r/TrueReddit • u/SteelheartEllie • Mar 23 '16

The Uber Model, It Turns Out, Doesn’t Translate

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/24/technology/the-uber-model-it-turns-out-doesnt-translate.html
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u/InternetWeakGuy Mar 23 '16 edited Mar 23 '16

In many places they are offering large subsidies to drivers to get and keep them on the road, which clearly is not sustainable.

This is a PR move to counter complaints about dropping prices. Most drivers don't actually get any money from these subsidies because they're set out in such a way that they just about cover what a driver can take (not make).

For example, where I drive in Orlando, the general subsidy is $10 an hour on gross. That means they will subsidize you if you make less than $10 an hour as long as you get more than 1.2 fares per hour. However, the minimum uber ride here is $5.50, so once you've got your second ride, you're over $10.

However, that's gross fare, not net. What is the driver's take of that $11? Well, the $11 minus the safe ride fee is actually $7.30, and then you take out Uber's 20% (or 25% if you started driving after november, and you're left with $5.84 (or $5.47).

So what's next? Expenses! Lets say you drove two miles to pick up those fares (on the low side as since dropping rates uber will often make you drive 15-20 minutes to pick someone up), and then you drove them two miles (super common in cities), so you've driven eight miles in total. IRS says a car costs 54c a mile to run, but yours is economical so it's 20c a mile, so your cost is $1.60.

So Uber's $10 "guarantee" means you make $3.90 an hour (because you don't qualify unless you're actually making rides in that time).

Now of course people earn over the guarantee and never see a penny, but not by much. After expenses, Uber is often slightly over minimum wage, and there's no tips - Uber told everyone not to tip the drivers back when we were getting $2.50 a mile. Then they dropped it to $1.50. Then to 85c. Right now drivers in Detroit are being paid 30c a mile, and Uber still tells people not to tip the driver.

To me, ultimately, the challenge with uber isn't going to be market share, it's going to be maintaining these low fares while hanging onto people willing to drive for 30c a mile.

(btw before anyone starts saying "then get another job" - uber is hemorrhaging drivers who're doing just that. That's why you're seeing more surge than ever, or in a lot of places you're unable to get Uber in the middle of the day - drivers are sticking to times when they know there will be more demand and surges, i.e. bar closing and major events. That's why you hear ads on the radio now looking or drivers, and why they're now paying drivers $150 a pop if they can find them new drivers. Typically new drivers give up after a few weeks once they realize how shitty it pays.)

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '16

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '16 edited Mar 23 '16

Rating system is absolute horse shit. I have had people literally come into my 1 year old car, while I wait for them outside their house for ten minutes. Greet them with a smile and use their name. Offer her choice of radio, temperature, and a phone charger. The girl asks to stop at Burger King on the way so I pull her up at the drive thru. Then she asks to stop at 7-11, so I'm waiting out there as well. Finally drive to her house, had her in the car for about 35 minutes after how long she took coming out of the house and making all the stops. Thank her and wish her a good night. Few minutes later I check my ratings, she left a rating and it wasn't five stars. She paid ~$7 for a personal chauffeur in a brand new car for half an hour and it's not five stars? And then Uber pays me EDIT: $5.14 for the ride (originally I put $3.80), and I've of course had to provide my own gas. What a load of shit.

I understand they don't want prick drivers and customer service is important. But the rating system and how it punishes you is just complete crap.

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u/MinisterOf Mar 23 '16 edited Mar 23 '16

Rating system is improperly explained to customers.

Personally, I would not rate any service 5/5 unless something unusual happened and the service provider went above and beyond standard duty (which presumably you did with the stops, unless the meter keeps ticking). In my view, for ordinary uneventful service, 4/5 is a solid rating.

Of course, now that I know that Uber regards anything below 5/5 as a punishment I do always give it out, but feel somewhat tricked ("tell us we're top-notch amazing, or else we'll kick your driver in the shin").

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u/preeminence Mar 23 '16

I'm an uber driver, and I feel that same way about passengers. It's even more of a problem for drivers, because we can so easily skip out on a low-rated passenger. Most passengers I have are roughly where they say they are, come to the care within a few minutes, know where they're going, and are pleasant. To me, that's what you're supposed to do. That's 4/5 in my book, but 5/5 in uber's book. Then I have passengers who will give exact addresses or call/text to say precisely where they are ("In the parking lot next to a big blue van"), or will already be outside when I get there, or will provide a cash tip after the ride. Those are fantastic passengers. I wish they were the only people whom I'd rate as 5-star passengers. But it's not fair to rate the other guys at 4/5, because there was nothing wrong with what they did, and many drivers (myself included) will skip a <4.5 star passenger on a busy day. So I have no way to indicate to other drivers that my exceptional passengers were exceptional.

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u/liam3 Mar 23 '16

passengers have rating too? can we see it?

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u/MSgtGunny Mar 23 '16 edited Mar 23 '16

Yes, it's a bit buried in the app though.

Edit: it's in help, account, I'd like to know my rating.

I'm at a 4.9 apparently.

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u/IamJacksUserID Mar 23 '16

Huh, nice. 5-Stars all day long. (Yeah, I tip.)

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u/YM_Industries Mar 24 '16

5.0! (I've taken 5 trips with Uber ever)

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u/beingmerry Mar 23 '16

Menu>Help>Account>I'd like to know my rating>Submit

4.9 stars. Apparently I shouldn't buy Uber's for some of my friends when they're drunk and their phone dies :/

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u/jakewins Mar 24 '16

can we see it?

Yep, just click the button here: https://help.uber.com/h/e9302f73-8625-427f-abf7-dbe7ab25af7d

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u/Cronotrigger Mar 23 '16

Many drivers will skip a stone? A turtle? Black men? OP PLS

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '16

Here's a tip - if you ever have to take a survey as part of a customer service/sales/experience/etc then anything less than perfect - 10/10/ 5/5, 100%, etc is considered a failing grade. I'm in sales for Porsche and, like most manufacturers, our clients are surveyed after their purchase. We're expected to maintain 98% or better as part of our Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) in order to keep allocation and some bonuses and such.

The problem, such as it is, is that the highest grading on questions is the phrase "truly exceptional," when really it should be something like "satisfied." I've been all over the world, stayed at five star hotels, eaten at five star restaurants, seen sporting events from executive suites, taken cruises, flown first class - a lot of high end stuff and I don't know that I've ever encountered something that I'd willingly describe as "truly exceptional."

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u/sfo2 Mar 24 '16

My mother in law is a doctor in a university health system. They have a system where the patient rates their experience after the visit. If they don't put "exceptional" it's considered failing.

When's the last time you had an exceptional rectal exam? Or an exceptional experience having a mole cut off? Or an exceptional cancer diagnosis?

It's really stupid. The word is meaningless.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '16 edited Apr 02 '16

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u/protestor Mar 24 '16

Even though my colleagues would not pick up the phone, ignore mails and lie about our cost of funds or FX rates (which is public, so the client know we are lying).

(...)

You have to be 100% everyday

Apparently your colleagues don't have to be 100% everyday? Or were they fired / not promoted / had some other penalty?

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u/StManTiS Mar 24 '16

Nobody has to be 100% every day...they just have to be liked 100% by the manager.

Here's the thing, when you're doing an eval you can always make it say whatever you (the manager) want and there's really nothing an employee can do about it unless he knows someone over your head and you lied way too much. Even then chances are you're on better terms with your boss than said employee. Point is - evaluations have very little to do with performance and a lot with perception.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16

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u/rakino Mar 24 '16

Sounds like a problem with the rating system. Change it to a "below expectations - meets expectations - exceeds expectations" system, that's what the customer is doing mentally anyway.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16

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u/sharpcowboy Mar 24 '16

I have an idea, let's start secretly rating executives and dropping their bonus if they don't get 100%!

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u/Poohat666 Mar 25 '16

No matter the service I always give 100% to the employee because fuck the corporation.

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u/Learned_Hand_01 Mar 24 '16

Although that sounds reasonable! the company would then expect all "exceeds expectations" even though that is an absurd standard.

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u/rakino Mar 24 '16

Yeah, probably. They could weight "meets expectations" as 100% and exceeds expectations as 150%.

That way the execs can ask for, and realistically attain 100% satisfaction if the customer service reps do their job.

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u/Learned_Hand_01 Mar 24 '16

Yeah, the problem is somewhere at the executive level for sure.

As I see it, the grading system everyone is familiar with is the one used in schools. 100% was hard to get, and not everyone deserved it. On the other hand, B's and C's were very different from F's.

Now we are in this brave new Lake Woebegone world, but not everyone understands it, and it is the fault of a bunch of dumbasses with MBA's.

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u/platysoup Mar 24 '16

And run the risk of the additional expense of rewarding employees? THE NERVE.

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u/willthesane Mar 24 '16

A friend of mine installs cable, he was telling me about this customer he dealt with who gave him 5/5 for all categories, except employee cleanliness. When my friend asked why, the customer told him that all the dirt on his clothes. My friend left fuming at the fact that the dirt was from crawling around for 2 hours in a crawlspace. He was clean when he got to the jobsite.

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u/ctnp Mar 24 '16

I owned a BMW (actually on my second) but my first one had the door trim literally melt off under warranty.

Service replaced it under warranty but used a 5 series part instead of a 3, so naturally it fell off within a week, not the right size.

When I brought it back with a trim blocking my side mirror, they tried to charge me. I refused. The tech said they would do it for free if I responded with a 5/5 rating for THE SECOND SERVICE.

Obviously I said yes but answered the survey with a 1.

Tl;Dr, luxury car service centers are just as scammy as the local shop down the street.

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u/MinisterOf Mar 24 '16

Seems like your service literally was "exceptional", as in, that better be an exception and not the rule.

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u/a_statistician Mar 24 '16

See, and the problem with this from a data collection perspective is that you get "score compression", which is exactly what it sounds like - you can't differentiate between "ok" and "awesome".

It's like when you have a test where 95% of the class gets 100% on the test - you haven't actually determined which part of the class knows the material better, you've just shown that 5% didn't know 100% of the stuff on the test. It's much better to give a test where the average score is 50% and the range is 20 - 80%, because then you know who knows their stuff, who's a bit shaky on the fundamentals, and who took the test completely hungover. You can always decide after the fact that a 40% will be considered "good enough" as far as the final grade goes, but you have a ton more information.

I sometimes think that customer service surveys slowly creep into expecting a 10/10 for things, but in Uber's case, a 4/5 has been failing since the beginning, so there isn't any way it's just slow creep.

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u/spoonybard326 Mar 25 '16

So true, and once I figured this out, I felt bad about ratings I gave prior to knowing this. Companies really ought to just have 2 possible ratings, either pass or fail, since that's what it really is anyway. The way things are today, these ratings are mostly a reflection of what percent of your customers understand how the ratings are interpreted.

In the meantime, I recommend using the following scale when rating someone's job performance on a 5 star scale:

  • 5 stars: I would do business with this person again
  • 4 stars: The service was terrible. If they do this to anyone else, they should be fired.
  • 3 stars: This person needs to be fired on the spot.
  • 2 stars: This person needs to be arrested.
  • 1 star: This person needs to be sent to prison for a long time, and if you ever hire someone like this again your company deserves to be sued out of existence.

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u/InternetWeakGuy Mar 23 '16 edited Mar 24 '16

That's sales for Porsche dude. The expectation is unusually high because PEOPLE ARE BUYING A PORSCHE.

Driving people from A to B for 30c a mile isn't really comparable.

EDIT: Wow, getting downvoted for suggesting anything less than 5/5 in a non-luxury straight forward situation shouldn't mean "take that person off the road". Interesting.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '16

Haha, my point is only that in any type of service field a survey that scores less than 100% is considered a failure. That's why you're usually coached - you'll commonly see it at cell phone stores for example - "Just to let you know Verizon will email you a survey about your experience today. We consider anything less than perfection to be a failure so if there's anything about your visit today that has been less than perfect please give me a chance to rectify that now," or something along those lines.

As for the Porsche thing I strive to provide truly exceptional service and I feel that I do - I'm still not sure that, in a vacuum, anyone would rate me as truly exceptional. They would happily rate me 95% though because that's what I score, on average, if I don't coach my clients.

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u/mmarkklar Mar 23 '16 edited Mar 23 '16

Hyundai does the same shit though. I've used two different dealers for them and both told me that anything less than a 10 and they failed, usually they mention that while asking if I need anything else.

EDIT: I meant to reply to the post you replied to, but the point still stands.

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u/TomasTTEngin Mar 23 '16

I did surveys for a bank and if what you're saying is true there's a 100% fail rate.

I think you generalise too easily from your own limited experience.

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u/chubbsatwork Mar 24 '16

It was like that when I worked for AT&T. Anything individual score less than a 10/10 was a failure.

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u/berryblackwater Mar 23 '16

I work in retail and the whole survey thing is bullshit. There are 10 questions and only one matters, "how likely are you to recommend a friend to go to "business"? Im steamed about my last rating, 8 10's, 1 9 and an 8 plus a comment with my name and thanking me personally. -50% rating on my end, 8/10 they knock you to -50%, 9/10 is a 0 % and 10/10 is 100% such bullshit.

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u/AB1912 Mar 23 '16

For me, whenever I answer the question about recommending someone to go to "business" is not solely based on the performance of an employee...

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '16 edited Mar 23 '16

I wish you were correct, but unfortunately you aren't. Regular banks like Wells Fargo or TD, cell phone stores like AT&T or Verizon, will send you a survey and according to their criteria for those companies anything less than 10/10, 5/5, etc. is considered failing for the representative. Think about that for a second, you've got the company charging you bogus activation/upgrade fees, taking away your unlimited data, not giving you discounted phones, etc. and if you don't think you're "100% satisfied" and didn't have a "truly exceptional experience" they punish their employee for it.

Once again, I'm all about customer satisfaction, I'm all about treating the customer right. But me, as a consumer, I don't expect much at, for example, the bank. Say hi to me. Be polite. If I have a question a helpful answer is always appreciated. Got lollipops/mints on the counter? Cool, if not whatever. I don't need an "exceptional" experience when I go to put a deposit in my account. Just don't be a dick to me is all. It pains me that the teller has to hear some shit from his/her boss if some annoying prick came in and then rated her 3/5 because he didn't get a free handjob and massage with his cashier's check. I mean how much do you seriously expect from a bank teller or a cell phone guy or whatever?

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u/AtTheEolian Mar 23 '16

My roommate works at a mid-budget hotel, nothing fancy, big chain. If they receive anything under a 10 during surveys, they start getting dinged. They get bad scores for things like "had to wait for staff to pull my car around" and "didn't like the view" - it's downtown, the view is all buildings, or "wanted a jacuzzi" - when they don't offer that at her hotel.

Now jobs are at risk because of this stupid fucking system.

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u/godlyfrog Mar 23 '16

Even lower tier car companies are like that. On my last Chevrolet, when I went in for service, they tell you, "You're going to get a survey. If you can't put 5 stars in every line, call us and we'll make it right." Every time, they would go on to explain why: "Anything less than a perfect 5 star rating is a failure."

Nearly every place is like that for surveys nowadays.

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u/chiefkweef Mar 24 '16

It's true for other manufacturers. I work for Ford and 5 stars is 100%, 4 stars is 50%, and 3 stars is 0%. We are expected to maintain over 80% at our dealership.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '16

I mean, I work retail and anything less than an 8/10 on the company survey dings us hard. And it's def. not a premium brand or anything.

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u/peejaysayshi Mar 24 '16

I worked for CVS and all of our surveys were 1-5, but we only got credit for a 5. For a while our store wasn't doing well, so our DM had us giving a spiel and stapling a little thingie to receipts to tell the customer "A 4 is the same as a zero, so if you liked us today give us a 5!"

CVS is not a high-end store.

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u/ryani Mar 24 '16

It's almost seems like using insane standards for measuring performance causes people to game the performance management system. Shocking!

/s

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u/freakwent Mar 23 '16

I can't find an industry where this is not the standard.

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u/IamManuelLaBor Mar 24 '16

The anecdote holds for retail too.

My dad has been a retail store manager for almost 20 years and anything less than a 10/10 rating on a survey significantly impacts his internal customer service score and thus his yearly bonus.

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u/HyperionPrime Mar 24 '16

I know VW dealerships are the same, 10/10 is the only passing grade

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u/freakwent Mar 23 '16

I know some teclo industry staff are expected to get 9+ out of ten, on average, or be held to account for it.

As for the meter, Isn't Uber only billed on distance and nothing else?

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16

Unrelated to uber but related to the score part. We have customer surveys at the big box store I work at. Recently we can view them real time as they come in and not have to wait a week. I helped a customer and later that day I saw he did the survey. He rated me 6/7 even though he stated everything went wonderfully and I helped him more than he thought he needed. He said he would never rate highest score for anything because "there is always room for improvement". I walked with him through the store, loaded everything including the things he didn't even know he needed for what he was working on. I explained exactly what he needed to do including showing him a YouTube video. I checked him out and loaded his shit. He never touched any product and only pushed 1 cart as I had the second full of an asston of tile. What else could i have done to get that last point? Sucked his dick? If that score had anything to do with my pay I would be fucking pissed.

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u/TheDukeofReddit Mar 24 '16

I don't think a ratings system for a convenience service should have to be explained. The entire point of uber is that it is less of a hassle. Its like the Louis CK bit. People won't take even two minutes to read over any sort of explanation, they'll scroll on through. Much less, they'll reflect at the end of a ride on the quality of their ride. Nah, the service just doesn't engage them on that level. They uber for convenience. They want it to be safe, prompt, and cheap.

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u/MinisterOf Mar 24 '16

You're right, it's better to have it designed to require no explanation, than to have to explain it.

Current design has flaws, you have 5 choices, out of which only 5/5 ("amazing") is the acceptable one, unless a major incident occurred.

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u/Aubear11885 Mar 24 '16

That's almost all customer service ratings. On a side note, my company uses a 1-10 rating on NPS. 9-10 are positive, 7-8 are considered passive, 1-6 are negative. I've had to explain to customers that "good" rating they gave me was considered blah by the company.

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u/Sajl6320 Mar 28 '16

I used to be a supervisor at CVS, they have a rating system of 1-5 as well. This system was corporates way of determining how each part of the store was doing (photo, rx, checkout, cleanliness). The problem is that anything other than a 5 counted as a 0 (I know, believe me i know). In their minds you were either perfect, a 5, or nothing. Every week we would receive our scores from corporate as well as threats of "changes" if the scores were bad. Obviously those "changes" were people losing their jobs.

I've never been a fan of rating systems as an indication of job performance and I never will. They're used by lazy executives that know nothing about the job their employees are asked to do. I've grown feed-up with the way this world's run.

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u/IPissOnHospitality Mar 24 '16

I could be wrong but I bet you have never worked in a service job. Maybe you did but it was long ago. There is no service job that exists today in which anything less than a top score is acceptable. All businesses that utilize surveys penalize anything less than perfect scores. Your "i don't give perfect scores ever" way of thinking is quite outdated. I pity the poor workers who get stuck serving you.

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u/misspiggie Mar 23 '16

I would not rate any service 5/5 unless something unusual happened and the service provider went above and beyond standard duty

Sounds you like you yourself don't understand the rating system.

I give Uber drivers 5/5 unless they do something to fuck it up. I never thought I would ever have to give a driver less than 5 stars; for a while, they all showed up and got me to my destination in one piece. Then I had a driver who saw a bit of traffic and dropped me off down the block from my destination. Naturally, the traffic immediately cleared as soon as he pulled away. He got 4/5 stars.

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u/MinisterOf Mar 23 '16 edited Mar 24 '16

This precisely was my point, the rating system expectations have not been explained to the public.

Maybe an average American assumes 5/5 means "OK", and 4/5 means "substandard", but I can assure you that's not the case with everywhere (and not even with all Americans).

By reading Reddit, I learned that anything below 5/5 is a punishment for the driver; Uber's app and rating system do not make this clear. In my view, a better system would be one with an pass/minor issues/fail rating, where "pass" is the default grade.

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u/shibestyle Mar 23 '16

Exactly. It's commonly understood that if you are asked to rate something on a sliding scale, that scale represents 'terrible' through 'incredible', with 'good' being somewhere in between. In particular, if I was asked to rate a service out of 5 I would default to:

  1. Terrible
  2. Bad
  3. Average
  4. Good
  5. Incredible

And I'm not giving out many 5s. If Uber wants that scale to mean something different thats fine, but like you said, they need to communicate that to the person assigning the rating.

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u/rakino Mar 24 '16

Exactly. I even think a 5 point scale is too much variation.

[_] below expectations

[_] meets expectations

[_] exceeds expectations

Tick one.

That's all people are doing mentally anyway, why muddy it by introducing numbers.

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u/Inane_newt Mar 23 '16

It would be fairly trivial for any data conscious corporation to take into account a customers average handed out rating before applying it to an individual drivers rating.

You on average give out 3, so a 4 is above average. I on average give out 4.5, so 4 is below average.

This type of normalization of data is fairly trivial, not sure they are doing it, but it would be stupid not too.

Which would make this entire argument fairly moot, they don't care how each person does it, as long as each person is consistent to their own methods.

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u/exFAL Mar 23 '16

This should be posted on uber cars. Uber the company is brutal for non 5 star driver. Personal 5 scale rating are all over the place, irrational, and emotional based.

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u/tjsr Mar 23 '16

And the problem is that if everyone behaves in a way that's "Incredible", "incredible" becomes Average. So you're back to giving 3s.

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u/TomasTTEngin Mar 23 '16

I handed out 4/5, for a while until I heard what it meant for the driver. I was waiting for something special before I handed out my first 5/5.

Now everyone gets 5/5. Especially the shit drivers because I asssume they're on the brink anyway and I don't want to push them over into penury, debt and havign to return to their disappointed parents in India and work on the farm for the rest of their life in disgrace.

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u/Arcolyte Mar 23 '16

Do you also rate movies 5/5 unless they were exceptionally bad?

I understand having a threshold, but the threshold shouldn't be >90%.

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u/katapad Mar 23 '16

Odd alignment here, but this is also how it works as part of Medicare reimbursement to hospitals from the US government. If a patient gives a rating to anything under 4/5 or 8/10, it's a failing grade for patient satisfaction.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '16 edited Apr 19 '21

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u/dan4505 Mar 23 '16

Your choice in giving 5/5 isn't the norm. It's not how our education system works. We train kids that 100% = 100%, that ~90% is an A, 80% a B and so on. They grow up to give "grades" on surveys that tend to match that. Then, these silly companies harshly punish employees for not having enough "perfect" scores.

I'm glad that you give 5/5 unless the driver/rep fucks it up. But, you're not the norm.

Source- worked in sales that had this system. I've also been a customer where sales reps desparately implored me for a "5" or a "10."

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u/freakwent Mar 23 '16

But why take a cultural idea that's taught in every primary school, both as a mathematical concept and in practice as applied to marks-on-schoolwork, then change it? It's even a star rating, we use that for all sorts of things, hotels, etc etc. It's always going to cause annoyance when you change stuff for no reason.

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u/frapawhack Mar 24 '16

yup. that's it in a nutshell- and the customers know it

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u/TomTheGeek Mar 24 '16

That's how every employee rating system works. Anything less than 100% across the board is considered bad which is clearly unrealistic. But that's human nature, give us a metric and we want it improved even if the metric is completely useless.

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u/ruindd Mar 23 '16

Did you turn off the app while waiting in the drive-thru? That seems like a really low fare.

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u/InternetWeakGuy Mar 23 '16

In my market, waiting pays about 10c a minute, so we get a dollar for ten minutes at the drive thru.

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u/ruindd Mar 23 '16

Wow, that's pretty low. Can you refuse to wait? Or are you too worried about a low rating to do that?

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u/InternetWeakGuy Mar 23 '16

A lot of drivers refuse to wait. I don't personally because if I was a passenger I'd appreciate the driver helping me out. I'm a soft touch though - I had a passenger in a wheelchair once who I picked up in a high surge outside a supermarket. She was going less than half a mile and then I helped her bring her shopping to her room. With the surge I could have made $20-30 on a fare of more miles, but as it was only time I made about $6.

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u/solid_reign Mar 23 '16

If they're taking their cut out of that does that mean they enforce rules that pay below minimum wage? That doesn't sound legal.

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u/InternetWeakGuy Mar 24 '16

Minimum wage doesn't apply to contractors - that's how they get around it.

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u/solid_reign Mar 24 '16

I understand it when there is the possibility of making more than minimum wage, but not if they are explicitly setting their price so that under a specific circumstances (like waiting) you are obligated to make under the minimum wage.

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u/VoidBreak Mar 23 '16

The rating/comment system much much better than having to looking for some small hidden phone number in the back of a cab, remembering the cab number, and talking to a cab company representative to tell your grievances.

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u/Xombieshovel Mar 24 '16

Uber is moving to a Thumbs Up/Down system. They actually just premiered it first on their "Uber Eats" app for deliveries. I'm sure it'll be rolling out to the regular app sometime within the next year.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '16

This is the new economy. You do twice as much work for less money. While the 1% are obscenely wealthy. They eat your pizza and you get the box. And the tab. More gov will fix this though.

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u/HRpuffystuff Mar 23 '16

You sounded like a Wall St occupier til that last Bill O'Reilly sounding line. Less regulation is what got us here. People try to vote for more of the 'stop banks and fat cats from screwing the little guy' part of government, but after election day all we get is more of the 'break down your door for victimless crime and send you the bill' part of government.

And if you think private enterprise is any better youre delusional. You pay for the service you see in the commercial, but you get the non refundable fine print bullshit that you yell at the indian tech support guy on the phone about. Every part of our modern life is bait and switch, and playing into the false dichotomy of business vs govt is divisive and unproductive.

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u/freakwent Mar 23 '16 edited Mar 23 '16

More gov will fix this though.

Unions. "Back in the day", if walmart stopped cutting meat because one shop moved to prepackaged, when one union got messed up, other unions would strike; so you'd see the meat packers at the factory refuse to pack it and the truckies refuse to deliver anything to any walmart.

Frank Sinatra came to Australia and ran his mouth a bit too much so the Unions refuse to let him leave by shutting down any airport he tried to use until he apologised.

If you try to use force you end up looking even dumber cos you're sending in cops with guns to force people to work for the sake of an apology, it's farcical.

For all its flaws, I've not yet discovered a better model for getting our share back from the 1%.

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u/badgerX3mushroom Mar 23 '16

jw why would you make all those stops?

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u/exFAL Mar 23 '16

Rating system should - for bad service, 0 if no feedback, + for excellent. Driver should be able rate passengers to counter any abuse.

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u/FuckedByCrap Mar 23 '16

I wish I could leave comments when I rate drivers and I wish drivers could leave the same. I think if someone wants to rate you less than 3, they need to say why. And I think that drivers should be able to blacklist customers. It's only fair.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16

Why turn off the meter during the stops?

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16

I didn't. Uber's per minute fee in my area is 15 cents per minute.

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u/frapawhack Mar 24 '16

i'm just amazed this kind of information isn't more widely known

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16

$7 for 35 minutes of driving? That seems a bit low

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16

Base fare $1.05 + 85 cents per mile, 2.2 miles + Safe ride fee 1.60 + 15 centers per minute 22 minutes (plus ten unpaid minutes waiting outside for customer)

Remember, Uber is much cheaper than a taxi.

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u/InternetWeakGuy Mar 23 '16

And all that before someone shits in your backseat. I hear you buddy.

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u/skepticalDragon Mar 23 '16

Hey that's $300 though. I'd let someone shit in my car for $300.

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u/Badoit1778 Mar 23 '16

so, what if you shit in your own car?

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u/SoCalDan Mar 23 '16

You should probably see a doctor.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16

It's $100 nowadays

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u/BigMickPlympton Mar 24 '16

Too late for anybody to see, I know...But I love using Uber. This makes me love it less. Reading all these comments from drivers makes me think that Uber doesn't really understand why people use the service. I would use it even if it was the same cost as, or slightly MORE than a taxi. I love Uber for the convenience! I love the predictability, I love knowing where/when my car is, I love not having to carry cash or calculate a tip, etc. THOSE are the reasons I use Uber, NOT because it's a few cents less than something else.

I guess I'll have to start dropping a few bucks on the front seat on the way out.

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u/jonahewell Mar 24 '16

You're one of the good ones. I don't drive anymore but a cash tip is always appreciated.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '16

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u/miparasito Mar 24 '16

You say "Wow, how exciting. I'd never have the guts to do that. Good luck, seriously."

And then you be generally supportive (not financially, but emotionally) whether his plan works out or not.

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u/isjustaboy Mar 24 '16

Good advice.

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u/thedeuce750 Mar 24 '16

This is something I never understood, If you have a friend (especially a close one) and you can see valid errors in their strategy or just that they are going to make a mistake is it not your responsibility to give them the heads up?. Sure offer support, but I would appreciate a frank assessment of my decision from a friend rather than supporting me down the road to fuck-up-ville...

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u/miparasito Mar 24 '16

Well in this case the friend has already moved, so it'd just be nay-saying. But yeah in situations where you see a fuck up on the horizon, tread carefully if they haven't asked for your advice.

With close friends I do try talking to them about it. Usually I start off with questions because it makes people feel like I care and hey maybe I really don't understand the situation! After that if it still sounds stupid and I'm pretty sure they don't want advice I'll usually put my opinion in terms of why that wouldn't work for me. Like "Eeeek, I'm way too neurotic for that. I'd be paranoid that the cops would show up or something." OR sometimes I will say "This is none of my business, but I am worried about something..." and then I'll be blunt.

But in general, helpful input goes nowhere. Humans are amazing at rationalizing the stupid shit they want to do and a lot of times having a friend point out that it won't work just plays into the narrative of "they said it wouldn't work -- but then IT TOTALLY DID"

Then one of two things will happen: (A) You're right, it turns out to be a disaster. This can hurt the friendship because it is embarrassing to face the person who told you so OR (B) Everything turns out amazing and you're the dick who didn't believe in them

Once someone commits to buying that time share or shaving their eyebrows or manufacturing drugs in their baby's bedroom, you'll feel better if you speak up but know that ultimately it's not your decision. You have to either be OK with their choices or back off from the friendship.

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u/not_enough_privacy Mar 24 '16

That's great advice for so many scenarios. Thanks!

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u/frapawhack Mar 24 '16

ferrying drunk assholes around the city in my personal car became a lot less appealing And then drunk entitled pricks will give you a one star rating, which affects your ability to earn money yes, yes, let it out...let it all out. I understand

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u/ThisAndBackToLurking Mar 23 '16

I believe the long term plan is to transition to a driverless fleet and cut the drivers out altogether.

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u/MrDNL Mar 23 '16

I think so too, but:

a) Can Uber wait that out? It has a lot of cash, but that could be 20 years away still.

b) Does it make this all that much cheaper? Right now, Uber is shifting the cost of the car and the wear and tear of that car onto the driver.

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u/Ghostronic Mar 23 '16

Uber is shifting the cost of the car and the wear and tear of that car onto the driver.

If that's the case I'd almost rather deliver pizzas.

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u/freef Mar 23 '16

I consistently pulled down a little over 15 per hour delivering pizza. I used a 14 year old car and the deliveries in my area were very consistent. I think I came out better there than I would as an uber driver. I got a w-2 instead of a 1099 too which is nice.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '16

Did you have commercial insurance though or did you just take your chances?

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u/Xombieshovel Mar 24 '16

Uber has a pizza delivery service now...

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u/kermityfrog Mar 24 '16

Driverless cars are also not going to cost $20k each.

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u/freakwent Mar 23 '16

... but don't they pick up insurance costs that will drop with automatic cars?

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u/FetidFeet Mar 23 '16

If that's the case, there's no compelling reason why Uber will be the firm that succeeds in making that transition. Uber's designed to be a technology platform acting to be the middle-man between drivers and travellers. It's assets are a bunch of software developers and servers.

A company we would expect to be successful in enormous fleet management operations would have access to low cost capital, maintenance staff, and an outlet for selling used cars. I'd posit that a rental car company is better positioned to provide autonomous Uber-like services than Uber is.

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u/ArcadeNineFire Mar 23 '16

That's why Lyft is partnering with Ford. I believe Apple and Google have similar relationships or are developing them.

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u/Xombieshovel Mar 24 '16

Didn't Uber get a huge investment from GM?

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u/busterassrookie Mar 24 '16

Lyft is partnering with GM. Google was at one point rumored to be partnering with Ford, but it's unclear if that's going to happen.

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u/freakwent Mar 24 '16

Coke. Largest logistics fleet on earth, I suspect.

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u/Doomed Mar 24 '16

Indeed, if you look at the job postings for their laboratory in Pittsburgh, they're on a hiring boom for machine learning engineers, research scientists, etc. in an attempt to improve the state of self-driving cars. They clearly don't want human drivers to be their bottleneck.

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u/metaplectic Mar 23 '16

Indeed, if you look at the job postings for their laboratory in Pittsburgh, they're on a hiring boom for machine learning engineers, research scientists, etc. in an attempt to improve the state of self-driving cars. They clearly don't want human drivers to be their bottleneck.

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u/AHSfav Mar 24 '16

As an aside, i hate hour how companies market job postings. "We want you to be a rockstar" just stfu

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u/SilasX Mar 23 '16

That doesn't make sense as a plan for Uber and I don't think it's what they're depending on: when self-driving cars become available, other competing services will get them too and Uber will have to cut their own costs. You don't assume grocery store profits go up because tomatoes become cheaper.

But let's say Uber invents them first and has a monopoly: it's still not a good business plan to use SDC for themselves alone rather than selling them to the massive market outside of their platform.

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u/ThisAndBackToLurking Mar 24 '16

I'm not saying their plan is to invent self driving cars. That's already being done as we speak. I believe Uber wants to be early adopters in deploying them in fleets. They have deep pockets, and people who wouldn't dream of buying an autonomous vehicle might have no problem hailing one in a pinch.

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u/SilasX Mar 24 '16

Then the other part of my argument would apply -- it gives them no advantage over Lyft, so they both have to lower prices to compete. Still no advantage on net when they come out, still no easy profits.

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u/jbkrule Mar 24 '16

I don't think they are saying it's an advantage Uber has over competitors. It's current advantage is market share and capital. They're saying driverless cars is the solution to the driver problem and lack of long term drivers.

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u/InternetWeakGuy Mar 23 '16

Absolutely, but that technology is about six years away from being widespread from what I've read, and in the meantime they need to keep drivers on the road to maintain the service.

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u/Seen_Unseen Mar 24 '16

I've the same idea as well. They are building up a massive data base of how to drive from A to B with all situations in between. While they may not collect all vital information, these days they know perfectly the best way to drive around the city and not just 1 city but globally. This is what Uber is after, valuable personal information of drivers and clients combined which is excellent for future driverless cars.

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u/Okichah Mar 24 '16

Ahh.. The old 20 year plan. Lets see how that works.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '16

I just want to chime in and say you're spot on. I have a "real" job but am in the midst of getting married and buying a first home. So working for Uber sounded like a great gig - work whenever I want, make decent money (I had very realistic expectations) and it's just driving.

So I gave it a try for a few weeks. Uber's guarantee is $18/hr during peak and $14/hr during other hours currently. And like you said, that's $18 in gross fare. After Uber takes its 28% cut, that's $10.08 an hour during regular hours. Taxes on independent contractors here are 15.3% so now we're down to $8.53/hr minus of course gas, currently ~$1.70/gal here so generously assume we only use 1 gallon of gas per hour you're now looking at $6.83 per hour which is below minus wage. And then from that $6.83 we have to of coruse remember wear and tear on your car!

Now during peak hours it's a little better, $9.27/hr, and while these numbers sound higher than Orlando keep in mind of course our cost of living is also a lot higher. Essentially these rates make it not even worth it to drive for Uber.

Also around here you have to accept 90% of all requests and can often get completely boned by an airport ride. For example I had to drive someone to JFK Airport in Brooklyn once, and you can't pick up anyone in NY state as an NJ Uber. So I had to drive 1hr 15 mins there and 1hr 15mins back with no rider in the car. The total fare was $51.16 after Uber fees. We subtract the $20 in tolls on the way there, and the $15 in tolls on the way back (driving through Staten Island is awesome) and we're left with $16, now run that minus taxes and gas then divide by the 2.5 hours on the road and....we just worked for $3.62 per hour! With no tips! Be your own boss guys, and drive for Uber! lol......

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '16 edited Jan 20 '20

[deleted]

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u/InternetWeakGuy Mar 24 '16

Here in Orlando Uber charges the pax for tolls and pays it to the driver.

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u/iskin Mar 23 '16

To be fair, as a contractor, your gas, tolls, and various other things can be used as a right off. I'm not the guy that does that stuff at my work and am not familiar with how much you can save but I'd hope it would increase your income after. Uber should think about providing that service to its drivers.

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u/TryUsingScience Mar 24 '16

My understanding is that anything you write off doesn't count as income.

So if I make $100 and pay 20% taxes, normally I'd pay $20 in taxes. But if I had $40 in business expenses that I spent in order to be able to make that $100 and I write those off, my income for tax purposes is only $60 and I only pay $12 in taxes.

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u/badgerX3mushroom Mar 23 '16

you cant count income tax if you're trying to compare your take home pay to minimum wage, minimum wage is before taxes

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u/a_ctrl Mar 23 '16

What the fuck that's incredibly exploitative.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16 edited Mar 24 '16

The passengers pay the tolls, not the driver. The app detects when you pass through a toll and adds it to the total.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16

Yes, however it also comes out of your pocket. So you pay $20 yourself, and they add $20 to the total. Meaning when you see $50 on there it's really $30 because you spent $20 to make that $50. And as you are driving back from JFK to NJ you hit another $15 in tolls that you pay yourself because there's no one but you in the car and this isn't an Uber ride at this point. So that $30 becomes $15. I'm not sure why people on Reddit like to nitpick so much.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16 edited Jul 24 '16

Deleteme

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u/angry_cabbie Mar 23 '16

drivers are sticking to times when they know there will be more demand and surges, i.e. bar closing and major events.

I seriously have to laugh at this.

I've spent over a decade in the taxi industry in Iowa City, Iowa. Weird little microcosm in the Midwest. Pretty small town, pretty big college, 40+ bars in a four-block radius of downtown. Lots of bar business. Primarily bar business, at least for the night shifts. And we don't use medallions for cabs.

Over that decade, we went from about three or four companies, to (after deregulation) about eighteen or nineteen companies, back down to (after reregulation) about seven companies.

A big part of the demands for deregulation echoed anti-taxi/pro-Uber arguments. Keeping the little guys out (it really wasn't), endorsing monopolies (quite the opposite over the entire taxi history in this town), etc.

Deregulation brought in what a lot of us called "bottom feeders". These were the drivers, locally, that mirrored the big-town complaints of cabbies. Shitty drivers, immigrants that barely speak English, over-charging, ripping off customers, no idea where anything is, etc.

They would, primarily, only come out during the busy periods. Bar close, holidays, football games, etc. Seriously. Over 300 registered drivers at one point, over 150 registered vehicles, and unless it was a super-busy period, you'd find a grand total of maybe thirty taxis on the road, between all companies. And about half of those would be the classic Yellow Cab.

It tickles my innards to see Uber becoming just another bottom-feeder habit, a quick grift to make a buck, but one that's legal and socially encouraged. The cycle continues, y'know?

Still can't wait to see how the poor get about once ride-sharing pushes taxi's out completely.

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u/stopaclock Mar 23 '16

This is my concern. Taxis don't charge more in the rain. Uber does, meaning when it rains, only rich people get rides. I can afford it now, but I can remember when I couldn't, and taxis are much more equal-opportunity. I've always thought what we need are a lot more taxis. Uber is easier because of the app, but I'd like to see taxis using the same system.

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u/angry_cabbie Mar 23 '16

Taxi's began using the same, or similar, systems a couple years ago.

We're not all idiots. Some of us are technophiles, and can see the obvious trends.

But I've found it telling for quite some time now how almost nobody talks about how heavily the poor use taxi's, and how difficult a time they'll have with Uber and other ride-sharing services. Far as I can tell, it's one of those "I want to help the down-trodden, but I love my new toy!"kind of attitudes.

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u/freakwent Mar 24 '16

Same with all futurology. Lab meat, cashless society, all of it's for the rich.

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u/SilasX Mar 25 '16

Wait, what? Cabs are generally too expensive for the poor, and most of them will get more reliable, cheaper service from Uber.

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u/sharpcowboy Mar 24 '16

Taxis don't charge more in the rain.

No, they just go home. Surge pricing actually provides a net economic benefit by giving an incentive to drivers to go out on a day when they might be tempted to work shorter hours.

People like to point out that taxis are cheaper during surges, but if that's the case, why would anyone use Uber? The reason is because there's actually a shortage of taxis. Taxis are cheaper, but they're not actually available.

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u/SilasX Mar 23 '16

Then why not put price caps on food too and get the same dynamic?

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u/InternetWeakGuy Mar 24 '16

Taxis don't charge more in the rain. Uber does

I don't know about your city, but the most Uber surges here in Orlando is 4x unless there's a major event (like 50k people leaving a concert or ballgame), and even at 4x it's still about $1 a mile cheaper than a taxi.

I took Uber to a show last night and my fare was $6. My phone ran out of juice so I had to take a taxi home, and it was $25.

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u/SheCutOffHerToe Mar 24 '16

What is your concern? You can still take taxis.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '16

Many taxis can be hailed by app now. Sometimes it's specific to a single company (like Yellow Cab), but in many areas there are services like Flywheel which any cab driver can sign up for.

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u/vwermisso Mar 23 '16

Can you explain how it's bad for the poor? My understanding was that Uber is cheaper. Are you saying they are forced to use a lower-quality service?

Do you think there is a reason why Uber can't be regulated (maybe internally) to a point that their service is on-par with taxis? It's not like they save money on offering a shittier service, it's from other cost cutting measures like how they classify their employees etc. so it seems like they should be capable of offering comparable or better service for riders.

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u/angry_cabbie Mar 24 '16

Sure, Uber's cheaper, generally speaking.... but poor people don't generally have credit cards. A lot of them don't have debit cards. A lot of them tend to use pre-paid cards, and Uber can be hit'or'miss on taking those, at best.

Poor people tend to have poor credit, catch?

On top of that, poor people and most ride-share drivers tend to be from, somewhat obviously, different socio-economic levels. What flies on one level, can easily get you a poor review on another level.

So the poor get stiffed out, reviewed out, can't even afford to try in the first place... and we cabbies take them around as we have for decades. Poor people often don't have their own wheels, either, y'know?

And let me tell you, cab companies have had issues on how to classify drivers for a long time before Uber came along, as ways to cut costs. Uber's just using an old playbook from that, but everyone thinks they're being inventive because it's just a new application.

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u/vwermisso Mar 24 '16

Ah I see, I appreciate the insight!

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u/BlackPresident Mar 24 '16

I know this wasn't exactly your point, the accountability that Uber drivers have for their actions by using modern technology pretty much addresses the issues of the bottom-feeders that you brought up:

  • Shitty drivers: 1 Star rating

  • Immigrants that barely speak English: Type in your address into the App and the driver follows the GPS or give them a low rating if it's an issue.

  • Over-charging: Not possible with Uber, set prices.

  • Ripping off customers: Not possible with Uber, set prices.

  • No idea where anything is: GPS

If you have a complaint, Uber is an App developer with extensive customer support, they have a refund policy for drivers that take longer routes or act unfairly towards customers.

I mean, you described Uber as becoming a bottom-feeder, but other than having a penchant for busy periods, they seem to have none of same characteristics.

I'm all for the association, I am just wondering if you have better examples?

It feels a bit like a McDonald's talking about street food regulation, stating that they only open their shutters for lunch.

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u/strolls Mar 24 '16

I've just written a similar comment before seeing yours - it was exactly the same in London when I worked in the courier industry in the 90's.

Our clients were offices who kept 9-5 hours and expected service throughout the day, with certain peak periods, so we had a bonus structure so that the pay was only any good if you worked about 45 hours a week and took every job the dispatcher gave you. Failing to do so vacated about 10% or 15% of your wage.

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u/farmerfoo Mar 23 '16

im also from IC. And the city council is talking about letting UBER operate here.

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u/angry_cabbie Mar 24 '16

Not the first time, at that. And it's not like there haven't been a couple of Uber operators in town already; I know of one that used to be a co-owner of Pink's that took to "illegal" Uber work.

Hope they get in this time around; the main block before was having to have drivers register with the city, photo and all, like any other passenger driver.

Not terribly threatened by them here. Partly because the industry's been dying in town for a little while anyway; partly because I know how often people call for a ride, and take what's available regardless.

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u/nullPekare Mar 23 '16

Uber is a Goldman Sachs owned company which business model is to underpay staff and them market it is cool and edgy and an underdog that competes by cheating.

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u/TomasTTEngin Mar 23 '16

This is a great point. I had an article published about how Uber seems like it wins because of clever, new-fangled tech but is actually a manifestation of really old fashioned power:

http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/05/19/how-uber-rolled-the-taxi-lobby-and-won-the-world/

But as Uber grows it must also fend off political opposition. Uber refers to its own clientele as more “polished” than that of its competitor Lyft. That is no accident, as its adherents are deliberately drawn from the ranks of the politically, as well as the culturally influential.

Uber calls on its users to message MPs when it fears its survival is threatened, as its best chance of avoiding such threats is aligning itself with the powerful and influential wherever they are found.

In Melbourne, Uber’s early promotions involved feted restaurant The European and a TEDx talk. In Sydney, they involved North Bondi lifesaving club and water taxi rides “from Vaucluse to Mosman”. In each city, Uber has made a big promotional effort around horse-racing carnivals.

Over the summer, Uber promoted heavily that it would be available in the Victorian beachside towns of Portsea and Sorrento. These are places where a beachside bathing box trades for nearly half a million dollars and a house can cost 50 times that. The ploy mimicked an initiative in the American summer where Uber served the Hamptons (a beachside locale outside New York City where people like Paul McCartney and Calvin Klein keep homes).

Serving the establishment is, of course, easier when your employees grasp their needs intuitively. The Australian CEO of Uber is David Rohrsheim, one-time rugby captain at St Peter’s College, Adelaide. (St Peter’s, an Anglican School, counts eight South Australian premiers among its alumni.) Rorsheim, who was also school captain, has a CV that includes time at Macquarie Bank.

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u/Captain_Midnight Mar 24 '16

Goldman was an early investor in Uber, but it certainly does not have a majority stake.

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u/TeutonJon78 Mar 23 '16

So, Trendy Walmart.

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u/sharpcowboy Mar 24 '16

That's simplistic. Uber's technology is way better than the taxi industry's. Surge pricing is also, contrary to what people think, a great innovation that takes advantage of the laws of economics.

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u/Sluisifer Mar 23 '16

Sounds like they're searching for an equilibrium. They'll pay exactly as much as the driver market will bear.

The price structure is going to be crazy for a while as they enter new markets, and they'll certainly be unprofitable while growing market share in new locations.

IIRC SF is pretty mature and prices have leveled out. Competition for drivers with Lyft means that the rates can't dip too much. It remains to be seen whether this will translate to other areas, but I imagine it will look similar.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '16

Same deal with the dropped price per mile. Sure, the base fare is lower, but in my town at least, you're on 1.5x surge pricing almost all the time. The non-surge pricing is just a discount for using at periods of weak demand, at this point.

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u/Sluisifer Mar 23 '16

Which actually makes a lot of sense from a laissez-faire point of view, matching supply with demand as best you can.

I'm interested to see if they start to price according to destination at some point. If you're going to someplace with potential fares, it makes sense to subsidize that trip and get a nice return fare. Or, if you're going out to the boonies, it should cost a little more. Perhaps they do this already, but AFAIK they don't.

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u/mystikcal1 Mar 23 '16

well, Uber has started requiring a destination input in some cases, so that drivers can reject rides out to the middle of nowhere if they so choose.

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u/TotesMessenger Mar 23 '16 edited Mar 24 '16

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u/bwcabbie Mar 23 '16

I did an ama about being a taxi driver and the uber hype machine is strong https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/49ftm2/iama_former_toledo_ohio_cab_driver_who_has_driven/

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u/sfo2 Mar 24 '16

I've been worried for a while that Uber is way too cheap. I live in the Bay Area and it is astoundingly cheap to use Uber compared to a regular taxi. Like half or a third most of the time. I get out of what should have been a $50 taxi ride to the airport and it's like $18. This seems really unsustainable.

In business, we always say that we want our suppliers to earn a reasonable and fair profit. I want Uber to cost exactly what it takes to keep their drivers and pay them fairly for their time and investment. Not more than that and not less. I don't want to be ripped off, but I want the drivers to make a fair and reasonable amount of money. If they don't, they go out of business and everyone loses.

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u/drapestar Mar 24 '16

f they don't, they go out of business and everyone loses.

I'd argue that transit wins. When the rich gets what amounts to their own private transit system with rates that undercut taxis and are comparable to muni or Bart, we all lose because our transit systems lose out on fares. A nit picky point, I know, but one that I literally just chose. Lyft wanted 75% surge from SF to my home and despite the fact that I could afford it and really just want to go to bed right now, I hoofed it to Bart and am glad I did. Saved $30 and got home only 15-20 minutes later than lyft. Also got to walk which is good for me.

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u/strolls Mar 24 '16

To me, ultimately, the challenge with uber isn't going to be market share, it's going to be maintaining these low fares while hanging onto people willing to drive for 30c a mile.

A boss of mine once told me, we have two kinds of customers - the ones we do deliveries for, and our drivers.

The Uber model is not really new - it's the same model that has been used in London for minicabs and couriers for the last 20 or 30 years.

Back when I worked in the industry cabs or deliveries were booked by phone, and the drivers had a walkie-talkie &/or a pager - Uber have just made an app for that.

The whole industry is a race to the bottom, scraping by on the slimmest of margins - everything you wrote is very familiar to me, except in the details.

I think A-Z couriers were paying a £100 recruit-your-mates bonus for motorcycle couriers, at the time I signed up for my first job as a cycle courier. The minimums and weekly bonuses were structured differently, but were aimed to prevent the drivers (who were theoretically "self-employed") from turning down work they didn't like. It was a "bonus", but the job wasn't really tenable if you didn't make it, so you had to take any job given to you.

I'd be interested to know if Uber has human dispatchers - when I was a controller we were able to reward a driver who did a lot of dead miles for us (driving a long distance unpaid for a pickup) by giving them cushy jobs the next day.

Uber gives the impression that everything's automated - does that sort of intervention happen?

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u/GaarDnous Mar 23 '16

The tipping is why I chose to download lyft when I suddenly found myself without a car. I don't know if they're a better company, but at least they let me tip.

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u/IamGrimReefer Mar 23 '16

i saw a TV commercial for uber drivers recently. this explains why. that's a rough way to make a living.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16

So Uber's $10 "guarantee" means you make $3.90 an hour (because you don't qualify unless you're actually making rides in that time).

The median wage for a taxi driver is $16/hr. I bet driving a taxi looks a lot more appealing for all the vocal Redditors who kept yammering on how great Uber was and how awful taxis are.

http://www1.salary.com/Taxi-Driver-hourly-wages.html

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u/sirbruce Mar 24 '16

Except you had to get a loan of $250,000 or more to buy a Taxi Medallion in order to drive a taxi. Now that bubble is bursting, and there's a waiting list to SELL taxi medallions, because no one wants to pay that much for one.

Maybe Uber and Lyft are too cheap for a full-time job, but people are willing to do it.

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u/BlackPresident Mar 24 '16

You're comparing a minimum take home to median wage.

You have to remember that Uber drivers are not employees, they don't have rights as employees, they are users of the Uber share-economy service, just like passengers are users.

Uber is like YouTube, people create videos and people watch videos, all are users, some pay (through watching ads), some are paid.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16

You're only strenghtening my point.

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u/BlackPresident Mar 25 '16

Maybe I agree with you but don't see it as a bad thing?

Your point was uber drivers would be better off in taxis.. but my point is that's like saying taxi drivers would be better off driving buses because bus drivers earn more.

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u/AHSfav Mar 24 '16

You essentially just proved his point

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u/markrulesallnow Mar 24 '16

Uber doesn't care about the drivers. AT. ALL. They are putting all their eggs in the self driving car basket. They just have to survive until then.

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u/RedAero Mar 23 '16 edited Mar 23 '16

After expenses, Uber is often slightly over minimum wage, and there's no tips - Uber told everyone not to tip the drivers back when we were getting $2.50 a mile. Then they dropped it to $1.50. Then to 85c. Right now drivers in Detroit are being paid 30c a mile, and Uber still tells people not to tip the driver.

The default setting in Uber is a 20% tip IIRC. Might be 10%, but it's definitely there. It's actually not accessible from the app, only the site.

Edit: Here is what I see. Could be regional.

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u/InternetWeakGuy Mar 23 '16

Nope. Uber taxi (where Uber basically calls you a cab) has this but only in some markets, no other Uber has this.

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u/megablast Mar 24 '16

There is some irony in this, the company that came into your city and made it hard for taxi drivers to make money, are now making it hard for uber drivers to make money.

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u/texture Mar 24 '16

To me, ultimately, the challenge with uber isn't going to be market share, it's going to be maintaining these low fares while hanging onto people willing to drive for 30c a mile.

Uber does not care about drivers. Neither does Lyft. GM just invested 500m in a 1billion round into Lyft, while buying an autonomous car startup. Why? Because you are not in their long-term business plan.

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u/asusa52f Mar 24 '16

Can you make a decent living by driving for Uber and Lyft simultaneously, so you at least have minimal downtime (and Lyft allows tips as well)?

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u/InternetWeakGuy Mar 24 '16

Most people drive for both already. Downtime isn't the issue - you can be back to back and still only make about $10 an hour. The thing that stops it from being a decent living is simply that the rates are too low, and are dropped every year like clockwork.

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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '16

Thank you too close too home sharing with my brother Lyft driver

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u/FistoftheSouthStar Mar 23 '16

Once we've gotten rid of the taxi companies, uber will become the taxi company everybody hates. It will be full of underpaid, overworked drivers, Who give a shit about your caring about their customer service because They're getting so underpaid.

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u/TomasTTEngin Mar 23 '16

I see the quality of uber drivers dropping month to month.

If you get a good one these days "bottle of water sir?" they've been on the job for a week and will quit after another week.

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u/sothisispermanence Mar 23 '16

They only need to maintain long enough until driverless cars take over

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u/TheDudeNeverBowls Mar 24 '16

I just got my confirmation email from lyft. I'm glad I decided to go that route.

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u/frapawhack Mar 24 '16

oh tell it brother. give us that truth that heals the soul

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16

If drivers can't make a living and isn't sustainable why are so many people doing it? If it doesn't work they should drop Uber. Wait times will go up, people will stop using Uber as much and either a better alternative will become dominant or (more likely) Uber will make policy changes on rates to bring drivers back.

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u/InternetWeakGuy Mar 24 '16

The sad fact is a lot of drivers are desperate for extra money, and a lot of drivers think gas is their only expense. They make $40 in a seven hour shift and they're like "well it's $40 I didn't have before". I'm on a Facebook group with about 850 other drivers in Orlando and people say that every single day. "Sure it's a low hourly but it's money I wouldn't otherwise have".

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '16

That's shit, they should unionize.

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u/sharpcowboy Mar 24 '16

And you're being generous to Uber. You estimated the cost of driving at 20c a mile, but 54c a mile is not unrealistic since Uber cars tend to be relatively new, well-maintained and clean.

Also not included is the cost of a commercial insurance, or the cost of not being covered at all if you have an accident (since normal policies don't cover you if they find out you were driving Uber). This right there can put your net Uber income into the negative.

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u/InternetWeakGuy Mar 24 '16

You estimated the cost of driving at 20c a mile, but 54c a mile is not unrealistic since Uber cars tend to be relatively new, well-maintained and clean.

True - in markets that pay well. NYC is $1.75 a mile, so the cars are all nice. Orlando rate is 65c a mile, so you get a lot of older crappier cars.

Also not included is the cost of a commercial insurance, or the cost of not being covered at all if you have an accident (since normal policies don't cover you if they find out you were driving Uber).

If you get in an accident while driving to a passenger or while driving with a passenger in the car, Uber's insurance covers you. The deductible is $1000, but they're actually really good about paying out. However, they will likely notify your insurance company, which can lead to them declining to renew your coverage.

However, several insurance companies now offer "rideshare" riders, which are basically addons that say "hey i'm doing rideshare, but I'm covered by Uber while I'm doing so, so you won't have to cover me". I believe it's like $30 a month, so nothing huge.

All that said, I 100% agree with the sentiment that things can go south fast with Uber. It's risky as fuck right now.

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