Man cheated Uber and got $50,000 in free rides

Andre Yoskowitz
7 Jan 2015 10:20

Blake Jareds, a 24-year old New Yorker, was able to abuse Uber's promotional codes to get over $50,000 in free rides before the company canceled his account.
The company offers credits when you refer friends, and Jareds used some pretty ingenious ways to get thousands of people to sign up under his referral link.
BusinessInsider explains how he pulled it off:

Step 1: Jareds changed his Uber promo code from a random string of letters code to "uber$20FreeRide."
Step 2: He sent out a mass email via MailChimp to about 700 people from his email contact lists. It had a 40% open rate and about 5% click rate, the former finance student tells us.
Step 3: Jareds posted a link to a subreddit where users submit deals for free stuff. "This is where I believe Uber claims I breached their guidelines," Jareds tells us.
Step 4: The combination of the "uber$20freeride" promo code and Reddit earned Jareds' link a high level of search-engine optimization. It "propelled my referral link to one of the top links on Google if a person searched for 'Uber promotion code' or a variant of such. This is where I would say 90% of the 2,000+ people who signed up came from."
His credit was canceled, but Uber later reinstated his account and credited him $500.

After his account was reinstated, people continued to click his links and he saw the credits keeping flowing. Over the summer, Uber caught on again and shut his account and took the credit back. He now has a new account.
Uber, thanks to people like Jareds has added a new section to its ToS, making it grounds for termination of the account if the promo code is made available to the general public.