Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi took over the company in April 2017, when the company was reeling from some pretty terrible PR.

The company’s co-founder, Travis Kalanick, had just been ousted after months of chaos, and Khosrowshahi knew it would be something of an uphill battle.

Well, that’s not about to get any easier, as a tell-all book authored by New York Times reporter Mike Isaac, titled Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, nears publication.

An excerpt was just published over on the New York Times (read that here), but we’ll get the basics via TechCrunch:

Isaac outlines how Uber misled customers into paying $1 more per ride by telling them Uber would use the proceeds to fund an “industry-leading background check process, regular motor vehicle checks, driver safety education, development of safety features in the app, and insurance.”

The campaign was hugely successful, according to Isaac, who reports that it brought in nearly half a billion dollars for Uber. Alas, according to employees who worked on the project, the fee was devised primarily to add $1 of pure margin to each trip…

Instead of an apology, Uber today sent out a mass email to riders titled, somewhat ominously, “Your phone number stays hidden in the app.” The friendly reminder continues on to tell customers that their “phone number stays hidden when you call or text your driver through the app,” that “pickup and drop-off locations are not visible in a driver’s trip history,” and that “for additional privacy, if you don’t want to share your exact address, request a ride to or from the nearest cross streets instead.”

OK, but that’s not really what you’re under fire for, Uber.

As the book’s release has neared, Uber in the US has sent out a number of similar emails, stressing their improved safety features, but that’s not enough to turn the tide:

…the company’s shares have been sinking since its IPO in early May; that Uber’s cost-cutting measures will be scrutinized at every turn (outsiders particularly relished the company’s decision to save on employees’ work anniversaries by cutting out helium balloons in favor of stickers); and that Uber appears to be losing the battle, city by city, against labor activists who want to push up the minimum wage paid to drivers.

And those are just three of many daunting challenges that Khosrowshahi has been tasked with figuring out  (think food delivery, self-driving technologies, foreign and domestic opponents). No doubt Isaac’s book will highlight plenty of others.

The book is now available for pre-order on Amazon, with the release date scheduled for September 3 (next Tuesday).

Here’s some of that write-up:

Award-winning New York Times technology correspondent Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped presents the dramatic rise and fall of Uber, set against an era of rapid upheaval in Silicon Valley…

What followed would become a corporate cautionary tale about the perils of startup culture and a vivid example of how blind worship of startup founders can go wildly wrong. Isaac recounts Uber’s pitched battles with taxi unions and drivers, the company’s toxic internal culture, and the bare-knuckle tactics it devised to overcome obstacles in its quest for dominance. With billions of dollars at stake, Isaac shows how venture capitalists asserted their power and seized control of the startup as it fought its way toward its fateful IPO.

Based on hundreds of interviews with current and former Uber employees, along with previously unpublished documents, Super Pumped is a page-turning story of ambition and deception, obscene wealth, and bad behavior that explores how blistering technological and financial innovation culminated in one of the most catastrophic twelve-month periods in American corporate history.

In other words, Uber is going to need to up their PR game when the book hits the shelves.

Watch this space.

[source:techcrunch&amazon]