A California couple celebrating their five-year wedding anniversary charged $30,000 for an Uber ride
A California couple celebrating their fifth anniversary with a trip to Guatemala was wrongly charged $30,000 after taking an Uber ride when the app mistakenly converted local currency to dollars.
Douglas Ordonez and Dominique Adams of Riverside were left without money for the rest of their trip after their bank accounts overdrawn with tens of thousands of dollars.
The error appeared to have occurred when Uber used the couple’s debit card for ₡30,000 Costa Rican colones (about $55 dollars) — but instead processed the taxi ride for $30,000.
Adams, who was in Costa Rica, took an Uber to the airport to catch a flight to Guatemala, where she planned to meet her husband for a romantic celebration.
“I took an Uber, everything was fine, I didn’t think twice about it,” Adams shared KTLAuntil she received a call from her concerned husband who saw their joint bank account completely empty after his own card was declined.
Douglas Ordonez and Dominique Adams can be seen on their anniversary trip to Guatemala
Dominique Adams and Douglas Ordonez celebrating their fifth anniversary in Guatemala have been wrongly charged $30,000 for an Uber ride due to a currency conversion error
The error occurred when Uber processed the couple’s debit card transaction for $30,000 instead of the target ₡30,000 Costa Rican Colones (approximately $55 USD)
“He checked our bank account and saw the debit of almost $30,000, and we were both like, ‘What the hell? What are we supposed to do?'”
“The bank blamed Uber and Uber blamed the bank,” Adams said. “I took the Uber, everything was fine, I got the receipt by email and the next morning we both realized I was actually supposed to pay in US dollars.”
“I was told there was not enough funds and I knew we had money in the account so I tried again and he also said the same thing. Then I checked my bank account and that’s when I saw the $30,000 charge,” Ordonez told Insider.
The couple say they spent their vacation with what little money they had on them. Adams posted a clip about the incident on TikTok the next day.
“We were both distraught, stuck in limbo and feeling like there was nothing we could do,” she added. We constantly called the bank asking for an update, and then we were blamed for the error because we called our bank to give them a trip notice, the bank said, “That allowed the charges to go through,” Adams said.
Adams posted a clip about the incident on TikTok the next day telling her story
Customer service proved to be of no use with seemingly AI-generated help
The California couple ran out of money for their trip after their bank account was emptied
The pair say they will never use Uber again and will make sure they use a credit card instead of a debit card
Adams took to TikTok to document her ordeal
“I can’t believe they processed a payment of this amount. Failed security measures and negligence,” she added.
The couple claims their bank, Altura Credit Union, was equally useless in helping them.
It took another four days before the $29,994.33 charge was finally reversed.
“To this day, Uber has not contacted us. They didn’t email us back. Before this was resolved, they marked this case as resolved in their app. They were very negligent,” Adams said.
Uber has since responded in a statement about the couple’s ordeal: “At Uber, we take every report seriously. As soon as we received the user’s report, our support team immediately addressed the issue and released the authorization hold that was applied incorrectly due to a bank error in Dollars and not Colones. However, the refund processing time depends on each bank’s policy.’
The couple say they will never use Uber again and suggest that fellow travelers use a credit card on their account instead of using a debit card.
“I will probably never use Uber again just knowing that their customer service is really terrible,” Adams said.