Source : Perth Now news
A teenage girl has spoken of her terror, claiming an Uber driver locked her in his car and demanded to be paid with details emerging in a Fair Work Commission judgment.
The 18-year-old was being driven home in the early hours of January 3 when the driver cancelled the ride and locked the doors of his car until she transferred him money, it was alleged.
The alleged horror ordeal involved former Uber driver Abdullah Ahmed Mohammed whose account was deactivated following multiple accusations the man demanded they cancel their ride and transfer him money.
Details of the allegations were published in a Fair Work Commission judgment, the 18-year-old telling Uber she left her phone on the front seat to charge during the trip and only noticed Mr Mohammed had cancelled the journey close to arrival at her home.
According to the girl’s claims in the documents, she told Uber: “We stop outside my house and I had taken my phone back like two minutes ago, three minutes ago, like I’d just gotten it back.
“And as I was getting out, he was like, ‘Oh, can you pay me? And I was like, ‘What do you mean, can I pay you?’
“And he was like, ‘Well, the Uber ride was cancelled, so I need to be paid through bank transfer’. And I don’t know if he locked the back door, or if he was unlocking the doors, but you know the clicks that all the locks make… that went off as soon as I reached for the door handle.”
She sent him “55 or like 65 bucks” of the $80 the driver said she owed through bank transfer, the documents said, and the driver took her phone number.
“He was like ‘I’ll text you in the morning to pay me the remaining 25’. And I was like, yeah, that’s okay. Okay, like I just wanted to get out of the car.”
“Hi you said you will send me 25 in the morning,” he wrote on a message, the FWC was told.
She blocked his number and later that day, Uber temporarily restricted his access to the app.
Mr Mohammed denied the claim and said it was ‘false’.
The FWC judgment showed two mobile bank payments to A Mohammed, a text message to the 18-year-old saying “25 in morning”. Mr Mohammed said the mobile number belonged to him.
The judgment said it was the second time Mr Mohammed was accused of inapropriate behaviour, the first was in July 2025 when another rider complained that he attempted to convince the passenger “to cancel the Uber and pay him more money than what I was getting charged on the app.”
The complaint also stated that “he was visibly annoyed and slightly argumentative when I said that I was going to stick with the app. He gave me a low star ratings a result, which hurt my perfect record”.
Mr Mohammed said all the complaints were “false” and accused both passengers on each separate occasion of being “drunk”, “not wearing seatbelts” and “behaving inappropriately throughout the trip”.
Following the two complaints, Uber stated they were terminating his account.
Dissatisfied with his account termination, Mr Mohammed filed a Fair Work complaint, alleging the reports against him were untrue and that was unfairly booted from the app.
He stated that he needed his Uber reinstated for income purposes and demanded the company pay him remuneration due to the deactivation of his account.
The Fair Work Commission found Mr Mohammed’s deactivation was consistent with the Digital Labour Platform Deactivation Code in that he had right of reply, and that the process was fair.
