How far will someone go for a couple hundred bucks? 
 
 According to Meredith Mandel, her Uber driver was willing to stage a vomit scene in his car. Gothamist reports that she was charged a $200 cleaning fee when an Uber driver, named only as Muhammad, accused her of making a foul mess in the vehicle. Mandel claims that she did no such thing, and neither did her two companions. She instead alleges that he intentionally staged the scene to collect money. She has since complained to Uber, which has refunded her and says it will take “appropriate actions,” and she has sworn off the company in favor of competitors. 
 
 Muhammad said that Mandel and the two other passengers were drunk. Mandel refutes that claim, saying that none of them had enough to drink to be intoxicated after their two and a half hour dinner. She adds that the pictures he provided as evidence don’t add up for multiple reasons. 
 
 The mess is confined to easily cleaned parts of the car, such as the plastic dashboard and floor mat. It can also be seen in the front of the car and on the driver’s side door, though Mandel says they had all been sitting in the back seat. Additionally, the color of the spill didn’t make sense considering what they each ate for dinner immediately before being picked up. 
 
 Multiple accounts of similar accusations can be found around the web. Uber riders tend to think these incidents are scams rather than mistakes, likely because the cleaning fee goes directly to the driver. There have also been various viral stories about Uber drivers treating customers disrespectfully, which doesn’t help the image of the group as a whole. 
 
 Uber responded to the incident in a statement to Gothamist: “We want riders and driver to treat each other with consideration and respect which is why riders who create a serious mess in a driver’s personal car can be charged a cleaning fee. If a rider is wrongly charged a cleaning fee, we investigate the circumstances and then provide a refund, which is what happened in this case.” ||||| WEST HOLLYWOOD (CBSLA.com) — Uber says the company has decided to refund a cleaning fee for a woman who was hit with a $100 charge after utilizing the service Sunday night. 
 
 Annie Pho told CBS2’s Amy Johnson she used Uber to travel to her friend’s West Hollywood home as she didn’t want to walk 1 mile when much of the region was getting hit by a storm. 
 
 Pho, who has used the popular ride-sharing service many times before, said she never imagined she would get hit with the hefty bill. 
 
 “It was pouring rain, so I just decided to take an Uber,” she said. “And the next day, I got slapped with a $100 charge for a cleaning fee for bodily fluids.” 
 
 Uber does on its website list cleaning fees for cosmetic and/or physical damage to the interior or exterior as a result of events, such as vomiting or pet accidents. 
 
 “There was rain, but I mean, I don’t think I’m responsible for weather conditions,” she said. 
 
 But there it was. Her $7.41 ride had gone up by an additional $100. 
 
 “I think that it could have easily been solved with just a simple towel-wipe, and I’m sure that that’s what he did and then pocketed $100,” she said. 
 
 Pho emailed her complaint to Uber. 
 
 “It’s extremely frustrating. Ummm. There’s not even a phone number to contact, so there’s not really much I can do,” she said. 
 
 She then posted her complaints online. 
 
 I have been scammed by an @Uber driver. @Uber is doing nothing about it! $100 Cleaning fee due to rain water #ubershame #Uber — Annie Pho (@Annie_Pho) March 4, 2015 
 
 “I honestly think that it’s more of a scam than anything,” Pho said. 
 
 CBS2 reached out to Uber regarding Pho’s complaint, and the company said after further review that it has decided to refund the $100. When asked whether the decision had anything to do with CBS2’s inquiry, Uber said it reviews every complaint it receives. ||||| Related Coverage 8 On Your Side inquiry leads to refund of Uber $200 vomit cleanup fee 
 
 TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – An Uber driver is off the job after multiple customers complained about fraudulent cleanup fees. 8 On Your Side reported about one case Wednesday night. 
 
 A second customer stepped forward to 8 On Your Side, saying he too was charged a fee for a mess that wasn’t his. “I get home in the morning and I received an email saying, ‘Your fare has been adjusted and to account for the mess that you all made, we took out $100.’ It was laughable. I thought it was like eggs,” Tampa attorney Alex Serrano said. He received the charge after a Saturday night Uber ride in north Tampa. 
 
 Serrano tried many times to clear up the charge with Uber. “My final response was basically, ‘Look I’m going to take legal action against you’ and I let them know I was an attorney,” Serrano said. But Uber refused the refund, telling him the company has a “policy” and then sending pictures to Serrano of his mess. 
 
 “My aggravation was with the fact that we knew what happened in that vehicle. no one threw up in the car,” Serrano added. 
 
 The pictures of the mess sent to Serrano were very similar to pictures sent to Cody Dawson by Uber this week. Dawson was also charged a cleanup fee of $200 that Uber refused to refund until after 8 On Your Side reached out to the company. 
 
 Serrano saw Dawson’s story and told the company he too had been in contact with 8 On Your Side. Hours later Uber responded to Serrano apologizing and refunding his money. 
 
 Here is the message Serrano received from Uber: 
 
 “Hi Alex, 
 
 This is Alex Uber advanced support. First of all Thank you so very much for the effort reporting this fraud issue and for all of the valuable time you have invested to let us know this situations was happening not only you but other riders. I´m truly sorry you had to live this experience, but thank you for not giving up. I want to let you know that we have rejected this driver from our platform, and that we will take actions on this. Also I already refunded the $100.00, as well as the fare for the trip, so the final fare will be $0.00 on this trip. I can not express how embarrassing this is to Uber but I hope you give us a second chance to prove we can give you an excellent service. Thank you once more for your commitment let me know if there is anything else I can do for you. 
 
 Have a wonderful day!” 
 
 “Based on that, they apparently had been investigating this particular driver and that’s when they let me know they’ve refunded my money. I’m glad I saw the report,” Serrano said. He thinks Uber should take another look at its policy. 
 
 “The report from the driver comes apparently and then they just take the money right out of your account. (The driver) could target basically bar patrons who would then be defenseless to these allegations,” he added. ||||| 
 
 (Getty) 
 
 Update below 
 
 A frequent user of the ride-share service Uber is swearing off the company after she says her driver accused her of vomiting in his car to stick her with a $200 cleaning fee, and backed it up with faked photos of the alleged barf. 
 
 Meredith Mandel, who works as an art director in Manhattan, says she left a late dinner at the restaurant Roman's in Fort Greene early on the morning of February 21st, accompanied by her boyfriend and a friend, and caught an Uber back to their respective apartments in Williamsburg. She said that the trip ended shortly before 1:30 a.m., no muss, no fuss, but that she awoke in the morning to see a $200 cleaning charge tacked onto her $19 fare in her Paypal account, without any explanation. 
 
 
 
 Gross, but is it real? (Meredith Mandel) 
 
 Upon receiving those, Mandel went into detective mode. 
 
 "I was infuriated, because I realized that it actually is a scam," she said. "At first I was trying to actually give them the benefit of a doubt, but I realized [it] because all of the money goes to the drivers." 
 
 She determined a few things of note. One: at least one of the three photos appear to show portions of the car in the front seat. She says that she and her fellow passengers were confined to the back. Two: all of the purported puke seems to be confined to easily washed plastic surfaces, mainly floor mats and the plastic of the dashboard and a driver's-side door. Three: there have been other reported instances of alleged Uber vomit scams, including two incidents in Tampa, Florida that got a driver fired, and another in Los Angeles. Four: when she uploaded the photos to a metadata scraping website, no time or date was attached to the photos (we repeated this process with files she provided and got the same results). And of course, she says neither she nor her companions were drunk. 
 
 "Dinner literally lasted two and a half hours, and me and one other girl in the car had two really small glasses of wine," she said. "My boyfriend had two beers. This is over two and a half hours, so we were basically sober by the end." 
 
 Oh, and that yellowish goop from the photos? Mandel said the glove doesn't fit on that one either. 
 
 "The vomit is super yellow, and we ate really dark food, like meat," she said. "It just doesn't line up." 
 
 Mandel and her female friend had the pork ragu, while her boyfriend had the pork milanese with dark root vegetables, she said. 
 
 
 
 What in the... (Meredith Mandel) 
 
 After a few more frustrating days, she laid off Uber customer service and filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. She checked back in with Uber yesterday and in the evening, before Gothamist reached out to Uber, a customer service guy named Jose wrote to say, "I'm sorry to hear about you were charged more than you expected for this trip." He said she would be refunded her $200 within 1-3 days. Jose also pledged to follow up with the driver and "make sure to take appropriate actions." 
 
 Mandel said she used Uber "all the time," but has sworn off it since the incident, "which is super unfortunate, but it's because I just don't feel comfortable anymore." She said she has downloaded the NYC Taxi app and Lyft to fill the void. The second $200 charge didn't go through and has since disappeared, she said. 
 
 We reached out to Uber's corporate office to see what those "appropriate actions" might be, how widespread the problem is, and how the company's protocol for proving cleanings works. Spokesman Matt Wing sent this statement: 
 
 "We want riders and driver to treat each other with consideration and respect which is why riders who create a serious mess in a driver's personal car can be charged a cleaning fee. If a rider is wrongly charged a cleaning fee, we investigate the circumstances and then provide a refund, which is what happened in this case." 
 
 Uber's website says that the cleaning fee does indeed go to the driver, and says that the fees are "always" accompanied by an "an updated receipt with an explanation," which Mandel says she didn't receive. A customer service rep named Patrick told her Uber "does not have to warn passengers about a cleaning charge." 
 
 Repeated fare cuts dating back to 2014 have prompted some New York Uber drivers to stage strikes, work slowdowns, and protests in recent months. 
 
 An Uber driver we spoke to, who asked to remain anonymous, said that passengers ralphing is a real problem, especially early in the morning, and that he tries to steer clear of fares who he finds falling over as they sit on the curb. 
 
 "When I see somebody too drunk, I ask them, 'Are you sure you're okay to ride? You're not going to vomit in the car?'" he explained. "Ten, fifteen minutes later, they puke all over the car." 
 
 Such an event can take a driver out of commission for hours as he or she searches for a 24-hour car wash and tries to shampoo out the nastiness, costing lost revenue on top of the cleaning bill. It is theoretically possible to collect money for phantom throw-up, though. The driver explained that Uber first asks for photos and bills the customer an amount its bean-counters deem appropriate. A receipt for the cleaning is only required if a driver asks to be reimbursed in addition to the initial amount. Uber does not reimburse for lost time, he said. 
 
 The driver said he hadn't heard of any puke-faking Uber grifters, and that it seems like a lot of trouble to go to. 
 
 "I don’t see why somebody would go out of their way just too get a hundred, a hundred fifty dollars, when you could make that in two or three hours of working," he said. 
 
 Still, he said, it's possible. 
 
 "I wouldn’t be surprised if some Uber drivers used that as a scam," he said. "We’re human beings, and unfortunately, human beings are capable of anything. But all that to collect a hundred, two hundred dollar cleaning fee? That's a new low." 
 
 Update 5:40 p.m.: 
 
 Taxi and Limousine Commission Deputy Commissioner Allan Fromberg reached out with these words of wisdom:
– Meredith Mandel paid $19 for an early morning Uber ride in Brooklyn. Later, Mandel, who had shared the ride with her boyfriend and friend, discovered that an additional $200 fee had been tacked onto the fare, recounts Gothamist. The extra money was given directly to the driver to pay to have puke cleaned out of his car, Uber customer service told Mandel, providing a photo of the purported vomit. The driver, the rep added, recalled that Mandel and the others were drunk. The only problem is that Mandel says neither she nor her fellow passengers threw up during the Feb. 21 ride from a restaurant to the trio's respective apartments. And, she says, they weren't drunk. "I was infuriated," Mandel tells the website, "because I realized that it actually is a scam." Among other things, she noticed that the alleged barf was in the front of the car's cabin, but Mandel and company had been in the back, and it was conveniently confined to easy-to-clean surfaces. Gothamist notes that similar questionable fees have surfaced before. In Tampa, Uber fired a driver after multiple passengers complained about being charged for throw-up that they never threw up, reports WFLA. In West Hollywood, a woman was charged $100 for bodily fluid cleanup after getting into an Uber car while wet from a rainstorm, CBS reports. Other instances have been documented on Reddit. Geez, wonders Fortune, "How far will someone go for a couple hundred bucks?" Ultimately, Uber refunded Mandel's money. (Some Uber drivers are distracting drunk riders with a relic of the 1990s.)