The Mystery Of Why Uber Gave Me 77 Free Rides

For about two and a half years, Uber kept sending me free ride credits. I’d open my email and find I’ve been credited $15 to spend on a ride, or $20 towards a ride. It was all completely legit, and was actually sent to me from Uber. I just didn’t know why.

And then suddenly one day, they stopped sending me these ride credits. I counted my receipts and figured out that I got 77 rides for free, averaging one every couple weeks.

The whole time they kept coming, I didn’t question it. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? But once they stopped, I put on my detective hat and did a little digging. I’m pretty sure I solved the mystery of why they came to begin with, and why they stopped. Follow along and see if you can figure it out before I did.

When I joined Uber in 2011, they let you create your own referral code. It could be anything you wanted as long as it started with the word “UBER.” So I just added my initials to it and made the code UBERDF. I figured that would be easy for me to remember. Uber was still new enough that I had friends who were signing up, so I might have given out my code to a couple people, but then I pretty much forgot about it.

Then in late 2013, the trickle of free rides started.

I’d get an email saying I earned between $10 and $20 in credit because someone took their first ride using my referral code.

At first I assumed someone I gave my code to back in 2011 finally used it. Then when more free rides came in, I wondered if perhaps my code was on some list of Uber referral codes that may have been circulating. I didn’t really think more about it. I just accumulated my free rides in my account, ready to use when I needed them. It was great. Sometimes I even forced myself to use them instead of public transportation, since they would eventually expire otherwise.

Of course, I did wonder what was going on. Maybe this was happening to other people. So I searched for similar stories. The closest thing I found was an article about a guy who placed online ads for Uber using his own referral code and got hundreds of free rides that way. Uber found out about his scheme and took them away. So I was glad that my trickle of free rides was a slow drip that was unlikely to get their attention.

And then, around January of 2016, they suddenly stopped. At their peak I was getting 2-3 free rides a week. And then nothing. I mean, I couldn’t be too upset that now I had to pay for something everyone else paid for all along, but I was curious what happened. And since I wasn’t getting any more free rides anyway, I was no longer afraid to look into it.

So I started at the source. I looked again at the emails I received giving me free credits.

Each email told me that I was getting a free ride because my “friend” rode with Uber. But it didn’t say who the “friend” was. However, I discovered that if I logged into Uber’s website, I could see the first name of the person that took the ride that earned me each credit. They had names like Miguel, Juan, Antonio, Gabriela, Alejandro, Rosa Maria, and so on. They were all Spanish names. That was a big clue. But what did it tell me?

Maybe my code was on a list that circulated mainly on Spanish websites? That seemed unlikely. So I did what I probably should have done to begin with: I Googled “UBERDF”. And that’s when I discovered that Uber in Mexico City was sometimes referred to as “Uber DF”.

It turns out that Mexico City wasn’t called Mexico City in Mexico. They called it the Federal District, or in Spanish, the Distrito Federal. DF. Uber in Mexico City launched in late 2013, around the time my free rides started. So I assume that a lot of people signing up for Uber there simply tried the code UBERDF to see if it worked. And lo and behold, it did! In fact, when Uber launched in Mexico City their actual promo code was DFLAUNCH, so UBERDF was not that wild a guess.

My conclusion is that, given the large number of people in Mexico City, some of those people simply guessed that UBERDF might be valid, and I accidentally reaped the benefit.

So what happened in January 2016 that caused the well to dry up? Something that convinced me my theory is correct. The timing is just too coincidental otherwise.

In January, 2016, Mexico City officially changed its name from Distrito Federal to Mexico City (or in Spanish, Ciudad de Mexico — or CDMX for short). People stopped trying the code UBERDF. And that was the end of my free ride.

And perhaps it was the beginning of a similar mystery for whoever had the referral code UBERCDMX.

Afterthought: I should have made my referral code UBERNYC, and then maybe I’d still be getting free rides.

And that’s it for another newsletter! Thank you as always for reading. See you next time!

Actually, wait. Before I go. Anyone here an Apple Watch user? Do you play games on your Apple Watch? Care to beta test a game for Apple Watch? Try it out and let me know how it works for you.

David