Most people had at least one teacher who drilled “double check your work” into their brains when they were growing up. However, everybody in Uber’s accounting department either didn’t have people like that in their lives, or they never got the message.
Uber announced Tuesday it accidentally underpaid its drivers in New York “tens of millions” of dollars since 2014, according to Quartz. The company said it plans to repay drivers for the mistake, with the average operator expected to receive roughly $900.
“We are committed to paying every driver every penny they are owed — plus interest — as quickly as possible,” Rachel Holt, Uber’s regional general manager in the United States and Canada said. “We are working hard to regain driver trust, and that means being transparent, sticking to our word, and making the Uber experience better from end to end.”
The mistake reportedly stems from a discrepancy between the way in which Uber’s Terms of Service says it will calculate its service fees, and how it actually was doing so. In an agreement dated to 2014, the company reportedly stated it will calculate the fee based on the net fare — before tax and other fees — but in reality, it was doing so based on the gross fare.
Uber claims it recently discovered the error, which resulted in it keeping roughly 2.6 percent more per fare than it should have, while it was reviewing its Terms of Service.
Thumbnail photo via Flickr/Aurelien Guichard
