Customer Service Statistics on Uber Rapes Are Leaked

Internal screenshots provided to BuzzFeed by a former Uber customer service representative show the results of queries for the terms rape and sexual assault conducted on Uber’s customer support portal.

In one screenshot, a search for “sexual assault” returns 6,160 customer support tickets. A search for “rape” returns 5,827 individual tickets. Other variations of the terms yield similarly high returns: A search for “assaulted” shows 3,524 tickets, while “sexually assaulted” returns 382 results.

The data captured spans December 2012 through August 2015.

The ride-sharing firm says the data shown in the images is not an accurate representation of assault complaints.  

Uber officials told BuzzFeed that of the thousands of tickets returned for the keyword “rape,” five meet Uber’s standard of an actual incident.

Uber declined to further define this standard or disclose its methodology. (It’s worth noting these are incidents in its customer service system, not an accounting of all incidents. The number is neither comprehensive nor inclusive).

Uber says that the company received 170 claims of sexual assault directly related to an Uber ride.

After Uber learned of BuzzFeed’s investigation, the company began contacting customer service representatives who had searched the database for the terms rape and sexual assault, apparently in a hunt for the leaker.

Additional screenshots detail the way Uber’s Incident Response Teams are instructed to handle customer support tickets, which range in severity from Level 1 to Level 4.

Nonconsensual sexual contact (or attempts to commit same) fall under Level 3, and are supposed to prompt an investigation.

According to Uber’s internal documentation, if an investigation into nonconsensual sexual contact proves inconclusive, a driver receives a “Final Warning”; only if the investigation is conclusive or if the driver receives a second inconclusive strike is he or she deactivated.

Screenshots from Uber’s “Support Logic and Escalations” database section also show that customer service reps handling nonconsensual sexual contact cases should be mindful of media and law enforcement interest when deciding to escalate cases to higher-ranking employees. “Determine LE/media interest and have Comms/LERT monitor if risk confirmed,” one screenshot reads.