
“The woman who showed me all the information Uber had said it had to be a mistake because ‘you were on an island where cars can’t go,'” Abreu recounted. The 42-year-old native of the Dominican Republic had recently become a U.S. He said he tried to figure out what else could’ve contributed to his deactivation. I was so dumbfounded, I asked them to please check everything.”

“I left the Uber office pretty unhappy,” Abreu said. But he hadn’t actually sent an appeal, he said. 22Ībreu said the person at the Uber office told him he had sent an appeal, and that it had been insufficient to reopen his account. New: Uber, Lyft, DoorDash win as appeals court upholds California’s Prop. See: ‘If they can win here, they can win anywhere’: The next battleground for Uber and Lyft is Massachusetts, where drivers are fighting for the right to unionize It is mentioned in a proposed ordinance in Chicago, as well as in proposed legislation in Massachusetts - the only state in the nation that conducts an additional background check for drivers in addition to the one carried out by ride-hailing companies, and that also can play a role in deactivations if it deems it necessary. The issue is common and widespread enough that some states, such as New York, New Jersey and Washington, have enacted laws that include provisions on deactivation processes. I shouldn’t just be deactivated.” Uber Black is the company’s premium service - which, among other things, requires drivers to have higher ratings, commercial licenses and newer cars, and lets passengers reserve rides up to 30 days in advance.Ībreu is just one of many drivers who face deactivations by gig companies like Uber at any moment. I bought this expensive car I got a commercial license.

“How could that be?” Abreu said he told Uber.

Yet after seven years of driving for Uber, he found his account deactivated.Ībreu tried to plead his case a few times by going to the company’s office in Saugus, Mass. That somewhere else was on an island unreachable by car, pointing to an obvious mistake, he said. He was then told the photo’s metadata showed him as being somewhere else. One day, Uber asked Abreu to prove he was at the airport, so he sent the company a photo of himself.
