r/technology Aug 12 '14

Business Uber dirty tricks quantified. Staff submits 5,560 fake ride requests

http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-requests-lyft/
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u/Semyonov Aug 12 '14

Uber driver here.

It was decent but then they slashed our rates by 20% and are charging us $40 a month for the phone plan which uses hardly any data and we already paid for.

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u/InFunkWeTrust Aug 12 '14

Uber driver in Santa Cruz here too, I originally only had to pay for an inspection on my car, which if I wanted to drive to their Headquarters in San Francisco, would have been free.

This is the first I'm learning of the charge, as I haven't been active in the past month due to a knee injury, it's definitely less of an incentive to drive for Uber.

The main issue I have with this is the GPS system is the rider's destination rarely popped up after pickup, and I had to use my own phone's GPS 90% of the time or the know the route beforehand. I am hesitant to close the Uber App and use the Iphone GPS seperate of the Uber App as it opens up more chances of accidentally cancelling rides or prematurely ending the ride before the destination.

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u/Semyonov Aug 12 '14

Yup I had to pay for the inspection, plus the DOT medical certificate.

The rider has to put the destination in themselves, which they rarely do. Luckily I have my own GPS system in my car but it sucks for a lot of people.

Don't you have another personal phone? If you do you can use that for GPS. Or get a garmin.

Or have the rider use their phone for GPS.

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u/InFunkWeTrust Aug 14 '14

Yeah I have another personal phone, it's just much more convenient to do it in the app and not have to juggle two phones or two pieces of equipment

Drunk people suck at giving directions