Urgently Profiteering

[fenderbendr6]

I had a police rotation call last month for a Subaru broke down on I90 10 miles from my shop. The driver, a woman traveling alone had tried to use her roadside assistance to arrange a 38 mile tow to the nearest dealer. After about 2 hours, Urgently told her they could not provide service and suggested she call 911. When I arrived 30 minutes later, the deputy was still on scene because it was nearly dark and the woman was nervous about being alone on the highway.

After I loaded the car and was on the way to the dealership, she explained that Urgently had informed her that she was only covered for a 28 mile tow and made her pay $104.00 over the phone for the extra 10 miles before they would help her. So they charged her over $10.00 per mile for over mileage and then failed to provide service. I wrote a receipt for the tow, and told her she should apply for reimbursement and demand her $104.00 back as well.

 

I was thinking at the time about how they were using this outrageous up front payment as a way to profit from the call, as they would never pay a contractor $10.00 per mile, but it gets better yet. I got a call from the woman's insurance agent the next day, asking why I had double billed this tow. When the woman asked her agent about reimbursement, the agent called Urgently and they told her they had dispatched me and paid me for the call, including the $104.00 additional fee. I set the agent straight about what really happened. Hopefully the woman got her reimbursement.

[Ray Cairns]

That is not hard to believe, hopefully she had the issue taken care of. I have had a few unfavorable experiences with Urgent.ly here in western Pennsylvania. I uninstalled their app after multiple changes in my rate schedule were made(by urgent.ly) without my knowledge. It got to the point where after accepting each job, I would have to call and be put on hold for 20-40 minutes just to verify the price before heading out. Why not just include a final price on the accept/decline screen? Seems like an intentionally deceitful app design... oh well. I still do some work for them however not as frequently and only by phone call. At least I know I can give an accurate quote for services and there are no surprises in the billing department.

[Ray Cairns]

On 9/18/2020 at 11:20 AM, Ray Cairns said:

That is not hard to believe, hopefully she had the issue taken care of. I have had a few unfavorable experiences with Urgent.ly here in western Pennsylvania. I uninstalled their app after multiple changes in my rate schedule were made(by urgent.ly) without my knowledge. It got to the point where after accepting each job, I would have to call and be put on hold for 20-40 minutes just to verify the price before heading out. Why not just include a final price on the accept/decline screen? Seems like an intentionally deceitful app design... oh well. I still do some work for them however not as frequently and only by phone call. At least I know I can give an accurate quote for services and there are no surprises in the billing department.

Update: It seems they've updated their app, now including the actual price on the job offer screen. Glad they are improving  👍  🧐

 

🙉 Now if only service providers could submit bids on jobs via the app instead of a rate sheet... Jobs could be awarded to the best price/ETA ratio 😍

 

Are we asking too much? 

What century are we living in?

Should software developers show up to rural Appalachia and bludgeon me to death?