Say if a passenger gets off at a certain location but the driver does not terminate the trip and keeps on driving. It'd be a piece of cake for Uber to solve this dispute if they just match up the GPS locations and paths of the driver and the rider.
Can Uber pull up the passenger's GPS location to solve a dispute with the driver? Say to settle a disagreement between drivers and riders as to where the drop off occurred?
The Guru Take
No, they cannot for multiple reasons.
Can they or do they? Uber technically has the capability to do this, as the location of the user can be tracked by the Uber app. However, "do they" and "are they allowed to" are completely different things. (Only last year in 2017, Uber was embroiled in a controversy where they were caught tracking passenger's exact location even after the ride was over. This was possible because Uber's app could track the GPS location of the mobile device even if the Uber app was running in the background.)
The Uber app can still see the passenger's location during a trip. However, whether Uber stores that and whether they can pull it up later depends on their data rentention policy.
With that said, Uber can only track the users if the Uber app is open on the phone. Combine that with the fact that the passenger does not have to have the app open during the ride, and we can surmise that the passenger location for dropoffs cannot be determined with certainty, and hence it may not be reliable enough to use it for conflict resolution.
Comments
I Don't think Uber is legally allowed to collect and keep that information, definitely not to that level of detail.
Also, remenber that your Uber app does not have to be on during the ride for the trip to be successful.. and it needs to be open for Uber to track your location, right? Hence, it wouldn't be a reliable for your drop off location anyways. (plus no actions are taken by the user at the time of drop off, right?)
Maybe you assume too much. too much faith. Remember this is the company for employees using the "God mode" to monitor their x-girlfriend and boyfriends as well as celebrities.
This happened to me once. A driver drove like 30 miles past where he dropped me off and my bill was crazy high. I disputed it and after a few issues (Uber's support is the worst) they did refund me. Not sure if they used GPS though? or just trusted me? I mean they could see my ending address in the app so that lined up with my story.
No, unless there is no cell coverage at the drop off point.