A Maryland woman was left stranded without her luggage after requesting a ride home from the airport through Uber.
After a long international flight into Dulles International Airport, Kristen Webb of Gaithersburg requested a ride from the Uber app, and a driver arrived within minutes.
“The driver pulls up, gets out of the car and says my name, so I’m pretty confident he was the driver,” Webb said.
But just after the start of the trip, the driver told her she wasn’t connected to his car. He pulled into a vacant lot about two miles from the airport and asked Webb for her phone.
“He’s doing something with my phone, and I get frustrated, also realizing I’m in a place where there were no people at the time, and said this isn’t working, let me get another driver,” Webb said.
She got out, and the driver took off.
“He just drove off with my luggage in the trunk,” she said.
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Despite numerous attempts to contact him through the app, the driver never returned.
Webb reported it to police at Dulles and tried to report it to Uber.
“I was trying to get a hold of Uber and I found Uber has a very difficult system to work with,” she said.
After filing her complaint, she saw it passed along several times.
“I realized pretty quickly this would not get cleared up," she said.
No one from Uber called Webb until after she sought the help of NBC4 Responds.
Uber identified the driver, but he didn't appear anywhere on Webb’s history on the Uber app, which is supposed to allow you to "see your driver's picture and vehicle details."
“I still think they have a very serious security issue that they haven't really tried to figure out,” Webb said.
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority said it is actively investigating the incident.
Uber said it is assisting the police investigation and the driver has been blocked from the app. Uber said it is also investigating why the driver doesn’t appear in Webb’s history.
She filed a claim with Uber's insurance company, which requested she sign a settlement agreement prohibiting her from talking any further about her case.
Webb never got an answer about the theft of her luggage, but she did sign the agreement and was compensated.
