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When talking to lyft drivers here in New York, they all drive for Uber exactly as long as it takes to pay off their car loan for that day and then switch to Lyft because it pays more.

So I wouldn't be surprised if Uber is a lemon market when it comes to drivers.

I'm confused by that. Why do they drive for Uber for part of the day if Lyft pays more?

Some sort of lease arrangement stipulation on the vehicle with Uber for people who didn’t own / couldn’t afford a car?

I'm just inferring, but it sounds like it's possible to get a car loan/lease through Uber. It might be more tax efficient to have Uber take repayments directly from your earnings? So if first $X earned on Uber that day go to your repayments, it's worth earning $X on Uber to pay off the car, and then drive on whatever app pays the most.

most drivers in NY drive for multiple companies. Uber, Lyft, and Gett are the most common.

Yeah I've had a similar experience.

A year and a half ago a driver didn't pick me up, so I asked for a refund and got it immediately.

A couple months ago a driver pretended to pick me up. I couldn't cancel because I was "in" the Uber. So my friends waited on me for an hour. Then when I requested a refund they wouldn't give me one.

This was even though the ride was $9, I'd spent $200 on Uber in the previous month, it was only my second time requesting a refund, and my GPS would have validated my story.

I've since then only used Lyft.

For me, it's getting better and better.

And by better, I mean cheaper.

I always buy the uber "passes". So for 20$ a month, you get unlimited rides that are first $5 free. In Boston, I basically go get a meal, park my car, etc. all around the city for free. Just today I dropped off the car at an autoshop and Uber'ed my way to work... how much did it cost me? $0.21. Usually when I'm at work I'm hopping here and there, just a couple of miles -- it's almost always free for me. The wait-time is never more than 5 minutes. It's completely unbelievable. I will be sad when these deals go away.

I do feel shitty though that drivers get paid crap... I rationalize my taking advantage of the system by convincing myself that I will stop when I'm in a financially better health myself and will start leaving big tips (I'm in academia, I'm pretty sure I get paid less than they drivers overall).

Oh, and Lyft is ALWAYS more expensive. I used to check prices for both when I needed to go somewhere... since Uber was always cheaper (and that's leaving Pass discounts asides), I actually uninstalled Lyft app a month ago.

Sounds more like there is more demand of rides than there are drivers. Whether that's from less people driving or more people riding is the question. Maybe Lyft is starting to become more popular. In my area, Lyft wasn't popular at all for a long time. You would wait forever meanwhile there was always an Uber driver in the next neighborhood. Now, they are pretty much the same in experience, wait times, and prices. Only time I've ever had "bad" drivers are when they call me before pickup and ask me where I'm going and demand I cancel since my destination would take them too long which I somewhat understand. There should be some sort of system to help drivers limit the amount of non-fare driving (giving them fares that might be a little further away to pickup but the drop off is right near the driver's home, kind of like pooling where the driver's home is the last "drop off").

I think both companies need to make sure that their drivers are happy. There will always be a demand for cab services so making sure you can keep drivers to match the demand will keep the fares coming in.

> Only time I've ever had "bad" drivers are when they call me before pickup and ask me where I'm going and demand I cancel since my destination would take them too long which I somewhat understand.

You understand this!? What? I haven't experienced this (thankfully), but this is ridiculous. This is the kind of behavior I experienced from cabs the led me to be an Uber evangelist to begin with. -20C, downtown Toronto, 2AM, cabs (illegally) outright refusing to drive you because they want to go a different direction. Uber was a godsend in comparison, at the time.

If that behavior is making its way onto these platforms, I have to wonder whether the initial innovations in safety and value for the consumer are just getting absorbed and destroyed by the scale at which these companies have to operate (lack of ability to regulate and vet their drivers).

You can either have being driven somewhere as a public utility, or as a private venture. You want to be driven somewhere very inconvenient? Fine, but you may have to pay extra for it.

Uber is still a godsend in the relatively rural area I'm in, where there are effectively no taxis, and the only alternatives are A.) calling a friend, B.) hitchhiking, C.) driving anyway when you really oughtn't, for whatever reason.

I don't think you understand: cab drivers in Toronto (and other cities) frequently turn down freezing cold passengers that just want a ride back home (still in the city) because the cab driver wants a route that brings them close to their home.

They will not accept your fare. This is illegal in most major cities (or at least Toronto), but impossible to track and enforce. It has nothing to do with wanting a ride to somewhere "very inconvenient" - convenience is priced into the fact you pay by mile. Enabling this sort of behavior is outright regressive to Uber's value prop in some of their largest markets - not to mention a public safety concern.

FWIW: I think both Uber and Lyft now have features designed to help drivers pick up fares towards their own homes at the end of a "shift" in order to make their drivers happier, I'm just saying that the behavior of cancelling fares shouldn't be considered "understandable" and undermines the value prop of these companies in major city centers.

I do understand. My belief would be that if you are running a for-profit, private business, and not a public service, you have the right to refuse service if it's against your best interests.

I don't go making websites for everybody that asks me to, when I have more productive things to do, and I would bridle a bit if anybody suggested that I had some kind of moral obligation to do so.

I always thought it was a little idiotic that Uber doesn't just tell the drivers where you want to go before they come pick you up.

Uber could add an option to specify your destination, and provide the information (or lack of info) to the drivers.

? I always have to specify my destination before booking.

neither uber nor lyft share that with the drivers till they register that you are in the car, presumably to prevent just this sort of thing.

That makes little sense to me, if they can't get drivers to go to certain routes, then the fare should increase as an incentive should it not? Some sort of market matchup between drivers and passengers is part of what Uber/Lyft should be supplying in their platform.

If a driver has say 15 mins of time part time, or left on their intended shift, as a passenger I really don't want that driver for a 45min trip thinking they need to be somewhere else..

i used to feel that way, but then i started thinking of the "bad neighbourhood" problem. it's historically been a huge problem for people living in certain neighbourhoods (and typically poor and/or heavily non-white ones) that cabs don't want to take them there.

The most I've run into route avoidance is with drivers who don't want to spend 2 hrs on a trip to the airport during rush hour.

Is the "bad neighborhood" problem a race problem, or a problem of not enough fares in that area (i.e. by taking a fare in, if the density is too low then you lose the time/cost of fares getting back out of that area...). and of course, if historically, if fewer fares go there, that problem is exacerbated.

I suppose one way to rebalance that issue without changing fares, is to preferentially schedule a driver for later fares until the earnings/trip/time etc are rebalanced. If Uber itself valued getting more uniform coverage, it seems like it could offer drivers to "undesirable" areas more, and shift some of the profits over from other areas into the low coverage areas too.

But all of this seems more complex and less transparent than increasing fares. The whole point of a market is to exchange information and come to some double ended voluntary deal that is good for both parties. If you fix bad neighborhoods by imposition onto drivers who don't know what they're getting into in terms of start/end points.

It's a hard set of tradeoffs.

it's a race problem in that it disproportionately affects communities of certain races, due to historical systemic issues. so even if no single uber driver specifically thought "i don't want to go into a black area", all the other factors affecting that decision would tend to affect black people more than white people.

this is nicely illustrative of how these things can feed off each other: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-amazon-same-day/

As I understand they don't provide to driver until pick up to prevent drivers from cherry picking only rides they want to give. I think they used to tell them on the way to pick up passenger and found a higher cancellation rate.

I have had drivers ask me to cancel because they didn't like where I was going and wanted to stay in a downtown surge area. Rarely am I in a hurry so I told them they are welcome to cancel and I sat for a few minutes while he sat outside and refused to cancel.

>- A day where I experienced $50+ non-surged fare estimate from downtown SF to the Sunset, something I've never seen before (usually $22-ish... I took MUNI.)

I agree in my personal subjective experience.

They recently estimated a fare for me at $50 for something that was usually about $17 - there was no surge going on - at least they didn't say there was. It was not a typically busy time either. I hailed a cab and the meter read $21 when I got home.

And yes, I'm aware that they changed how they tell you a surge is going on and there was no "Fares are higher because of demand" message.

This is just the Uber market normalizing. Cabbies normalized a long time ago and we got: aggressive driving, taking the long route to jack up the fare, claiming the card terminal is broken to get cash, denying a ride if you're black/latino.

Take your pick!