[nxsynonym]

It would leave too much room for fraudulent or abusive behavior. Would exponentially increase the time their claims/customer service team has to spend digging through refunds to sort the real ones from the bs.

As a bad customer: I don't like the drivers name - refund. I thought the driver was too slow - refund. I just want to see what I can get away with - refund.

Believe it or not, most people will exploit systems to the fullest extent.

[rhino369]

I agree. The real problem is that app charges you after 5 minutes when the driver is nowhere near the pickup.

If the initial estimate is 2 min, and then the driver just drives in a different direction for 5 min, they shouldn't charge the 5 dollar fee in the first place. Especially since its now common for drivers to do this as a method of forcing riders to cancel to help their metrics.

Even if the driver is legit lost, that's still not the customers fault.

[benologist]

Completely false. Steam's offered a 2-week refund window ever since their criminal no-refund policy [1] was called to a judge's attention in Australia and the end result is a very low refund rate - just 6% for Rust [2].

Google Play for years now have had a 2-hour window where you can reverse purchases too just by going back to the store page and pressing the cancel button. I think the vast majority of developers aren't even aware of it.

It's very easy to detect consumer abuse of such a policy at the store-level. But I don't think consumers in general are trying to fuck companies. Darkpatterns.org exists to point out how willfully the opposite is true, Uber are just being thieves and they will be held accountable for it and a refund button will appear but not until they've stolen millions more.

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/video-gam...

[2] https://www.pcgamesn.com/rust/rust-refund-stats-sales-number...

[nxsynonym]

Steam and Google play are much different services and user bases.

I'd also like to see comparative transaction amounts before you claim "completely false".

[benologist]

About half of Uber's users come directly from the Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ubercab

Do you have any examples of companies suffering unfairly from refunds because consumer protection laws have made them mandatory for a long list of reasons in many countries for decades already.

[nxsynonym]

User downloads != transactions. A user can download the app once and conduct hundreds of transactions.

Refunds still exist, and are honestly easy to request. My point is that there is most likely a very strong product/business decision as to why there isn't a "get my money back now" button in the app.

[ajford]

Exactly! As for the driver calling to ask you to cancel, that should be on him. He should cancel, not the customer. That seems like a scam from his end. Trying to up his numbers, or keep from getting the ding from the cancellation.

[nibnalin]

The problem with this method is that when I tried it, the driver just agreed to come, and I wasted 15-20 minutes to get a ride that had a wait time of 4-5 minutes.

Moreover, with drivers rating riders now, I’m quite sure the driver gave me a poor rating(so did I, but this exercise is just counterproductive really)

[wyldfire]

> Believe it or not, most people will exploit systems to the fullest extent.

I don't believe it. It's hardly most people. But I would grant that it is many people.

[nxsynonym]

Weather it's most or a lot, the noise generated in either case is enough to cause operational issues and bottleneck customer service for people who have genuine needs for refunds.

[dllthomas]

> Believe it or not, most people will exploit systems to the fullest extent.

But "the fullest extent" is the same in each case. Really, the issue is that there's a significant segment of the population that is willing to go to various degrees of effort to exploit a system.