A tourist in Costa Rica ran into a shocking scam. “I was shocked,” Dominique Adams, who was on vacation in the country, told Newsweek when she discovered that Uber had charged $30,000 to her card for a ride from her hotel to the airport.
A tourist from the States traveled to Costa Rica to meet her husband to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary in Guatemala. But the joyful event turned out to be overshadowed – after checking her recent transactions, the American woman realized that she was mistakenly charged in US dollars, and not in the local currency because the fee of 30,000 local colones corresponds to approximately $55.
“I was impressed. My heart froze. But what was even worse was that at first both Uber and its bank, Altura Credit Union, seemed to be of little help. I was worried that I wouldn’t get my money back,” the tourist complained. What’s more, she said, the bank “accused” her of posting the trip to her account, allegedly allowing the withdrawal to bypass security, when such a withdrawal would normally be considered fraudulent. The bank also told her that she needed to contact Uber to cancel the payment, but she said that proved to be very difficult. “There was almost no customer service, I only received pre-generated messages,” the tourist said.
As a result, tourists have very little money left for a memorable trip. “We could not access our money for 4 days. We barely scraped by and took out a little cash to feed ourselves and for transport, but our vacation was essentially postponed,” the tourist added.
The scandal in social networks, which was raised by tourists, helped them. Four days later, instead of the promised seven, the bank sorted it out and returned the money. However, tourists did not hear any apologies or explanations from Uber. According to her, the bank has apologized, but “still cannot indicate a valid reason why the withdrawal of funds bypassed all security measures.”