‘I feel duped’: B.C. woman falls victim to elaborate Uber scam

A B.C. resident is warning others after falling victim to an elaborate Uber scam.

“ I feel duped, who do you trust now?” Sarah Hamilton told Consumer Matters.

This past January, the Vancouver resident had her car serviced and says her dealership requested an Uber to pick her up at her home.

However, immediately after receiving a text message confirming an Uber was on the way, Hamilton says she received a phone call from the driver.

“He asked me to confirm who I was, which I thought was strange,” she said.

“Yes, it was me, Sarah Hamilton, and then he asked for a code. You need to give me the code. I thought that’s strange maybe I need to give him a code to pick me up.”

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Given the timing of the call from when the Uber was initially ordered, Hamilton says she was caught off-guard.

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When she checked her personal email account, she found an email from Uber with a verification code.

“Had I spent some time and actually looked at the message, it said don’t share this code with anyone, Uber will never ask you for this code,” she said.

“My bad. I gave them the code. Didn’t think anything of it. Then he pops up on my app as the driver that’s going to pick me up and all of a sudden he drops me.”

Hamilton says another Uber driver showed up at her home and drove her to the dealership. She says she didn’t think much about the previous incident until the next day when she received some unexpected notifications from Uber.

“I go into my Uber account – I cannot get in,” she said. “It then asks me to put in my phone number. I enter my phone number and it says what’s your verification code? I’m not getting a verification code. That’s when I realized my account had been hacked.”

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Hamilton later discovered she was charged for two trips in Calgary, Alberta at a cost of over $300 each.

She says she immediately contacted her credit card company, but says getting in touch with Uber and restoring her account took days. She also says she received no further contact from Uber despite asking if changes were being made to prevent this type of incident from happening to others.

Uber confirmed to Consumer Matters that the incident resulted from a compromised driver account, but did not provide further details.

In an emailed statement, the company said in part: “Riders and drivers should never share personal account information, such as passwords, or verification codes, with anyone…”

Uber has since refunded the unauthorized charges to Hamilton’s account. However, she says she’s too nervous to use the Uber app again.

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