An Uber customer was hit with a huge $16,000 bill for her 7-mile nightmare journey across New York.
Jaime Hessel said her driver had been on his phone, cut across lanes, and even driven down a bus lane during the 35 minute 'trip from hell' from her East Williamsburg apartment to Midtown East.
So she was stunned to receive a message from the cab-hailing app telling her she owed them thousands of dollars for the trip across boroughs.
Horrified: Jaimie Hessel says Uber billed her $16,000 for a 35-minute 'car ride from hell' - and says she's never going to trust the cab-hailing service again
The journey began on March 28 when Ms Hessel decided to call an UberX car to get to a fundraising pub crawl for cancer due to start at 1pm.
But alarms bells were triggered as soon as she got in the car to find the driver appeared distracted.
After sitting in the vehicle for around five minutes before setting off, he soon began to ignore the GPS, taking a longer and more complicated route, according to Ms Hessel.
To the passenger's terror, instead of paying his full attention to the road, the driver was also taking phone calls and checking his voicemail during the trip.
Ms Hessel claims that the car dangerously cut across lanes of traffic on several occasions and was even driven down a bus lane until she demanded to be let out early.
'I had him drop me off a block away from the bar because I didn't want to be in the car anymore. I felt very unsafe.'
But the nightmare trip was far from over.
After receiving her initial bill of $56.40, the passenger immediate e-mailed Uber Support to complain she had been overcharged and that the driver had unnecessarily extended the ride.
Within a few days, the Uber resp had written back to inform Ms Hessel the company agreed the journey was 'inefficient' and she would get a refund of $15.
But the following morning, she received a bizarre email which stated she owed Uber more than $16,000 - with a refund of $4,000. Her total, in the end, came to $12,251.49.
'It freaked me out,' she said 'I have bad eye sight and I thought maybe I wasn't reading it correctly.'
The panicked Ms Hessel quickly got in touch with the company again to inform them of their
They say it was a clerical error and that she was never actually charged the $16,000.
She added it was
