Writing about an app can be challenging. An app like Uber’s is constantly changing, something that can mess you up if you’re trying to be topical.
For example, I wrote a rough draft of my book Confessions of an Uber Driver two years ago expounding on the hacks drivers could use to manipulate the app to get it to take you into lucrative neighborhoods. No sooner did I finish writing about it then Uber changed the app to provide upfront all the information drivers would need to know before accepting a ride, negating the need to manipulate it, and rendering what I had written irrelevant.
With every update to the app (which happens at least twice a year), new features are introduced and old ones retired. What’s more, Uber and Lyft switch things up. In the most recent development, which cropped up just days after my book was published, Uber began offering rides with extremely long pick up routes.
Drivers have always been offered their next ride while the current ride is underway, which means as a driver you have your next ride waiting when your current ride is completed. Efficient? Yes. Profitable? It can be, especially if the driving time to your next rider is 5 minutes or less. (Remember, the trick to making good money as a rideshare driver is fast turnover.) But now Uber is up to something puzzling.
In the past, the app didn’t send you new ride requests until you were 5 minutes from dropping off your current rider. Then it would typically send you ride requests that were 8 minutes or less away. But recently the app has begun sending ride requests early in the current ride, as much as 20 minutes before the pending drop off, and showing much longer routes to the next pick-up spots, as much as 15 minutes from this pending drop off. This is nuts.
If you accept a ride that you can’t even start driving to until 20 minutes from now, and then it takes you 15 minutes to drive there, the next rider will have to wait 35 minutes to be picked up. In most cases they’re not going to do that. They’ll just cancel.
I tried this a few times to see what would happen and, sure enough, 4 out of 5 riders canceled. What is Uber thinking?
I’ve been scratching my head over this for a few weeks, and the best I can come up with is Uber is trying to obscure the actual amount they’re willing to compensate drivers for those rides. As noted in the book, Uber has been eroding driver’s pay relentlessly for years now, using various underhanded methods to hide it from drivers. With upfront fares, it would appear the amount of compensation for any ride is transparent as the app shows drivers upfront what they will be paid for each ride. But what if the ride is 40% longer than it appears to be?
Keep in mind, drivers have 10 seconds to read the information that pops up in order to make a decision about whether or not to accept the ride, and there’s a lot of information to take in. You have to discern where the ride is heading, how long it will take to get there, how much the ride pays, whether it’s a single ride or a share, whether it has multiple stops, and what grade of service is being offered. You have to do all this while you’re navigating through traffic and trying to avoid running over pedestrians who are threatening to walk in front of you. It's easy to miss things. Now Uber has added something else.
In the past, most pick up spots were not more than 8 minutes from the last drop-off. Now they can be as much as 30 minutes away. If you don’t notice this information upfront, what looks like a 20 minute ride for $14 (equivalent to $42 per hour) could actually be a 45 minute ride for $14 (equivalent to $18.65 per hour). And this assumes the rider is waiting and ready to hop into the car the moment you arrive. If not, your pay will drop further.
I’ve gotten wise to this trick and now reject every ride sent to me before I’m within 5 minutes of my current drop off. Within that shorter time frame, most rides offered to me have reasonable pick-up routes of 8 minutes or less. I can only hope other drivers act accordingly.
Riders can help the situation by cancelling any rides sent to them that have pick-up times greater than 10 minutes. Just cancel that faraway ride, wait a minute, and order the ride again. I spoke to a rider who told me he did this and it worked. The next ride was a whole lot closer. If enough riders and drivers refuse to play this game, maybe Uber will give it up.
In any case, this whole new wrinkle occurred less than a week after I published the book, so I couldn’t include it. But it all goes to show how difficult it is to write about an app that’s constantly changing. In this blog and in my newsletter, which you can sign up for here, I will try to keep you abreast of new developments. And perhaps you can email me and let me know you’re theory about what they’re doing, and we can talk about it.
Malcolm
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