Fabio
Held hostage
I wanted to report an incident that has happened on our pickup from the airport, when your driver ‘JUN’ arrived at our destination. When the driver picked us up at the airport the very first thing he told us, after barely saying hello, was that toll and tips weren’t included and that we had to pay for them (in a very rude and abrupt way). We said ok, as we saw the email highlighting this information. What was very odd was that both the email and the driver mentioned tips before the trip even began. I’m fully aware that in the US there’s this absurd obsession with tipping for everything, however I would assume you would tip someone after they’ve provided you with a good/outstanding service. As we were driving to our destination, the driver did not say a word to us, but showed early signs of his instability, constant beeping, road rage, loud exasperated exhales. As we approached our destination (we weren’t even there yet) he started asking us to pay for the toll (and tips) and we said sure, we can pay by card or contactless, whatever you take. He barely spoke English and was very hard to understand, and I’m sure he couldn’t really understand us either. Once he showed us his screen, the first thing he asked was to select a tip amount, I said we didn’t want to tip as he has been very rude to us from the second we stepped into the car. At this point, things go absolutely crazy. He started shouting very aggressively, saying he would take us back to the airport and we would deal with his company about all this. We tried to explain we would pay for the toll as we agreed and it was ok, and there was no need for all this insanity. As he kept on shouting and driving off from our destination, he kept on shouting more and more, and then more. He told us to shut up and kept saying he will take us back to the airport. At this point, as he was basically keeping us hostage, I even told him I would call the police but he didn’t seem to care. As he kept on shouting and driving like a maniac, we told him we’d pay both for the toll and tip him, at this point we would say anything to get out of the car and away from this very mentally unstable individual. I think he might have been under the influence of either drugs or alcohol. It was almost impossible to communicate with him, as he was shouting non-stop, not listening to us, and barely understanding anything we were saying to him. What seemed to kinda work was to say ‘we give you money now’. He somewhat calmed down and decided to drive us back to our hotel, we even told him we were happy to walk from where we were, as we just wanted to get away from him. We obviously tried to explain we never at any point said we wouldn’t pay for the toll, but it was to no avail as he just wouldn’t/couldn’t understand anything we were saying. The toll fee was only $6.94 and we tipped him the lowest option we saw on the screen, just so we could get out of this situation. We were absolutely shocked about what had just happened and still trying to figure out how it would have benefited him taking us back to the airport, as he would have had to pay the toll again and definitely not get any money at all from us. This was an absolutely disgusting and crazy situation, on what planet does someone treat their customers this way, shouting like a maniac and keeping them hostage, all for what, a $6.94 toll fee and a small tip? Make it make sense… I’m definitely reporting this incident to Expedia, so hopefully they will stop working with you in the future. Of course I will also let the world know about this as much as I can (friends, family, socials, and I’ll even go to the media), so nobody else will have to go through this. I don’t understand how you can let someone so mentally unstable work for you and have the responsibility of driving people around, putting their lives (and other drivers) at risk. At the very least I hope I will be refunded for amount we were forced to pay, he can keep the $6.94 for the toll.


