Passenger who wanted to take an Uber from Brixton to Croydon is charged £470 after typing in Bristol by mistake

Uber trip: The journey from Tulse Hill to Croydon via Bristol cost £467.52
Twitter / @gracekelly_97
Hatty Collier27 February 2017

A minicab passenger who wanted to book a car to take him from Croydon to Brixton was taken on a 140-mile detour after mistakenly typing Bristol as his destination.

The man was charged almost £470 for his Uber journey home to south London after he nodded off in the back.

The rider, named Aaron, was attempting to travel the short two-and-a-half-mile distance from Tulse Hill to Croydon in the early hours of Sunday morning.

But he ended up on a five-hour, 140-mile detour when he apparently typed in the wrong destination - an address in Bristol - shortly after 3am before falling asleep.

After finding himself in Bristol at 6am, the driver offered to take him back to London and updated his destination to Croydon, a spokeswoman for the minicab booking app said.

The total cost of the journey was £467.52.

The Twitter post has been shared thousands of times

A screen grab showing a map of the journey and a text message exchange with a friend uploaded to Twitter has been shared and retweeted thousands of times.

The Uber passenger ended up giving his driver a one-star rating.

The minicab booking app said the passenger would be offered a refund as a gesture of goodwill as it was “clearly an unfortunate mistake”.

A spokeswoman said: “We’ve tried to contact the rider, but our systems show they set an address in Bristol as their destination.

“When they arrived and it became clear this was an error, the driver returned to London to drop them off in Croydon.

“This was clearly an unfortunate mistake so as a gesture of goodwill we would like to offer the rider a refund.”

Do you know who the passenger is? Contact our news desk on 0203 615 2500 or news@standard.co.uk.

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