Uber threatened to oust a delivery driver after she opened a suspicious envelope she picked up for the rideshare app and discovered it contained illegal drugs, which she then handed over to police.
To make matters worse, it appears the disgruntled drug couriers left a one-star review on the driver’s account for failing to complete the delivery on February 16.
The Brisbane driver, who will only be identified as ‘Emma’, told Daily Mail Australia that after handing over the drugs to police and explaining the situation to Uber, she was warned about ‘tampering’ with the delivery.
Uber driver ‘Emma’ said the ride-sharing giant warned her about opening a package she correctly suspected contained illegal drugs
“I thought their response would be, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe our service was being used for potentially illegal activity, we need to close that sender and give all their details to the police,'” Emma told Daily Mail Australia.
“No, they just turned around and said if anyone tells us again that you tampered with their package, we will restrict your account.
“This incident really scared me and their reaction scared me.”
Emma’s nasty ordeal started on a Friday evening when she turned up at an address to receive a package.
“The Uber app doesn’t tell you what kind of package it is,” Emma said.
Uber’s text message stated that if there were similar messages in the future where Emma opened packages, she would not be able to deliver goods
‘It just says that the package must be picked up at this address. I’ve delivered a package before and it was a birthday cake.’
She knocked on the door of the address, but the people inside knew nothing about the intended delivery.
“I was walking back to my car and this guy came from another address and he said, ‘Are you Uber?’” Emma said.
The man explained that he didn’t give Uber the address so he didn’t know how it got mixed up.
“He gave me a sealed white envelope with nothing written on it,” Emma said.
“I thought it might be cash or documents, so I just put it on the front seat and started driving.”
Her suspicions were not aroused by the wrong address, which Emma says “happens all the time,” but by the mysterious envelope.
Emma filled out a form to explain why she couldn’t deliver the package, but received no response from Uber
“I reached out and felt the package and I thought, ‘That doesn’t feel like cash or documents,’” Emma said.
“I stopped and held it up to the light to look through it so I didn’t have to open it.
‘It felt suspiciousd I thought, “I don’t want to be part of committing a crime.”
“So I opened it very carefully, thinking that if I’m wrong and it’s not something suspicious, I’ll just seal it up and we’ll be fine.
“There was something rolled up in toilet paper and it was a small ziplock bag with white crystals.
Emma was deeply shocked by the discovery.
“I’m such a nerd,” she said.
“I’ve never been around drugs of any kind before, so I wrapped it back up, put it in the envelope and sealed it.
‘I was still shaking when I handed the delivery to the police. I didn’t want it near me. I didn’t even want to touch the envelope.’
Emma also sent a detailed explanation of what happened during the aborted drug run
While calling triple-0 to find the nearest police station, Emma worried about being tracked via the Uber app by the sender and intended recipient of the package.
“I was afraid they would follow me if I stayed there too long or went to a police station,” Emma said.
“I turned off my phone so the sender and recipient couldn’t track me.”
She drove to the nearest police station, where she said the officers, who had been notified of her arrival in advance by the Triple O operator, were fantastic.
However, her future client harassed her at this stage.
“I opened my phone and the recipient messaged me through my Uber app,” she said.
‘He was like “Hey, where are you?” and “Are you on your way?”
“He tried to call me too, but it’s through an Uber call management thing.”
To prevent the drug courier from messaging her, Emma messaged Uber Support using their form template to explain why the package had not been delivered.
Emma said Uber didn’t respond to that message, but later that evening they sent a text asking why she hadn’t delivered the package and she had to explain the situation again.
It is the second reported incident of an Uber driver being used to transport illegal drugs
Uber promised that a member of their community operations team would call her about the incident.
However, because Emma was busy, she was unable to answer the call, but still managed to communicate with the employee via text message.
The employee, identified as “Jerome,” noted that according to Uber’s community guidelines, “delivery personnel are expected to deliver packages to their intended destination” and that it was against those guidelines to “open or tamper with the package” .
He said that in future, if Emma thought she was transporting an illegal item, she should simply hand it over to the nearest police station.
“Please note that we regularly conduct reviews of users of the app,” Jerome’s text read.
“If we continue to receive similar feedback indicating that a package has been inappropriately discarded, opened or tampered with, this may result in limiting your access to package delivery requests on the driver app.”
After receiving this unexpected message, Emma immediately decided to close her account.
In response to the standard question about why she left, Emma said she was “shocked by the way you reprimanded me when this happened, and I thought it was quite an insulting response.”
Last April, a Sydney Uber driver, who wanted to be known only as Jess, told media she had opened a suspicious delivery package and discovered crystal meth.
In revenge, disgruntled drug dealer Jess left a one-star review, which Uber only decided to remove after the incident attracted media attention.
The same seems to have happened to Emma with a new one-star review on her account, although it doesn’t provide any feedback to identify who it’s from.
Despite Uber’s insistence that she should not have opened the package, Emma said the police officer told her she had done the right thing.
“If I hadn’t opened it and those guys got caught with drugs, I would have been aiding and abetting,” she said.
‘I might have been charged.
‘If it hadn’t been something dodgy, I would have just completed the delivery and apologized to the recipient.
‘It’s not like I opened it because I thought, “This looks nice.”‘
An Uber spokesperson said that “if a delivery person suspects a package is suspicious, they should never open the package and should immediately report it to Uber and the police.”
“Any illegal activity while using the Uber app is unacceptable and may result in immediate loss of access to the Uber app,” the spokesperson said.
‘When shipping goods, passengers must agree immediately before request that they will not ship prohibited or illegal items, including drugs.
“Our dedicated Law Enforcement Response Team, which includes former Australian police officers, is also available to assist police in their investigations into such matters.”
Queensland Police said they could not comment on drug-related matters.