The reason for the cleaning fee is two fold- 1. It costs money to clean things. They're probably stretching a bit with the full $200 for water, but with worse messes, it sometimes requires professional cleaning.
2nd, the driver's time. Time is money. When we have to go offline to deal with a mess, we are loosing money. And regardless of whether its water or nuclear waste, we do HAVE to go offline to deal with it- we can't go pick up another passenger with someone else's mess in the back seat. How would you have liked it if you had been his next passenger and sat down in a puddle?
And just a couple things I want to let you know. The driver has no control over what (or even if) cleaning fee is charged. From our end, its pretty simple- if we have to go offline to restore our vehicle to serviceable condition because of another passenger, we submit a cleaning fee request. We lose money in that down time and have to make it back. Uber ultimately decides how much to charge (typically $50-200). I am a bit surprised they went full on for this, but I guess it just shows they are no longer happy with just screwing over drivers for profit, but screwing passengers too.
Also, don't file a chargeback. It is in the terms of service that you agree to pay any cleaning fee. You did in fact authorize this charge. The only time cleaning fee's get refunded is when the rider can somehow prove they weren't responsible. I'm sorry, it sucks, they really shouldn't have charged you this much, but like I said, I guess they have to screw over everyone now.
tip my fucking driver
Thank you! Yes- people, tip your uber drivers. With the new rate cuts and uber fees, we make about 65 cents per mile, the standard tax deduction for vehicle expenses is 57.5 cents per mile. So after expenses, we don't even get 10 cents/mile. Tips are HUGE. However,
When I learned they got rid of the option for tipping automatically
There NEVER was a tipping option. When UberTAXI was a thing in some cities, you were given the option to set an automatic tip amount, but this only applied to TAXI rides. Standard UberX/XL drivers have NEVER received tips in any way (unless tipped in cash by passenger).