A couple from California who were celebrating their five year anniversary with a trip to Guatemala were mistakenly charged $30,000 after taking an Uber ride when the app wrongly converted local currency into dollars.
Douglas Ordonez and Dominique Adams from Riverside were left without any money for the rest of their trip after their bank account was overdrawn by tens of thousands of dollars.
The mistake appeared to have occurred when Uber ran the couple’s debit card for ₡30,000 Costa Rican Colones (about $55 U.S. dollars) – but instead processed the taxi journey for $30,000.
Adams, who was in Costa Rica, was taking an Uber to the airport to catch a flight to Guatemala where she had planned to meet her husband for a romantic celebration.
‘I took an Uber, everything was fine, I didn’t think twice about it,’ Adams told KTLA, until she received a call from her concerned husband who saw their joint bank account had been completely drained after his own card was declined.
Dominique Adams and Douglas Ordonez celebrating their five-year anniversary in Guatemala were mistakenly 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 intended ₡30,000 Costa Rican Colones (about $55 USD)
‘He checked our bank account and saw the almost $30,000 charge, and we both were like “What the hell? What do we even do?”‘
‘The bank was blaming Uber, and Uber was blaming the bank,’ Adams said. ‘I took the Uber, everything was fine, I got the receipt emailed to me, and then that next morning is when we both realized that I was actually charged in US dollars.’
‘I got the notice of insufficient funds, and I knew we had money in the account, so I tried it again, and it said the same thing too. 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 using whatever little cash they had on them. Adams posted a clip about the incident on TikTok the following day.
‘We were both distraught, stuck in limbo, feeling like there’s nothing we could do,’ she added. We were constantly calling the bank asking for an update, and that’s when we were blamed for the mistake because we called our bank to give them a travel notice, the bank said “That’s what allowed the charge to go through,”‘ Adams said.
Adams posted a clip about the incident on TikTok the following day recounting her tale
Customer service appeared to be of no use whatsoever with help seemingly AI generated
The California couple found themselves without any money for their trip after their bank account was drained
The couple say they will never use Uber again and make sure to use a credit card rather than debit
Adams took to TikTok to document her ordeal
‘Cannot believe they allowed a payment of this amount to process. Failed security measures and negligence,’ she added.
The couple claim their bank, Altura Credit Union, was equally useless in assisting them.
It took a further four days before the charge for $29,994.33 was finally reversed.
‘To this day, Uber hasn’t contacted us. They haven’t emailed 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 promptly addressed the issue and released the authorization hold mistakenly applied due to a bank error in Dollars and not in Colones. However, the time it takes for the refund to be processed depends on each bank’s policies.’
The couple say that they will never use Uber again and suggest fellow travelers use a credit card on their accounts rather than debit.
‘I will probably never use Uber ever again just knowing that their customer service is really horrible,’ Adams said.
