A Man Got A $600 Uber Bill After Getting Stuck In Virginia's Hours-Long Winter Traffic Jam
Even the folks at Uber were shook. 😱
Imagine being stuck in traffic for nine hours with a stranger.
Now imagine getting a $600 bill because of the delay.
A Virginia man got hit with an eye-watering Uber bill this week after he found himself stranded in the middle of a disastrous winter traffic jam on Interstate 95 on Monday.
Andrew Peters was one of the thousands of people who got stuck on I-95 for hours earlier this week after ice and heavy snowfall led to a major pileup and delay on the busy route.
Virginia State Police said they received more than 2,000 service calls during the logjam, which dragged on for over 24 hours. Hundreds of people were forced to spend the night in their cars in the cold, and many of them didn't eat for nearly a whole day, the Associated Press reports.
Peters said he had just flown in from California when he hired an Uber on Monday, and he didn't realize he'd be taking it into a historic traffic jam.
"We hopped right on the highway, and literally the second we got on there we were just stuck," he told Fox.
He and the Uber driver had no food or water in the car, and that made them pretty worried as the hours wore on, he told WTOP.
This is why you should avoid travel This is I-95 city side near Rappahannock River. Heavy snow continues to fall with our crews & emergency responders in same conditions. Additional staffing, equipment & resources are being shifted to #FXBG area to respond to winter storm.pic.twitter.com/bbRVWDkg1A— VDOT Fredericksburg (@VDOT Fredericksburg) 1641230551
Peters said it took nine hours for him to get home, and when he arrived his final Uber bill was $200, which he says he was fine with paying, plus tip.
Then Uber tacked on an additional $400, and Peters' jaw dropped.
"I was like, 'Oh my gosh, that's crazy," he told Fox. "That's a lot of money."
Peters complained about the charge to Uber and in the media, saying that it was particularly frustrating because he couldn't challenge the $400 charge through the app.
Uber gave him a full refund on Wednesday.
An Uber spokesperson told WTOP that the company refunded Peters' ride "after this terrible ordeal and are so glad that he and his Uber driver got home safely."
Thousands of people had an even rougher time with the traffic jam on Monday and Tuesday.
Senator Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's running mate in the 2016 presidential election, said he was in the traffic jam for 27 hours.
"I started my normal 2 hour drive to DC at 1pm yesterday," he tweeted from his car around 8:30 a.m. on January 4. "19 hours later, I'm still not near the Capitol."
A CT family returning in a packed car from Florida walked by in the middle of the night handing out oranges as we were stopped for hours on I-95. Bless them!pic.twitter.com/MrmZ1ZF6JJ— Tim Kaine (@Tim Kaine) 1641308386
The whole traffic jam started when a truck spun out on the highway, causing several other cars to swerve out of the way and collide, state police said. The I-95 quickly backed up, and heavy snow and freezing temperatures only added to the pain, making it hard for rescue crews to get to where they were needed.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or deaths in the traffic jam, but people were pretty mad that it took over a day to clear it all up.