‘This receipt is an obvious Photoshop job’: Uber accuses 13Cabs of fake advertising

13CABS has been accused of using “shady marketing tactics” after it posted this photo of a $276 Uber receipt to Facebook.

UBER has been forced into an embarrassing backflip after accusing 13Cabs of Photoshopping a $276 receipt promoted on social media as part of the taxi company’s “no surge” advertising campaign.

13Cabs posted the image of the receipt to its Facebook page on Friday, ostensibly in an attempt to find its owner to gift them a taxi voucher.

“Do you know this person!?” the post said.

“If so, we want to gift them a $400 13CABS voucher to make up for being surged nearly 4x this morning for a trip from the CBD to the Airport by a certain ‘Ride Share’ company.

“This Driver receipt came across our desk and we’re looking for the other half — so if you can prove you were the Passenger for this ride, get in touch and we’ll help make a rainy day a little brighter. #13CABS #NoSurge”

Uber at first angrily hit back, slamming the receipt as “an obvious Photoshop job”.

“It is missing the booking fee line item, which is standard on normal Uber receipts,” a spokesman said. “The base fare of $91.55 can only be accurate if was a three-plus hour trip to the airport given our time and distance rates on UberX.”

But in a subsequent statement on Monday, Uber conceded the receipt — for a trip in an UberXL, which transports up to six passengers — was real, while still maintaining 13Cabs had lied in the ad by claiming it was from the storms.

“After further investigation, we now believe this was an old XL receipt from several weeks ago that was repurposed to falsely claim it was a trip that occurred during Friday’s storm,” the spokesman said.

In response to Facebook commenters calling fake, 13Cabs said “to the best of our knowledge” it hadn’t been Photoshopped and encouraged people to “Google it a bit” if they didn’t believe it could happen.

“To be 100 per cent honest our small team felt your exact same disbelief that this must be fake, but we’ve verified the sources and this is in fact correct,” the company wrote.

“Which is why we’ve taken it upon ourselves to act and try identify this poor soul who has been slugged with this fare. So please if you happen to know anyone that was recently affected by surge pricing during yesterday’s storms (01/12) please point them our way.”

Many were still not convinced, with one person describing the post as “blatantly fake” and the “last gasp of a dying industry”, and another accusing 13Cabs of “resorting to some shady marketing tactics”.

“I’d rather pay the 4x surge and go home in a clean modern car with a friendly driver that knows where he’s going rather than a s***box 13Cabs rubber-coated stinking taxi with the driver constantly mumbling into his earpiece,” one commenter wrote.

“Uber is the best thing to happen to the industry, you brought it on yourselves for taking the p*** out of us for years.”

In a statement, a 13Cabs spokesman said the receipt was “provided by a ride share driver late on Friday”. “The receipt shows what the driver earnt, and demonstrates the price surge was 3.9 times the basic fare,” he said. “We have no reason to believe the receipt is anything but authentic.”

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Originally published as ‘This receipt is an obvious Photoshop job’: Uber accuses 13Cabs of fake advertising