Thieving Uber Riders

(Apr. ’19/ 8,128 rides/ 4.97 rating)

I drove a couple on UberPool tonight, a warm Wednesday.  Chicago’s North Side buzzed with activity.  My second pick-up was for one rider.  A young man and his girlfriend approached and squeezed in.

“You can’t both get in,” I said.  “You only selected for one rider.  There’s only room for one more.”

“Uh,” said the sheepish guy.  His girlfriend was full of attitude and plopped herself in the back.

“It’s okay,” said the middle-aged man already in the car.  They were going home from the Todd Rundgren concert.  “We’re about to be dropped off.”

His wife agreed and the young couple was allowed in.  I was gypped out of a dollar of fare because they’d selected one instead of two.  A cheapskate move that clogs the car with extra riders, some will select one to save the trivial UberPool cost for a second rider.  The problem is my sedan is rated for three separate UberPool riders and it can be a squeeze for four or more.

We dropped off the pleasant couple.  The young man in the Hipster beard, sitting in the front seat, asked, “How far to Union Station?”  He had an accent from somewhere south of Chicago.

“Fourteen minutes.”  I engaged in small talk with him.

His girlfriend, alone in the backseat, was sleepy but unpleasant.  “You’re driving north!” she accused me.  That was untrue because I was headed south toward Union Station, the downtown home of Amtrak.

She appeared to be on some sort of depressant drug rather than alcohol.  She scratched herself and periodically complained about the route, although I followed the GPS route downtown.  I already knew these streets well.

The 20-ish blonde maneuvered herself to the middle of the backseat.  She fell forward onto the armrest between the front seats, then, slid back into her seat.

I focused on driving south on Larabee- a long straight shot into downtown.  At the next red light, something was off.  My phone was not in its cradle.  It was gone.

I looked around by my feet, then, the feet of the guy in the front passenger spot.  Nothing.  I turned on the overhead lights but saw no phone.  I tried not to panic; it had to be somewhere.  I had used the Uber GPS moments before.

On a hunch, I looked in the backseat.  No phone on the floor.  I looked at the blonde.  She stared vacantly.

“Do you have my phone?” I asked.  Her left hand held something close that looked like a phone.  “Is that my phone?”  It looked like my Samsung S8 in its blue Otterbox shell.

“It’s my phone,” she said.

Unsure, I kept looking around the front seat.  I realized that if she had my phone, she could jump out and run away.

“That looks like my phone,” I said.  Her boyfriend was dead quiet all this time.

“No, it’s my phone,” she said.

She had fallen up front, between the seats where she could have grabbed my phone while I focused on the road and small-talking her boyfriend.

“Let me look at your phone,” I said.

“No, it’s my phone.”

I yanked it from her hand.

“My phone!”  She reached for my arm.

I saw the Uber driver app on the screen.  My phone, indeed.

I put the phone in its cradle, shifted out of park and we went forward.  In retrospect, I should have stopped, demanded they get out, and ended the ride.

“Sorry about that, dude,” said he boyfriend.  “She does stuff like that.”   Great, a cleptomaniac.  They’d already proven their dishonesty by squeezing in a “free” second UberPool rider.

The remaining five minutes were quiet and uncomfortable.  After I let them out at Union Station, I reported the attempted theft to Uber in the “My Rider Was Rude” reporting option.

Having my phone stolen would have been an expense and a huge hassle.  It is surprisingly easy to grab a phone from the Uber driver and bolt.  If she had been a smoother criminal, my phone would have been stolen.

Riders steal.  I keep little worth taking in my car, but, three times my iPhone charger I have only for rider convenience has been pilfered.  The first time there were four high school girls on an UberX and one was fidgeting with the iPhone charger cord while she juiced her phone.  After that ride, I noticed I no longer had a charger.

Those of us who drive on the side need to keep as little as possible in our trunk.  I once took a rider from the Rosemont Fashion Outlet mall to her hotel.  She put a bunch of shopping bags in my hatchback.  Later, I noticed a Target bag with its telltale bulls-eye was gone.   There had been $100 of brand new clothes inside.  Uber doesn’t allow us to contact a rider over such things.  In this case, the woman left a message through Uber she accidentally took my bag and would leave it with her hotel concierge because she was about to fly out.  Despite two in-person stops by and a few phone calls, I never got the bag back.

In the case of the phone-thieving lady in the backseat, the best defense may be to use a tablet for Uber and keep the phone in the pocket.  I heard from of an Uber-driver using a tablet- which has a bigger screen than a phone, anyway- to protect against riders stealing his phone.  I will try this.  Better they snare a $100 tablet than an $800 phone.  It’s quite simple for an Uber rider to swipe your phone, exit the car, and run.  In this particular case, if the blonde were more coherent, she could have stashed it in her purse or even her clothing.  I could never get it back, even if I was certain she had it.  Drivers, beware!