempted to locate any number or help possible. We attempted to get in touch with him multiple times and he completely ignored us…and my phone was dying. Not even going to lie, I started really panicking. Poor AllieCat had to deal with my anxiety (which is not something I typically get) quickly spiraling out of control. Not a good look bruh.

You see from the surface this just appears to be “oh she lost her stuff so cancel bank cards, reorder IDs, and go pay for a new car key”. A pain, but all manageable. Except dependent IDs were needed to get home and umm we had a 5am flight the next morning to Texas. No identification, no keys, no money, no flight…you see where I am going with this??

To make matters worse there was no point of contact for Uber. No manager to contact, no help number, nothing. How does a company even run like that??? Anyways, we were effed. Hours later the phone dings! The turd finally replied saying he dropped the lanyard off at the main hub in San Diego. *face palm anyone?* Which was closed at this point and roughly $65 in Uber fees to get there.

Finally, AllieCat talked some sense into me and I called another friend (who had just recently moved to the area) to pick us up. A few hours and two exhausting phone calls later maintenance was able to unlock my house. Y’all on-call maintenance techs are a life saver!!

But wait, there’s more

The next morning we woke up early and called an Uber (because I had no car keys) to take us to pass and ID on base in hopes of getting a new ID. Would yall believe me if I told you this new Uber driver got pulled over with us in the car???? Sigh. Long story short, roughly $500 later all was taken care of and we were on a new flight to good ole Texas. I am quite fortunate to have such understanding and patient friends. From that point on we were sure to get ALL belongings out before rushing out of the Uber. Win some and lose some I suppose.