02:09
Driver takes revenge on woman who reneges on phone-return deal
Woman in China refuses to pay ride-hail driver agreed US$2.8 for return of left-behind phone, suffers instant karma
- Woman passenger calls driver, asks him to return phone to drop-off point
- Driver heads to police station 18km away with phone, costing woman more
A woman who refused to pay her ride-hailing driver an agreed 20 yuan (US$2.8) for the return of her left-behind phone got immediate karma after the driver sped off to a police station 18km away.
The driver, surnamed Chen, from Guangdong province in southeastern China, posted a video clip shot by his dashboard camera at 3am on January 5, on his Douyin account.
In the clip, the passenger calls Chen using her friend’s phone to tell him that she had left her phone in his car and agrees to pay him 20 yuan to deliver it back to where he dropped her off.
However, when Chen arrived at the spot, the woman refused to pay up.
Angry at this, Chen drove off without saying another word and ended up at a police station 18km away, a distance which would cost the woman 100 yuan to get to if she wanted to pick up the phone.
Chen said he had intended to take the phone to a police station even further away but the woman had called the police after he left and he did not want to get into trouble.
A police officer who answered the woman’s call contacted Chen while he was driving and told him which station to take the phone to.
“Is 20 yuan a lot?” Chen says in his video, adding that he insisted on the woman paying him first because he had been cheated before by other passengers.
The woman filed a complaint with the ride-hailing platform, but Chen said they told him he had done nothing wrong.
The story received widespread applause online.
“She should pay for the petrol it costs to deliver her phone,” one person said.
Another online observer recalled one time when she left her phone in a taxi and insisted on paying the driver money when she collected her phone: “If you treat other people well, you will also be treated nicely,” she said.
Last November, a woman in Guangdong province sparked an online backlash after she demanded a driver travel 50km to return the phone she left in his car for free.
She insisted it was the driver’s duty to return the phone, ignoring the fact that it would cost him at least 100 yuan to drive back to where she got off.
She also threatened to lodge a complaint against him with the ride-hailing platform.
The angry driver said he would deliver the phone to a police station near him and hung up.
