Lyft Burning Cash on the Way to $500M Round

techcrunch.com

10 points·zhuxuefeng1994··3 comments

In Austin they've had a 50% off promotion for several months straight now. They keep claiming it's going to expire only to extend it at the last minute. I'm curious if they're doing this in other cities too to try to promote growth.

I'm curious how this strategy will work long term - it's obviously not sustainable, and I have to imagine they'll lose a large number of customers as soon as they stop the promotion as they're simply more expensive than Uber. I'm happy to use the discount right now, but I can't imagine I'll continue to use them afterwards as Uber costs less.

I've been really disappointed with Lyft, even as I've used it for over 100 rides. The driver quality has been getting worse and worse. I got an email months ago telling me that I had gotten enough rides to be in the top 10% and be a part of "Lyft Nation", and then never heard about that again. And today they tried to get me to buy Justin Bieber music of all things, right from the app.

So I downloaded Uber today. I really wanted to like you Lyft, but your problems are of your own doing.

Uber is even worse. And they pay their drivers worse and seem to be a worse company to work for.

But I do agree - I've used it over 200 times in the last year and I've been giving a lot more non-5 star ratings lately. Drivers who are dangerous.. Drivers who don't pay attention to their GPS.. Drivers who fiddle with their phone while driving.. Drivers who plain miss me and cancel the ride.

I started using Lyft because I didn't want my drivers to drive like cabbies (as Uber drivers often felt like).. maybe that's simply something you can't expect in this market for very long.

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