Another day, another scandal for Uber. The New York Times article exposing Uber’s CEO shady practices revealed that Unroll.me gave Uber information about its rival. The company shared Lyft receipts with Kalanick without the knowledge of Unroll.me users. Now, the company chief came out of the shadows with a weak apology to those who felt betrayed #automagic
It seems that Uber’s advantage over other companies might have come by obtaining critical information about its competition. The New York Times article showed that an email management service gave Uber anonymized Lyft receipts in an effort to see where its rival stands in the market. Of course, once the truth was out, customers were appalled by the practice and in turn, forced the CEO to offer an apology.
Only said apology didn’t work as well as Jojo Hedaya might have hoped. The problem was with how Hedaya approached the whole situation, apologizing more for not being extremely explicit with its business model than with betraying the trust of its customers. “We need to do better for our users, and will from this point forward, with clearer messaging on our website, in our app, and in our FAQs. We will also be more clear about our data usage in our on-boarding process“, wrote Hedaya. He also stressed in the end that the company will “never, ever release personal data about you. All data is completely anonymous and related to purchases only. ”
What do you think about his apology? Isn’t he more sorry that people are reacting this way than of what he has done? Especially when he’s trying to throw the blame on its customers: “Sure we have a Terms of Service Agreement and a plain-English Privacy Policy that our users agree they have read and understand before they even sign up, but the reality is most of us –
myself included – don’t take the time to thoroughly review them.”
While that could be true in the case of some people, disguising arguments as an apology is never a good idea. The reactions of the users are proof of that:
What do you think? Be part of the conversation!
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