Uber driver by mistake with sleeping children, says Mom (exclusive)

Julia Viscomi, a mother of two children in Toronto, becomes a bit emotional when he recalled at the moment an Uber driver wrongly drove with his 5-year-old daughter.

Amelia slept in the back seat on her SUV when the driver took off. The girl was later found safe and undamaged 80 minutes later, but the experience continues to remove her mother.

“I have told the story hundreds of times and I still cry,” Viscomi, 38, recently tells the people about March 10 -incident. “Some things are very lively. It is a very surreal thing to think she was there with me and then gone for a second.”

However, Viscomi’s question is not so much with the driver as with Uber, which she claims refused to call the driver at that time due to privacy problems. She is now fighting the company for a financial solution and a change in her emergency policy.

The situation began when Viscomi, her 7-year-old son, Amelia, along with Viscomi’s boyfriend and his two young children, left a Toronto Raptors game. The group returned to find Viscomi’s partner’s car with a flat tire, so they paid tribute to an Uber. Sometime during the 30-minute trip, Viscomi noticed that her daughter had fallen asleep.

When the group arrived at Uber to her partner’s home, Viscomi says that she highly communicated with her boyfriend, who has poor hearing in one of her ears, about the group’s starting plan from SUV. She assumed that the driver had heard what was being discussed.

“I couldn’t come to my daughter in the rear row until everyone in front of her had already cleared the vehicle,” explains Viscomi. “The plan was that when (my boyfriend) was ready to get the kids out, I would be finished (open) the garage and I would meet him back on the vehicle.”

“We thought we would have it timed so I would be right there when he was done with the children, and then I will get Amelia,” she continues. “Unfortunately I must have been seconds too late because (the driver) had taken off with her.”

Her first thought was that the driver would realize his mistake and return. But then she remembered the driver and said he was on his way to his home, which was 20 miles away.

Her boyfriend first called the driver’s number via the Uber app, but could not get through. He then contacted Uber’s customer support.

“He explains the situation and says, ‘Call the driver’, reminiscent of Viscomi.” They say to him: “We don’t call the drivers. It’s against our policy.”

Viscomi and her partner, frustrated by the rope’s alleged refusal and called the police, who also contacted Uber. They also received the same explanation, she claims. “I remember one of the officers shook their heads and said,“ I’m not surprised. Uber is extremely difficult to handle, ”says Viscomi.

About 80 minutes after SUV drove, police told Viscomi that her daughter had been found.

In a statement on April 18, which was shared with People, a representative wrote in the Toronto Polist service: “Officier contacted the driver and tracked him in Bloor Street West and Dundas Street West area. The driver was not aware that the child was still in the vehicle. When officers arrived, the child was found in good health.”

When she arrived at Amelia’s place with the police, Viscomi saw her daughter in an ambulance that was medically evaluated. “As soon as I saw her I jumped out of the car and ran to her. I didn’t see if the driver was there or if his vehicle was there. I just wanted to come to my daughter.”

The Toronto Police told People that there have been no arrests or charges in connection with the incident.

The day after the incident, Viscomi says that her boyfriend received an e -mail that contained a $ 10 credit from Uber. “I was just so incredibly offended,” she says. “This was not a handbag left. It was a child’s life.”

Viscomi later called Uber and asked to talk to a supervisor; She says she was told that Uber did not have a supervisor and that they could not give her contact information for the company’s San Francisco head office.

Her e -mail messages to Uber’s managers and customer support bounced back, so she sent a priority letter overnight to Uber’s Toronto office. Several hours later, she received a phone call from an Uber Priority Support representative who offered to send Viscomi’s letter to the company’s legal department.

After eight days, Viscomi received a call from Uber’s insurer, who said it would review the case. During three conversations with the insurer, says Viscomi, they talked about an economic solution and a change in emergency situations. “The second conversation was that they offered a super low financial compensation but zero mention of any policy changes,” she says.

In a statement from April 21 to People, a spokesman for Uber wrote: “We realize how worrying this situation was for the family involved and are grateful that the child was safely reunited with his parent. We immediately began to review the details about this incident to identify opportunities to improve our processes and support systems.”

After five weeks trying to solve the matter with Uber, Viscomi took to Facebook and shared what happened. Her situation was noticed by the Toronto City Council Mike Colle, who introduced a movement – who later passed – which required Rideshare services to provide emergency contact information to customers and law enforcement.

Viscomi says she has not heard from Uber since her case was published. “The compensation is for me and my daughter,” she says. “The political change is for everyone. This may not happen again. It was completely preventive.”

Since the incident, Viscomi says that her daughter has mostly been her former self, but “if we are ever in a moderately crowded area, she will suddenly look left and right. If she can’t see me in her peripheral vision, she will look to the left and be like,” Mom, you scared me. I didn’t know where you were. “So there is some anxiety there for her.”

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At the same time, the memory of the 80 minutes when she wondered about her daughter’s place of residence is still prevalent.

“I honestly didn’t think I would see her again,” she says. “And everything could have been resolved with a simple phone call.”