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by chrishepner 4594 days ago
I am permanently banned from Uber.

About 6 months ago, I noticed I was unable to log in to my account. Resetting the password did nothing, so I sent an email to the local support address. Almost two weeks later, I finally get the following reply:

  I looked into this situation and it appears that this 
  device has been used on 25 different Uber accounts, which 
  is a major red flag for us. We will not be reactivating 
  your account.
  Uber Love,
  Sam
I have one of those "firewall" apps on my rooted Android phone that lets you restrict individual permissions for a given application. By default, I prevent applications from transmitting the IMEI. I assume at least 24 other people have done the same thing.

I sent an email explaining the issue, and they eventually emailed me back saying they would "check in with their engineering team and circle back soon." In May. My subsequent emails have been ignored. There is, as far as I can tell, no way to escalate the issue.

I used to really like Uber, but they sure did their best to keep me from using it.
3 comments
charleslmunger 4594 days ago
What's the name of the firewall app you use? It sounds like it's returning a noop string ("000000000000000" or something) from getDeviceId(), which is not what that method is allowed to return. If you actually read the docs: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/telephony/Te...

"Returns the unique device ID, for example, the IMEI for GSM and the MEID or ESN for CDMA phones. Return null if device ID is not available."

If it's returning a non unique string, it's breaking that contract, and it's the firewall app's fault, not Uber's.

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dbloom 4594 days ago
Why not just use Uber via http://m.uber.com, or via SMS? (see http://support.uber.com/entries/22340336-Requesting-a-Ride )
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chrishepner 4594 days ago
Because my entire account is banned, not just the device. If it were just the device, it wouldn't have been a problem - I could've just turned off the IMEI blocker and it would've been fine. Sadly, that's not the case!
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jrockway 4594 days ago
If they don't know your real IMEI, how can they permanently ban you? They don't ask for a copy of your social security card or anything.

I can see why you might want to permanently ban them, though. Blaming you for a bug in their software.

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charleslmunger 4594 days ago
It is absolutely NOT a bug in their code. The relevant API is here: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/telephony/Te...

If that firewall app is making those methods return anything other than null or a truly unique ID, then they are not a compatible android device, and someone using such a device is not in any position to complain when apps behave incorrectly.

It's worth mentioning that it's not required for the return value of those methods to be the IMEI, but it is required to be either unique or null.

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chrishepner 4594 days ago
They don't ask for a copy of your social security card, no, but I have to have a cellphone tied to my account and I only have one of those.
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