Couple Celebrating Wedding Anniversary Mistakenly Hit With Nearly $30,000 Uber Bill

A California couple’s trip to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary in Guatemala became a nightmare after being slammed with a whopping $30,000 bill for one Uber ride.

Dominique Adams told local CW affiliate KTLA-TV that the pricey ordeal went down after she took a 30-minute ride in an Uber to an airport in Costa Rica so that she could fly to meet her husband, Douglas Ordonez, in Guatemala.

“I took an Uber, everything was fine, I didn’t think twice about it,” Adams told KTLA.

But after she arrived at the airport, she said Ordonez, who had been traveling to Guatemala from the United States, called to tell her that his credit card had been declined.

“He checked our bank account and saw the almost $30,000 charge, and we both were like, ‘What the hell? What do we even do?’” Adams said.

That’s when they discovered that Adams’ ride, which should have been a charge of nearly 30,000 Costa Rican Colones (just over $55), was processed as a staggering $30,000 charge.

“Obviously, I knew that it was a mistake, but it’s still shocking when you see that on your account,” Adams told Insider.

The couple, who had planned to renew their vows on the trip, was stranded in a foreign country.

“The bank was blaming Uber, and Uber was blaming the bank,” Adams told KTLA of their experience trying to resolve the issue.

The pair said they “felt helpless” after being subsequently stuck in Guatemala without funds for four days while waiting for the charge to be reversed. Adams said there was “nothing we could do.”

“We were constantly calling the bank asking for an update, and that’s when we were blamed for the mistake because we called our bank to give them a travel notice, the bank said, ‘That’s what allowed the charge to go through,’” added Adams.

The couple’s bank, Altura Credit Union, reportedly apologized, per Newsweek; however, Adams told the news outlet that “the bank still could not provide a valid reason why the charge bypassed all security measures and policy.”

She told Newsweek, “We weren’t able to access any of our money for four days. We pulled out a little bit of cash to barely get us by for boat rides and transportation, but besides that, our vacation was essentially put on hold.”

Adams posted a TikTok video documenting her hellish experience on June 29, which has since gone viral, raking up more than 9 million views.

Adams accused Uber of being “very negligent” in the incident, telling KTLA that the rideshare company never reached out to them after the incident.

“They haven’t emailed us back. Before this was resolved, they marked this case as resolved in their app,” Adams explained.

An Uber spokesman told KTLA in a statement: “At Uber, we take every report seriously. As soon as we received the user’s report, our support team promptly addressed the issue and released the authorization hold mistakenly applied due to a bank error in Dollars and not in Colones. However, the time it takes for the refund to be processed depends on each bank’s policies.”

After the unforeseen mishap, Adams said she recommends that travelers “use a credit card rather than a debit card” abroad.

“I should’ve taken my own advice,” she added.

The couple told KTLA they will “probably never use Uber ever again” after their troubled experience.

Uber nor Altura Credit Union immediately responded to HuffPost’s request for comment.