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.
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.
[edit: shouldn't have implied that Uber is financially successful]
And then Uber bent in May 2016.
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.
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)
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.
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.
You also still don't have to tip if you don't want to.
"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.