Hacker News Reader

Comment by applecore | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised you still have to communicate your destination to the driver after you get in the car. Shouldn't Uber let you specify your destination in advance, entirely through the app?

View on HN

Uber does not disclose passenger destinations to drivers to prevent discrimination, e.g. far-away pick-ups with short rides.

A month or so ago, I made the mistake of answering a text message from my en route driver asking where I was going. I thought, "Oh nice, he's plugging it into GPS beforehand." But I was wrong. He must have not liked my destination because the trip was promptly canceled by the driver and I had to spend another 15 minutes waiting for a new one.

Lesson learned: never tell your Uber driver your destination before you get into the car. :\

They have a very small limit to how many pickups they can cancel, though.

That's good to know. Just to be clear, I don't fault Uber at all for this happening, and it's nice to know that they're attempting to put limits in place to prevent it. But it was aggravating in the moment.

Why don't you fault Uber? It's their driver who reneged on the offer to drive you and inconvienced you. Don't you want them to prevent this and make your experience better?

Because it doesn't happen on a regular basis, and they seem to have reasonable blockers in place to prevent it when they can. But, their drivers are people, and some people will do anything they can to get around that system.

If I had other poor experiences with Uber, then I'd be faulting them... but they've done a good job making sure that hasn't happened more than once.

I recently had this happen for a $65 airport-to-city fare when the driver was 5 minutes from the airport.

Uber could wait until you've been collected before passing that information to the driver.

A "Share My Location with the driver" button,which only becomes available once the ride has started would be cool.

I'm surprised the Uber app doesn't let you do this and give the driver directions automatically.

Most Uber drivers I see have GPS systems in their cars or one that I saw the other day had two iPhones.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com