Kenny Bachman was enjoying a night of partying in West Virginia in late February when he drunkenly called an Uber for a lift back home. While this is typically the responsible thing to do, the problem for Bachman was that he lived almost 300 miles away.
The 21-year-old’s wild night started when he hitched a ride to West Virginia to drink and hang with his high school friends who went off to college. After partying at a frat house and spending some $200 at a club, Bachman figured it was time to go home, so he called an Uber XL (an option the company offers for groups up to six people) to pick him up. But he doesn’t remember any of this, he says, because he blacked out before the 2011 Toyota Sienna minivan arrived.
“Literally, that’s all I remember,” Bachman tells PEOPLE. “I don’t remember ordering the Uber. I don’t remember leaving the club, nothing. I just woke up in an Uber.”
When he asked the driver what was going on, Bachman learned he had fallen asleep for the majority of a five-to-six-hour car ride from West Virginia to his home in South New Jersey. He didn’t even have the bags he brought with him for the trip—those were still at his friend’s house, hundreds of miles away.
“I was like, where am I? Who’s this dude sitting next to me?” he recalls. “So many other things could have happened, like, for instance, I could have been kidnapped for all I know. I had no idea. As soon as I woke up, I started interrogating the dude.”
But this wasn’t the end of Bachman’s problems.
Because he had ordered the Uber during a surge period—and was paying for an Uber XL, though he was the only passenger— it meant the price of the ride was going to be at least double the cost than it normally would. Not only that, Bachman says the driver had gone through multiple toll roads without paying, and he expected Bachman to reimburse him with cash.
The Uber driver eventually dropped Bachman off at a CVS near his home in Washington Township. After he handed the driver $20, Bachman learned the total of his cross-state trip would come out to a whopping $1,635.
Uber did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
“I was just so shocked it even happened and that I had to pay that amount of money, so I had to let it sink in for a while,” Bachman says.
Though he tried to dispute the cost of the ride, he was told by the company to foot the bill, though they did give him back the $20 in cash he gave the driver.
“I feel I was taken advantage of for my money,” Bachman, who works at UPS, says. “[The driver] knew I was drunk, but I’m saying, maybe he should have been like, ‘Yeah, this is wrong. Maybe you shouldn’t get in here or something.’ ”
Bachman recently set up a GoFundMe page to help raise money to cover his trip’s expenses. Today, a New Jersey-based meal prep company, Eat Clean Bro, has offered to pay his bill in appreciation for him not driving while under the influence. Bachman says the proceeds he raises will now go to charity.
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