Be Careful How You Share Your Uber Referral Links

On this and some other similar blogs you will sometimes see posts about new sign-up bonuses from Uber. Uber brings a black car, taxi, or UberX personal vehicle to you with the press of a button on the app, which is insanely helpful and convenient. The prices are usually pretty good compared to other ways of obtaining cars and sometimes even less than a regular old cab. I especially like to use it when traveling with family in a new city and am not necessarily overly familiar with the public transportation options. I use Uber when traveling myself and write about them when the sign-up bonuses or promotions warrant it.

The way Uber works is that you typically get some sort of credit when you refer a new customer who tries Uber. Because of that I've historically encouraged readers to share their referral links in the comments section of Uber posts so that we can all help each other earn more Uber credit. The goal of posting about Uber was never to hog the new customer referral sign-ups for myself, so sharing the love between readers in the comment section was more than fine with me.

However, I've recently started hearing some "urban legends" about accounts getting in trouble because of sharing their referral code in the comments sections of blog posts. I had heard enough of these stories to believe them to be true, and even included a warning not to (sadly) share your referral link in the comment section of this blog post about the current $30 sign-up bonus for new Uber customers. That suggestion was largely ignored and folks still shared their referral links in the comments section, which I personally have no issue with, but it makes me nervous for their accounts.

This morning a reader emailed me and asked me to delete their referral link from the comments section of an older post as Uber had disabled their referral code due to leaving it in the comments section of blogs. In this case they reportedly did not confiscate the credits earned, but seemed to have deactivated the ability to make further referrals. I have also heard of stories where all of the referral credits were cancelled due to violating the polices in place.

The actual policy on referral links on Uber is that:

Personal invite links should only be used for personal and non-commercial purposes. This means that you can share your invite link with your personal connections via email, Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, personal blogs, etc. where you are the primary content owner. However public distribution on sites where you are a contributor but not the primary content owner (e.g., Wikipedia, coupon websites) is not allowed. Promoting your referral code via Search Engine Marketing (e.g., AdWords/Yahoo/Bing) is also not allowed.

Uber reserves the right to suspend your account and/or revoke any and all referral credits at any time if we feel they were earned inappropriately.

Uber credit will be applied to fares billed in the corresponding currency. Example: Uber credit value in USD will only be applied to fares billed in USD.

Anyway, just thought this was worth a mention since it is in contrast to previous posts on the topic, and I certainly don't want any Mommy Points readers to lose some credit they may have earned by referring others to Uber. Continue referring people you know via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. just don't put it in the comments section of sites that aren't yours unless you want to risk your account status (and referral credits) with Uber.

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