Lyft adds a new app for drivers
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
A) Who's insuring the ride? If it's not insured and the driver is at fault in a collision, there could be no one to pay for injuries to you -- Lyft/Uber certainly wouldn't owe anything for stuff booked outside their platform.
Usually when they drive for a TNC, the TNC provides the insurance for the driver in the course of using the app. It's really unlikely for the driver to have a policy that covers them for non-TNC freelance rides -- especially since the big insurers haven't caught up to the realities of this use case and seriously overprice them.
(AIUI, they just have policies that assume you drive full time commercially, nothing that works on a per mile basis -- and even if they do have such policies, that would defeat most of the purpose of cutting out middlemen, as there would now be a written record of the transaction that can't be hidden on taxes.)
B) In order to get enough information to re-book out-of-band you'd have to accept it and then cancel. Do that a lot and it will be grounds for being kicked off the platform.
(The same applies to the people in the anecdotes in the sibling comments.)
Point (B) doesn't make sense to me. Why do you have to accept and then cancel? You just get the driver's phone number and talk to them directly.
In fact, if this is not common already, I think it undermines the contention of these companies that they are merely a service being provided to independent contractors. If drivers are independent contractors, of course they should be trying to build their own brand and dedicated clientele.
Point (A) is a good one, though. Sounds like there should be independent insurance providers that these independent contractors can use.
If you're instead saying that drivers are employees of these companies, then maybe you're right about all the rest of it. But you can't have it both ways!
Their service was connecting drivers and riders -- allowing them to find each other for the transaction. They connected you. That was their service. (They provide other related intermediary services, but the "finding" function is the big one.)
Same issue as when a recruiter finds leads and the employer makes an offer to the employee directly and cuts out the recruiter, which is why they set up a bunch of contractual barriers to stop it.
EDIT: Sorry, I misunderstood the use case -- that wouldn't apply to future bookings after the first one's been completed and they've exchanged information. But the "moat" there is the difficulty of iterating through your network of past uber drivers for each future ride.
>Point (B) doesn't make sense to me. Why do you have to accept and then cancel? You just get the driver's phone number and talk to them directly.
AFAIK, they don't give you any way to contacting each other until the ride is accepted. Am I mistaken here?
>If you're instead saying that drivers are employees of these companies, then maybe you're right about all the rest of it. But you can't have it both ways!
No. You can have a legitimate claim to compensation for connecting two people without the seller thereby being your employee -- see the recruiting example (though it's a bit confusing in that there is another employment relationship in the picture but I'm sure you see the mapping -- a recruiter can legitimately claim that they're owed a cut while not saying that their the employer of the, er, hiring manage or the candidate).
EDIT: As above, that wouldn't apply to future rides or job offers after that contract.
Also, it seems anyone could replicate this feature by using Stripe Connect. It's cool, but expect rapid commoditization of preplanned ride coordination.
Edit: comment recinded due to OPs edit.
Sorry, you're right, I misunderstood -- see the edit.
You're not mistaken, but the implication from the parent was that the rider had ridden with the drive before...
> I know many people around where I live who use local Uber drivers whom they trust to schedule early-morning rides to the airport and things like that.
Most drivers have a "Rideshare Rider" from their auto insurance provider...but not sure if it extends to off-service rides
The calculus is simple: liabltiy has increased and you have responsibility due to the commercial transaction.
Paying the average amount means you're paying more than some fares.
By paying cash, you lose out on all insurance in cash of an accident.
What a world we live in. Most of the country (and planet) is so broke they are just scraping by, while programmers have "drivers" and personal shoppers. Wouldn't want to distract those people who have to get to work every day to figure out how to sell the poor people ads!
The rest of the time, if you need a ride at a time/place that isn't regular, the driver you know might be far away, might not be driving at that time and might be driving someone else, so it will generally be worth it to pay a premium.
The difference with Uber/Lyft is that these drivers don't have a business outside of the app. Therefore, once you eliminate the app, you eliminate their commercial insurance and it becomes a really interesting situation if there were ever an accident.
Doesn't this discredit Uber's argument that drivers are independent contractors?
I hadn't done it as I usually don't need Uber / Lyft much but most of the people I know who have used Uber / Lyft have also gotten similar offers so it must be pretty common I would think.
Not saying this is legal/ethical, just that it would come to mind in that situation.
Not sure I'd base my livelihood on fraud.
Yep. This is the key for cooperating with shuttles. First, it's much harder to fill a shuttle on-the-spot (with good routes - very important for experience), than using pre-scheduled demand. And afaik, most of the shuttle market already work on pre-scheduled, so it's a requirement(unless you build your own fleet).
But if you do manage to cooperate with shuttles, the prices they could offer are so different than taxis, that sharing may become much less of a pain point for many people.
It's nice that you can schedule things like this, but if I have a 6AM connecting flight to a once in a two year trip outside the country, I'm booking a rental the night before and dropping the car off early in the morning before my flight. What happens if the driver for some reason can't make it that morning? Is there a backup driver? I'd need to be guaranteed with a backup list at least 10 deep to go with the lyft option here.
I never had a uber (no lift here) not showing up , while booking a taxi is almost like a lottery. Few years back our office manager booked 4 cabs for 6pm of the following day because we had a work function to go to. The first cab showed up at 6.50 after countless calls to the taxi company, the other never did.
We ended up calling 3 uber and we were on our way within 10 minutes.
That was the day I swore to never get on a taxi again, unless I really really had to.
I now don't trust taxis, Uber, or Lyft to get me to the airport very early in the morning. I live in DC, not exactly a small town.
Uber in general is much better than taxis, but I still wouldn't really trust it for time-critical early morning pickups.
Edit: The last time I booked a taxi it was 2-3 years ago for a 4am ride to PDX. I booked two to be safe, only one came anyways.
Ended up flagging a taxi down (taxis rarely drove by where I lived but I was in luck (?) after 30 minutes of waiting on the curb).
Whenever someone say he uses Lyft over uber and I ask the reason. They always says they don't like Uber because they can't tip the driver. I understand there is tipping culture in USA so that could be reason to prefer Lyft.
Can I ask why would you prefer Lyft over Uber?
Add to it that they want to "always know my location", etc
I always sit up front and talk with the person, learn what else they do, how long they've lived in the area.
When I try this with Uber (esp in SF), they often show me a thumb pointing towards the backseat instead!
Plus, don't most drivers drive for both companies at the same time?
What on earth gave you that idea?
If the driver doesn't want a tip, they will turn it down.
The place is a figurative shit show. Even if the drivers get paid the same from Uber vs Lyft, and even though all companies do shady things, I think I'd still rather give my money to Lyft than anything to Uber.
With Uber/Lyft, I can see the approximate ETA and general availability of cars even before I order the pickup, plan my morning accordingly, and be confident I'll get to the airport on time.
My local taxi companies were so unreliable that I also drove and parked in long term for vacations.
It's only on the last couple of years that I feel comfortable enough to get a Lyft or Uber to airport and actually expect to make it timely ever time.
If they have a scheduled ride and they forget about it, or they're stuck waiting around to make that ride and lose business, that doesn't seem like it will be popular.
One big thing that Uber needs to fix is the incentive scheme. One of the Uber drivers I talked to said she hated how they were, in my words, gamified into earning their incentive bonuses. And the incentive bonuses change every time, so it makes it hard for them to keep track. That's something Uber needs to change in order to increase driver satisfaction, making it clearer and more consistent on how to earn the incentives which is where the drivers make more. I don't see how Lyft's "Power Zones" are any different from Uber showing where surge is occurring, but if it works, then great.
The drivers are almost always running Lyft and Uber on separate phones, so it looks like a tremendous opportunity for both services to improve and capture the market.
Eg: Driver cancels 2 hours before pickup. Lyft penalizes driver x% of total fee, then uses that to "bid up" the price on that pickup to entice another driver to fulfill the request at the last minute. This has the potential to help attract drivers to go out of their way, which could help in less urban areas.
Quite frankly, I'm suprised they hadn't done it sooner.
[0]: https://blog.lyft.com/posts/introducing-scheduled-rides
Uber has had these features for a while now. As someone else mentioned, Didi has had these features too. 71 upvotes so far. This just further reinforces my view that there is an active voting ring on HN manipulating Uber and Lyft stories in Lyft's favor, which is ironic since many of the comments on such stories talk about Uber being shady.
Throwaway because I fully expect the voting ring people to downvote this.
Downvoters and those who upvoted this story, please leave a comment explaining why this is front page worthy.
We don't owe you an explanation, but I'll offer one anyway: I upvoted because it's a story about a popular tech company, and the way they're trying to improve their offering for their semi-employees. Why wouldn't I upvote this?
If I'm part of an organized voting ring, I didn't get the memo.