“Am I right to want them to refund me for my trip as well as for the cost of the pants?”

“Dear PoPville,

TLDR version: I rode an Uber that had coffee on the seat, it ruined my pants without me realizing it until I had already humiliated myself at a work event with a brown stain on my ass, and Uber claims the $5 credit they gave me is an “appropriate adjustment.”

I took an Uber to work this morning, had a great conversation with the driver, and spoke at a work event immediately after exiting the car. My colleague then informed me that there was an awful brown stain on my rear end — and it wasn’t there before I got into the car.

The stain was pretty gnarly (see above), and the pants that were destroyed happen to be brand new. I put on the gym clothes I had on me as to not further embarrass myself and bought a new pair of pants from the J Crew by my office because I needed to appear at other professional events soon after and didn’t have time to go home.

It took me a while to get in touch with Uber about this (they have no customer support number and their app doesn’t offer help options for any situation even close to the one I found myself in). Twitter DMs are the only means of communication that seem to get through.

My question for the community is two-fold:

1. Am I right to want them to refund me for my trip as well as for the cost of the pants?
2. Am I crazy enough to think they will come through on this?

For what it’s worth, I’m a pretty loyal Uber customer — I use no other ride share services, have logged probably thousands of dollars in Ubers over more than half a decade, and have never had to complain about an issue even close to this magnitude. I also have sympathy for the driver, who is nearly certainly not the one who spilled coffee on his back seat, and was a really nice guy.

Uber gave me a $5 credit and said this was an “appropriate adjustment.” I believe the full cost of the ride and the pants is Uber’s responsibility as a cost of doing business. I’m curious what others would do in this situation.”