Why is either business the cat's meow?
- CEO never blackmailed journalists
- No major revelations of sexual harassment
- ~~No major revelations of political support~~
Related to core business
- Surge Limit has prevented complaints about emergency pricing vs Uber.
- Lyft takes a lower commission capped at 20%/25%
- Lyft has in app digital tipping (drivers keep 100% of tips). Uber's tip policy encourages cash, which is an often cited complaint of taxis.
- Major investment / partnership with GM (mentioned in an Uber thread that Car Makers will need a cheap / reasonably priced app)
I've never understood why uber doesn't let you tip from within the app. it further solidifies the perception that uber doesn't care about its drivers. they can't wait to replace all their human drivers with a self driving fleet. can the same be said about lyft? maybe. but at least the humans are being compensated better by lyft right now.
I actively make choices for things like transit and food which reduce how much I have to think about tipping. I don't like having to judge someone's service, and decide how much it's appropriate to tip them based on some unwritten societal rule.
The signal that hiding tips away sends is "the service provider is being compensated already", and if you want to make an extra effort to pay them more you can, but it's not required of you.
I'm absolutely in favor of Uber/Lift charging whatever is necessary to pay their drivers properly. Similarly, I love no-tip restaurants which pay their servers and kitchen staff living wages.
I use neither Uber nor Lyft, so may wrong here, but don't both services strongly encourage passengers to rate drivers based on the quality of the ride?
Why is it awkward to judge someone based on a tip, but not on attribution of stars?
(Yes, I think the 1-5 star rating scheme has its own notable flaws based on how Uber seems to use it.)
Ok, great, but they don't, so the practical effect of your stand against tipping is less money for these drivers.
And why? Because you find it socially awkward? That's why it's better to have it in the app. You just get out of the car and it drives away. Then you select the tip in the app. Way better than Uber's system of "hand the driver some ones."
> The signal that hiding tips away sends is "the service provider is being compensated already", and if you want to make an extra effort to pay them more you can, but it's not required of you.
I agree that's the signal, but that doesn't mean it's true.
Eh, public transit it is, then.
Not that this is a sacrifice for me. I also hate how chatty most Uber/Lyft drivers are, so I rarely use them anyway.
I would gladly pay 15% more for a service, if I knew that the tip was included.
My problem with tipping is that it's become unclear when to tip, and when not to tip.
You tip you server, ok. You tip the bus boy at the hotel, ok. You tip your hair stylist, ok. You tip your Uber driver? huh, ok... Tip the guy who just made you a smoothie? Tip your starbucks barista? Tip the bus driver?
Nobody can clearly define when to tip, and when not to. It's entirely arbitrary, which is a horrible system to begin with. Never mind the fact that employers should pay fair wages to begin with. The fact that anyone DEPENDS on tips to get by, seems like the employer passing the buck.
Honesty lyft's pink branding and mustache logo gives off a fun and underdog vibe. Not many companies go for pink. Their 50% female executive represention probably plays a role.
Uber on the other hand with black/silver gives off a very strong corporate "we're gonna fuck you over if you don't play by our rules" vibe.
This are emotional arguments but that's what branding is all about.
Other people's livelihoods shouldn't depend on your sense of generosity. When I go above and beyond at my job I get a pat on the back and satisfaction of doing a good job. I don't do good work out of mercenary sensibilities.
This article and the research behind it
http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/restaurants/a23132/why-tip...
3. The percentage basis makes no sense.
4. Better service doesn't actually beget better tips.
5. It perpetuates racism and sexism.
If you go out and eat a fantastic piece of food do you think the person who should be rewarded is:
* The person who actually made the food.
* The person who carried it to your table.
You can complain that people should be paid a fair wage, but they aren't. I wish for many things, such as the end of warfare, but I accept the current reality that I live in and that I don't care enough about tipping to dedicate time and energy to affect its change. I'm not going to go out of my way to change some business's wage policy. It's sub-optimal, but what isn't? Humans are terrible at setting the correct prices for goods and services. The market does not provide either for a number of reasons (eg we don't take externalities into account, love to socialize losses and privatize gains without getting caught, etc.) It's been this way for longer than I've been alive and has shown no signs of abating.
If it bothers you that there is an OPTION to tip in an app, there's some insecurity there for a reason. Honestly, I like the system. I tip well at bars. As a result, bartenders will occasionally give me free drinks, engage in meaningful conversations, or just really go out of their way for me.
Now, I don't think that's sufficient to say that all tipping is to be avoided, but I certainly understand the urge to avoid it, ceteris parabus.
Isn't this just the bartender stealing from his employer? Did he use your tip to buy the alcohol?
The way I view it, I've already gotten a discounted cab ride thanks to the VCs. So the very least I can do in my fortunate situation is share a dollar or two for the guy who drove me home at 3am.
It's a dollar; you folks making six-figures are really gonna hold out against a person who drove you across town just 'cause you disagree with the currently (broken) system?
I want to have the option to tip for exceptional service or if I really enjoyed taking to the driver, but I do not want to feel obliged to, which is the issue currently with the low wages.
https://hbr.org/2016/05/ubers-new-tipping-policy-is-a-mistak...
Suggesting that black people are somehow to blame for Uber not allowing in-app tips is one of the most out there things I've seen on HN, and that's saying something.
http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/restaurants/a23132/why-tip...
When they were sued by their own workers because of this and had their backs against the wall, they had to claim it was because of this racist hand-wavy BS.
It was a ret-con and an incredibly cynical and insulting thing to do, but that's now the official reason they didn't allow tips.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/04/27/uber-resists...
Drivers are now allowed to ask for tips; I've had drivers with tip jars and squares available. And I've seen reddit discussions of drivers calling riders who don't tip dicks.
The first few times I used Uber, the most impressive aspect of it to me was that at the end I could literally just get out of the car. It was done. Payment was already handled. This was a tremendous improvement over the experience with taxis, where paying could be stressful and awkward and not even easy.
To this day I'm strongly against tips for Uber. Uber already has a rating system. I don't need the ability to decline to tip to communicate that a driver did poorly: I can just give them a low rating. So the only argument remaining for tipping built into the app is to supplement their pay, but that is a slippery slope that will quickly hurt drivers.
As soon as drivers routinely expect and rely on tips, that opens up Uber to reducing their rates to grab more customers. Drivers will become totally reliant on tips to make a decent wage, just like servers are in the restaurant industry. But not every customer will tip appropriately, which means one of two things:
(1) Either the drivers' overall compensation will go down due to the non-tippers, or
(2) The expected tips will go up, so that tipping customers effectively subsidize non-tipping customers.
In Atlanta this happened last fall. [Some] Uber drivers now have tip jars square readers ready.
I'd much rather have the price baked in like other countries.
You're not the customer of Square. It's great UX if your goal is to get more people tipping.
(I've said this before at food trucks)
But I changed from Chevron to Shell because of their bad UX for Safeway rewards integration, and I've noticed that Philz never asks me to tip on their Point of Sale system while places like Signtglass do. And my noticing will likely have affected by purchasing behavior.
They took a kind of strong stance [1] in protesting the recent order that restricted travel from those seven countries, so that's a political statement (whether or not we agree with it.)
Their announcement also included some strawman language, which turned off some people:
"This weekend, Trump closed the country’s borders to refugees, immigrants, and even documented residents from around the world based on their country of origin. Banning people of a particular faith or creed, race or identity, sexuality or ethnicity, from entering the U.S. is antithetical to both Lyft’s and our nation’s core values."
The first sentence was true, the second sentence (while noble and I like it) was a strawman.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/29/lyft-donates-1m-to-the-acl...
The immigration order was flawed enough as it was. It doesn't need a speck of embellishment in order to criticize it.
Is it though? For example of Muslim, it does not even affect about 88% of the world's Muslims (Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, Turkey, Malaysia, others)
And yes, it would be significant if the US targeted the 99% of the Japanese population vs the 1% most concerning part.
Bangladesh: http://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2017/02/02/bangladesh...
Egypt: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/26...
Nigeria: http://indianexpress.com/article/world/donald-trump-travel-b...
It is precisely the question. What the ban is is much more important that what it purports to be.
For example, if it purported to be a ban on terrorists but actually was as ban on Muslims (and I mean, a bonafide ban on all Muslims), would that not matter?
- George Orwell, 1984
The immigration suspension ought to be legal or illegal because of what it is, not what its author thinks.
To clarify, I don't think it would be illegal for the president to establish immigration restrictions (that are otherwise legal) while thinking something bad about Muslims. The problem is intending the restrictions to target Muslims.
The difference is between manslaughter and homicide. We take age, sanity, and intent into account, but hitting someone with your car is illegal no matter your mental state.
Likewise, tax fraud (intentional) is punished differently than tax negligence (unintentional). In either case, the action is illegal, and due taxes must be paid.
I mean to say that intent (and other aspects of mental state) can influence the severity of punishment.
It shouldn't determine whether something is legal, however.
Hitting pedestrians ought to be illegal regardless of whether you intended to do it or not.
Incorrect. Now, in most cases, hitting someone while driving will be at least criminally negligent and thus be some crime, but it's not impossible for hitting a pedestrian to be a non-crime because of the absence of the mental state required for any applicable crime.
> Likewise, tax fraud (intentional) is punished differently than tax negligence (unintentional).
"Negligence" is itself a mental state. That an act is illegal (though of different magnitude) when it is done through negligence as well as intentionally does not demonstrate that mental state is relevant only to degree of punishment, not legality. (There are strict liability offenses for which mental state is not relevant to legality, only possibly severity, but strict liability is exceptional in the law, particularly criminal law.)
Out of curiosity, under what conditions would this be the case?
In general I would agree with you, you oughta look at what a legislation does in practice. But here, because there is a sense of urgency (sending a gay refugee back to Somalia, for instance, is akin to signing their death warrant) and because the executive order hasn't been around for a while, I think it's ok to refer to what the administration intended the order to do. Because we don't have a lot of field evidence. As we see concrete evidence for the effects of a legislation, I think you're right and the weight of what it was theoretically intended should decrease pretty quickly (and it usually does).
The administration also didn't present to the court any sort of evidence supporting the claim that it would prevent terrorism.
In the case of this immigration restriction, the debate isn't how the EO ought to be enforced, but rather whether it is legal (specifically whether it infringes on constitutional rights without having a sufficient national security justification). The intent of the EO is important, since it would be trivial to make a silly EO that technically doesn't infringe when taken literally. As an extreme example, the EO could ban anyone who had entered a Muslim place of worship in the last year. Surely some Muslims haven't done that, and surely some non-Muslims have done that. But it would be very clear that the intention of this EO would be to discriminate against Muslims, and it would be ludicrous to claim otherwise.
Why can't the same principals be applied here? That the pitch and language of a rule aren't important, just the implementation.
It doesn't matter what Trump thinks about the order. It's legality is the same no matter who signed it.
Do you have a source for this? There is so much political noise that the only place I've heard it is second-hand from people trying to avoid the contents of the actual executive order and block it based on feelings.
That's the weirdest Muslim ban I've ever heard of.
Why fund us?
The key points are
- CEO never blackmailed journalists
- No major revelations of sexual harassment
- No major revelations of political support
..
Oh yeah, forgot to mention, "and people don't like that."
~~~execution~~~
One of the reasons I don't like Lyft. How about this system: pay the drivers a fair wage up front, so they don't need to subsist on the generosity of strangers. If they get great ratings, you can give them a bonus.
Regulations could help setting a limit to that, but then half of the US believes that regulations are bad for businesses and jobs. Part of that is true, but then what is the point of a job that makes you poorer at the end of each day?
A workaround are tips. And it is not ideal, I concur on that, but it is more viable than getting the government to regulate ridesharing jobs to ensure a minimum wage or teaching people at a large to be socially responsible.
[edit: shouldn't have implied that Uber is financially successful]
And then Uber bent in May 2016.
Why would Lyft want to continue this anachronistic idea which puts the burden on a fare? It's the number one reason I do not use Lyft.
I agree with you on tipping but your reasoning seems to need some work.
I use Lyft because I can ensure that the other person in the transaction is fairly compensated. I see you would prefer for both services to fairly compensate drivers, but given the choice of doing more work to ensure adequate compensation or giving up on it entirely, you went with B.
If you have trouble dealing with the details, just pick a standard percentage.
When I meet Americans and when I leave w/o tipping, which is not common but normal where I live, they feel really offended and sometimes, I suspect, they might have thought they have to hangout with stingy persons like me. I am not sure whether I am meeting a very different kind of Americans or it's ingrained in the culture there in US.
Problem is they are usually not even willing to see that it's a different culture here, or that we tip based on the service and/or the fact whether the restaurant charges a "service charge" or not (it's additional to service tax).
I don't think it's reasonable to expect ride share companies to pay their drivers a fair wage when they are in fierce competition with each other and self-driving cars are on the horizon.
I agree "mandatory" tipping like in US restaurants isn't a great system. I don't think including tipping in an app with a default of $0 makes it close to mandatory. Lyft could give stats on what fractions of rides have a tip given; my bet is it that it's relatively low. Making optional tipping easier is a good thing.
It's always reasonable to expect companies to pay their people a fair wage.
The 'Premium' image was black cars, inspected cars, and no need to tip.
I would rather have companies be forced to pay a reasonable minimum wage and compete by improving the service or efficiency, not just pushing the employees to work for less and less.
Not very ethical, but rational, profitable, and prevalent. Cost is a large area to compete in, and people are expensive.
It would be nice if companies acted ethically, but that isn't their reason for existence (especially in fast growing or large companies). If it's not surprising to me when companies act unethically, can I honestly say that I expect them to act ethically? Not if expect means "assign high probability to".
I agree that regulation is needed. It seems that often basic economics (people want to move around as cheaply as possible) lead to unethical situations (paying people as little as possible to move people around). I'm far from an expert of economics, but it seems like regulation is a way to change the rules of the game to have more ethical/fair/uniformly distributed equilibriums at some cost in net efficiency.
This is a bit ambiguous, and perhaps it's a different reading of it that's the contention.
Expect can either mean I think it's likely, as in I expect the sun to rise tomorrow, or a requirement.
I am not surprised that uber try and pay their drivers so little, but I am disappointed and want better from them.
> I'm far from an expert of economics, but it seems like regulation is a way to change the rules of the game to have more ethical/fair/uniformly distributed equilibriums at some cost in net efficiency.
I agree. Safety regulations are a good example of this.
I assume these drivers are all cutting checks to the IRS?
"In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living."
Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act (16 June 1933)
I want the easy option to tip someone for exceptional service, but I also want them to get payed well enough to not feel obliged to.
Exceptional, by definition, is rare. Having an easy option for a rare event is usually bad UI.
You also still don't have to tip if you don't want to.
But people have come to rely on it, and there'd be fewer people working those types of jobs if there wasn't some extra money from the customers.
If there was a collective way to tell the tipping industry to change, I think a lot of people would be for it. But for now it feels like you're taking away something they reasonably expect if you don't tip.
And somehow, Europe isn't suffering from a massive taxi driver and server shortage. And here in the U.S., there is no shortage of Uber drivers.
> for now it feels like you're taking away something they reasonably expect if you don't tip.
Uber drivers never relied on or expected tips. Uber seized the opportunity to change expectations and disrupt the payment model, and customers seem to like it. "This is the way it's always been done" isn't a solid argument IMO.
"pay the drivers a fair wage up front" => If Lyft charged more they'd have fewer customers. Uber didn't even bother with tips and takes a higher cut, so drivers make less on Uber already, I don't see what's wrong with optional tipping.
Neither did Uber
> - Lyft takes a lower commission capped at 20%/25%
Same as Uber
I have encountered Lyft drivers that refuse to work for Uber for such reasons.
Why is this one a thing? Almost every business out there beyond a certain size eventually grows into politics, in every industry.
If they want to grow, they'll have to address that. Fast
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicole-campbell/what-was-said-...
Specifically, he asked Ben Smith of Buzzfeed whether it would be ethical for Uber to hire someone to investigate and report to the public true facts about a journalist (as opposed to journalists investigating and reporting true facts about people involved with Uber). Ben Smith evaded the question, most likely because he didn't want to admit that as a journalist he feels that's a privilege which should only be afforded to members of his club.
You are right that Lyft doesn't do much politics. Instead, Uber spends money fixing political problems and Lyft then freeloads on them, making money in the better world that Uber created. For me, that's a strong reason to prefer Uber to Lyft.
My recollection was apparently wrong and from headlines that Ben Smith wrote.
I think we've reached the point where ridesharing apps are 100% a commodity: there's no real product differentiation, so I'll choose based on price and how long it'll take the car to arrive. Lyft drivers seem 'happier,' but that hasn't translated into anything significantly different for me in terms of ride quality.
This won't be a popular opinion, but I think most drivers—on both services—are too entitled and have unrealistic expectations. Having a driver's license and a car is not rare in the US: it's a job that requires less specialized training/skill than being a fry cook at McDonald's, and should be compensated accordingly.
The drivers who are happy are the ones who recognize this and do it to make some extra cash in their spare time after a 'real' job; the ones who are upset are trying to make their living driving. While I sympathize with the latter breed, they're in a dying occupation that's about to be automated out of existence within the next ~5 years.
I'm not claiming every Uber / Lyft driver has a CDL license (most probably don't). But to claim driving requires no special skill is false. There are certain situations that require very specialized driving skills.
Some driving definitely requires specialized skills, but driving a Prius around SF or $random_american_city isn't it. Autonomous vehicles have gotten quite good, and I can easily see them filling the taxi/Uber use case by 2022.
Thanks for the downvote and reply to something I didn't claim.
This is also Uber's supposed mentality, but you are wrong and Uber is misleading the public.
If a part time job is profitable, then doing it full time would also be profitable. The biggest lie in their marketing campaign is their claim that Uber is about ride sharing, but that's serious bullshit meant for fooling drivers and legislators, because the driver cannot control the passengers' destination and they take a pay cut when rejecting orders.
You see, the drivers that are upset are those that have done the math and realize that they cannot cover the maintenance costs for their personal car, along with what they lose in time spent in commuting and maintenance and still make a worthwhile profit.
At this point Uber survives because they found enough gullible drivers that waste time and add serious mileage to their own cars for Uber's profit. But at some point the bill kicks in.
Absolutely—at some point, the drivers all wise up, there aren't any new gullible people to replace them, the supply of drivers falls, and Uber and Lyft and their ilk have to raise fares. The only real question is whether this happens before autonomous vehicles can replace the drivers entirely. Uber, at least, is betting that it doesn't, and I think they're right.
That's making a major assumption. A lot of times aren't as profitable as others, and there might not be enough profitable hours for a full time job, but enough profitable hours for a part time job.
For instance, Friday nights in downtown at last call might be very profitable for 4 hours, which would make perfect sense as a part time job. If you need to make a certain amount of money, you might be forced to work hours that are a net drain on your finances, such as 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon.
But it seems that via(ridewithvia) and probably chariot(which was bought by Ford) do manage to do that - with their average passenger density most likely larger than 4 . Another proof they aren't commodities - they don't need all those tricks with drivers - their drivers are regular employees, probably well compensated.
Knowing how to drive is nearly ubiquitous in the US in the 18+ year old population.
So, let's say the metric is "additional training required after age 18".
Driving: likely none. McDonalds: likely a little!
One in five US residents speaks a language other than English at home. Of those that speak a language other than English, only 58% speak English "very well" Older people are less likely to speak English "very well" than younger people. https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf
So when you're looking at the bottom 10% or so of the workforce, speaking fluent English is a HUGELY marketable job skill.
Also, yes, a lot of people can drive. But, again, we're looking at the bottom segment of the workforce. It's easier to find "absolute numbers" rather than percentages, but according to one source only 89% of US adults are licensed to drive http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/11/07/americans-arent-as-dep... Multiple studies of the prevalence of government issued photo IDs (not just driver's licenses) corresponds to this: http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2012/jul/11/eric-...
And if you want to drive for Uber, you need to meet Uber's requirements. You need to be 21 or older. You need to have 3 years of driving experience (you can't just go out and get a license if you decide you want to drive for Uber). Clean driving record, background check, no criminal history at all in the last 7 years...
You need to have a clean 4-door sedan in good condition that can pass an inspection.
Even if you manage to jump through all those hoops, driving for Uber can be customer service in the extreme. Sure, I can drive myself to the grocery store and back like a champ, but Uber drivers are driving on unfamiliar roads to unknown destinations every day. And they're doing it with a paying customer in the backseat. I live in Boston, and there are certain sections of town where the GPS routinely doesn't work/jumps around, and those sections happen to be a minefield of winding one-way streets and construction.
How do you deal with GPS issues? Surprise construction? Traffic that Waze didn't predict? How do you mollify customers when things go wrong? Can you drive defensively and still make a timely arrival to your destination? I've taken a lot of Ubers and have seen some REALLY bad drivers, and some really fantastic ones that handled the car like a pro.
My point is, working as a cook at McDonalds requires far fewer resources and job skills than driving an Uber, hands down. You could make a more compelling argument for working the register, but cooking fries is trivial and requires very few skills or resources.
I have, for years, commented on Uber's savvy relative to Airbnb [1]. This was partly due to Uber's retention of Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe [2]. Unfortunately, he left for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in January [3].
Uber's problems are, 80%, a PR scandal. #DeleteUber started when Uber seemed to interfere with a taxi strike at New York City's JFK airport [4]. Uber cancelled its surcharge at 7:36PM; the taxi union scheduled the strike, at 4:55PM, for between 6 and 7PM [5].
Biggest winner? Peter Thiel--numpties jumped to Lyft. Almost everyone else rallied against his competitor.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6521376#6521700
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Plouffe
[3] http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/10/ubers-david-plouffe-to-join-c...
[4] http://www.businessinsider.com/delete-uber-hashtag-jfk-airpo...
[5] https://www.axios.com/uber-didnt-deserve-deleteuber-22258932...
Also, Lyft gives me the option of tipping the driver with my card, which I generally do if the driver provides something more than just transportation from point A to B. Some drivers have told me and a first date a series of jokes, thus being a great icebreaker. Others have helped me carry my drunk friend to the door. I don't like to carry cash and I find Uber's policy to be a commodification of an essentially human experience and almost dehumanizing. A lot of times, I don't tip and I don't feel a whit of guilt about it.
Uber, on the other hand, is a cesspool. It's run by sociopaths who think business success confers moral authority, and are quite annoyed with all the hullaballoo about "right" and "wrong" that their actions periodically provoke.
I have no problem with their business model, but I will not use Uber. I don't trust them with my credit card, and I don't want them tracking my movements.
Ten years ago, taxis were terrible. Even in San Francisco. Now there's Uber and Lyft.
https://hbr.org/2016/05/ubers-new-tipping-policy-is-a-mistak...
An uber driver even offered square for tip.
If anything, it looks like Uber and Lyft looked at the taxi industry and said "hey, if we made that into an app, we can make bank for ourselves while incrementally shafting the very people we need for our service!" and proceeded to do so and Lyft does so in a more camouflaged way.
When distinguishing between two effectively identical products, something like "The CEO seems less of an asshole" is a perfectly reasonable means of differentiating.
Anecdata I know...
No argument there. I completely agree (with the caveat that some small niches or niche companies seem to be "playing fair" but they're, by far, the exception than he rule).
> Do you just walk everywhere? Go live in the woods?
I intentionally didn't mention it, but since you asked: I don't use either service because of my objections to them. Where I live, public transit and bicycle infrastructure is pretty good--at least compared to most of North America--so if I can't get there by train, bus, bike, rented or friend's car (when going as a group), or my own two feet, I just don't go. I 197% recognize that this is a choice that many people don't get to make, but I don't think it invalidates the question of "why is Lyft seen as so much better than Uber?"
in my own town, uber is light-years ahead of taxi drivers. to the point where my parents are using uber (and they are really averse to technology)
That is my reason.
I don't either, but it's related to the outsider status.
Questions I'd be asking would revolve around unit economics - average gross and net revenues off a ride, average rides per driver per month, average rides per user per month, average driver retention and churn, average user retention and churn, all of the above in historic context broken down per market.
Presumably sophisicated investors at this stage are asking for such numbers and base their valuations on cashflow. It's not a pure software business with winner-take-all mentality, Lyft is a Lowe's to Uber's Home Depot.
From a consumer's point of view, both services offer a convenience layer over taxis: you have an online account that hooks into your credit card, which means you can just summon a car using your magic pocket computer, step inside, talk to the (generally friendlier-and-more-sociable-than-a-cab-driver) driver, and get out at your destination without having to guide the driver around the city, or having to take your wallet out of your pocket.
That they're priced similarly (and frequently lower) than regular cabs means both of these apps are in demand, period. The convenience layer makes them competitive against cabs even at equal fares.
If Lyft and Uber are essentially identical (which is arguable), then putting their company culture and PR under scrutiny is fair game and the natural direction consumers will go in.
That has yet to be proven with any sort of evidence other than an uncorroborated blog post or two.
They're both may not be super stringent but I've seen Uber vetting process and Lyft. Lyft was felt much better compare to Uber.