Lyft Drivers Are Burning Their Pink Mustaches | Hacker News Reader

Lyft Drivers Are Burning Their Pink Mustaches

vice.com

35 pointsviscanti45 comments

A lot of these lyft/uber/sidecar-are-falling-apart stories remind me of http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html. This may or may not be the case, but certainly the thought pops into my mind.

Yeah, maybe I'm paranoid, but this story sounds like an event organized by some anti-Lyft group for the purpose of press coverage. Most people when they are fed up with a job just quit, they don't hold a photo-op-worthy beach bonfire. Who bought the four pizzas in the last photo?

It is a possibility, but I think there's also plenty of paranoia. I would almost certainly buy pizzas for a mustache-burning event—moving away from bad jobs is always something to celebrate.

With all the dirty tricks going on, I can't help but wonder if Uber is somehow arranging this as a PR attack on Lyft.

Wonder if this article was run up the Vice flagpole, or down it?

Maybe Uber also faked the 10% pay cut Lyft announced for their drivers in LA too?!

But why is everyone hiding their faces at this protest in such elaborate ways? This seems to not happen when there are protests against Uber:

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/09/02/uber-defends-slash...

I don't see everyone hiding their faces, just two people, and “the pyro drivers noted that these mustaches were probably putting a ton of noxious chemicals into the air” may have something to do with covering mouth and nose.

Having recently read "Trust Me I'm Lying" from a recommendation on HN, it's hard to imagine this isn't a PR piece from Uber.

Lyft cut prices and earnings for their drivers then posted a pretty detached message about in in their Lounge.

Responses and messages: http://elsewhe.re/XrEY

I think it's pretty obvious that this isn't an "Uber attack" or some conspiracy, but the result of both companies racing to the bottom when it comes to driver compensation and benefits.

The problem is that Uber has always made it clear they're about efficiency and bottom line, whereas Lyft has tried to cultivate a 'community' feel. It stings more when your 'community' option turns out to be just the same as the 'money-grubbing' option.

At the end of the day both are businesses. One has apparently owned that from the beginning. The other pretended not to at the beginning so they could bootstrap their company.

Now Lyft is large enough that the facade is over, and it's clear that they're also just a business. But it feels like they lied to get ahead. I think that's where the frustration here is coming from.

It amazes me to see how much client promotion work Lyft is doing. It's clear that they're struggling to get people to ride with Lyft. Talking to Lyft drivers who driver for both services, it sounds like they're routinely getting more business with Uber (when they have both apps open).

I can't help but think that previous reports of "dirty tricks" were a PR attack arranged by Lyft against Uber.

> “But this is an elective service and our culture is taught to tip for elective services. And yet HQ doesn’t want to offend or dissuade customers by making the ability to tip more prominently featured for fear they may end up going to Uber. And so no drivers get tipped even when a passenger would like to give one. Maybe that’s more likely what’s bringing down morale.”

I never used Lyft or Uber until last week, and this was the most surprising part. I was trying to figure out how to tip the driver, and tbh I don't think I was able to figure it out. I ended up tipping them after the fact through the emails they send you, but it was very surprising as to how ambiguous that part of the user experience is.

With Lyft and Uber starting to take off a bit in my city, I was going to recommend it to some friends to make some extra cash. I don't think I'll continue to give this recommendation anymore though, if tipping is discouraged/hidden.

I've only used Uber, but my understanding is that the tip is built in. You choose a fixed percentage when you sign up, and that's the tip every driver gets. You can express how pleased you are with the service in your review, there's no need to do this through money. This model is a bit part of the reason I like Uber; tipping is an annoying, awkward, and outdated convention that I would prefer not to deal with.

I'd rather not have a built in tip as a customer. I don't want to tip someone who doesn't do their job well. I want to tip someone who does an exceptional job, and I may even tip them exceptionally.

Granted I've never used a service like Uber, so I can't directly understand where you're coming from.

You're supposed to tip everyone unless they treated you like garbage. People who accept tips don't make a living wage without them.

IIRC, Uber solves this by letting you rate people after each ride. People who have less than (4? 4.5?) stars get kicked off the service, so if you rate them a 1 then you probably won't see them again. So, in theory, you should only get rides from people who deserve a tip.

That's definitely a legitimate model. At least my experience with Lyft was that you could either tip or review, and I don't remember seeing an option to set a tip percentage. Definitely agree that tipping is awkward though, I kind of wish so many people didn't need to rely on them to make livable wages.

Tipping is not discouraged or hidden at all. Its right on the screen. I always tip 2 dollars for Lyft. Last Lyft driver said the average was 3-7 but some people don't tip.

Well, when I tried to tip, I also saw the review button and then clicked that first. I couldn't tip in the app after that.

> At this point, she explained, most drivers were driving for both Lyft and Uber, and everyone was really just hanging on and waiting for the moment when Uber will inevitably emerge victorious, purchases Lyft, and raises their rates back up to more reasonable levels.

Since when has consolidation ever been a better deal for the counterparty? The only reason the percentage that uber/lyft take is so low is because they're competing. If Uber takes over Lyft, expect both higher ride prices and lower driver compensation.

I don't live in a major metropolitan area, are Uber/Lyft really that big of a deal in cities? They seem like something only yuppies would use. This article is from a non tech/startup related publication so it would seem that they have penetrated the public conscience.

Much faster than a cab and Lyft at least is cheaper than a cab too.

I don't have a car right now. Most people though use it in place of a cab for a ride after drinking.

Idk, parking and traffic may suck but I couldn't justify shelling out out my hard earned cash any time I needed to get somewhere. Once in a while is fine, but only people with lots of disposable income who don't care about saving money I'd think would use them daily. In cities there are buses and subway systems, SF which seems to be where Uber gets the most usage has the BART which is great, and you can always walk.

Seems to be the same case with Airbnb, I don't see any normal people using it, it seems to be rich people who want to make some extra cash off their nice condo/vacation home.

I'm sure people ask this all the time, but why do these companies have such high valuations? ($17 billion for Uber - really now?). I mean they already generate revenue and are profitable, so shouldn't the value of them be proportional to their profit?

I thought I just said this, but I will say it again in a slightly different way.

Lyft and Uber have taken a huge percentage of the _entire taxi cab and black car service industries_. To the point where they may very possibly entirely replace them.

That is why those companies have large valuations.

The reason people use Lyft and Uber is the same reason people use taxi cabs. They went out drinking and can't drive home, or never planned to drive home.

Its true that people with disposable income are also a large user base.

Also in my area of southern California and many other areas, the buses are horrible and only students, homeless or poor people use them. Almost literally. And their routes are limited. Everything is massively spread out around here.

Personally, I had to sell my car, and I have zero disposable income. I just use Lyft now because it is cheaper than a taxi and arrives much more quickly. I also very rarely go anywhere far. Last two times I went to the store I walked.

Public transit in places like SF is generally not fast or convenient, so many people choose taxis. Maybe it's just the rich that make that choice, but the median household income in San Francisco is $72,947 so there are a lot of rich people.

> SF which seems to be where Uber gets the most usage has the BART which is great, and you can always walk.

Uh, do you even live in the bay. I don't but I know that the BART is pricey, stops running late, and the bay is filled with places you'd never walk at night.

It's funny because I can't justify owning a car, and even if I did, in cities it can be expensive and inconvenient to find parking if you even had one. It's not like gasoline is free or anything.

In London at least, Uber is cheaper than using normal taxis, and the process of using an app for ordering and payment is much easier than calling or finding a taxi, and you don't have to worry about having enough cash on you to cover the ride.

There are questions of legality here and in other cities (they kind of use a loophole to get around licensing requirements), but at the moment they just provide a better service than any alternatives.

In Los Angeles it's huge. Especially for night-life.

Now, it's easy enough to pay a small fee to avoid a DUI. My wife works Lyft occasionally for rush-hours, and from her experience quite a lot of people using it to get to/from work can't drive due to a recent DUI.

As far as taking a taxi: Previously you wouldn't ever even consider using a Taxi unless you absolutely had no other option including calling in favors from friends and family or splitting it 4 ways with friends. Only way I'd ever take a Taxi to/from the airport is if it's on the company dime. Lyft/Uber turned a $65-70 taxi ride into $20-30.

We take it occasionally for night-life and have noticed nearly all the drivers that we asked that have over a few months wised up and do Lyft & Uber simultaneously.

I see. As I said I don't live in the city so I don't know why people do whatever they do there. Looks like I stand corrected, apparently in some cases using Uber everyday is cheaper than owning a car in SF.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/technology/personaltech/wi...

On a sort of related note, why do Uber and Lyft create so much drama? Brazenly sabotaging each other, burning shit, super-conspicuous launch parties, etc. Does this drum up more customers or something? I don't know about you, but a company whose job it is to get me safely from point A to point B in a motor vehicle pulling crap like this doesn't exactly sit well with me.

one of their complaints is that there's an overabundance of cars on the road

This one sentence contradicts everything else in the article. If driving for Lyft is such a bad deal, why are too many people doing it?

If prostitution is so degrading, risky, and low-paying (for those in the lower tier of the system), why are there still prostitutes?

If working at McDonald's or Walmart is so shitty, why does anyone work at McDonald's or Walmart?

Etc. etc.

I don't know if this is the true for Lyft, but the recent articles about UberX strikes suggest a bait-and-switch tactic (or at least a perceived bait-and-switch tactic). The amount of money you make used to be high enough that people made investments in new car; now the amount of money is significantly less, but people are stuck doing it to pay the auto loan.

Bait and switch? The amount I was able to bill when I first started teaching/building websites in "the early days" was whole lot more than it was once everyone else got interested in the well paying gig. Did the market bait and switch me?

So they're burning essentially plastics? FK them all.

>Most drivers were driving for both Lyft and Uber, and everyone was really just hanging on and waiting for the moment when Uber will inevitably emerge victorious, purchases Lyft, and raises their rates back up to more reasonable levels.

This is why one of Lyft / Uber should die already and let the other take over the industry. Ride sharing is such an amazing idea, but the competition is nasty. This is a perfect example of why a monopoly is infinitely better than having competition: http://online.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-fo...

>This is a perfect example of why a monopoly is infinitely better than having competition: http://online.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-fo....

Or you could let the free market allocate resources quasi-perfectly, let the prices fall and send the money you saved on that ride to an African kid who just lost his family to Ebola. I don't know how much an Uber driver should make, and neither do you, nor the government.

how much one "should" make is a moral judgment tempered by the range of realistic possibility, not something someone knows or not. There is ZERO moral basis for saying that whatever a market works out equals how things "should" be.

I think we should have a world in which all our cooperative efforts in markets and otherwise that lead to general wealth and resources, we then distribute them so that as many people as possible can live a healthy, secure, and dignified life.

> This is a perfect example of why a monopoly is infinitely better than having competition

This is a grossly over simplified assumption that does not stand on its own. The type of monopoly that Google has was not handed to it, but resulted from "nasty" competition. Google (currently) is literally too competent to beat in the search engine space. Perhaps Lyft will die off or by purchased by Uber, but it's not a given that it should, or even that it will.

More importantly, what happens when there is no competition between companies for drivers? Are we assuming that once (Uber|Lyft) has the market wrapped up they're going to benevolently maintain favorable driver pay rates? Are we really assuming that in the absence of incentives to do so that (Uber|Lyft) will favor drivers or riders instead of its own bottom line? Since this flies in the face of common sense and a mountain of empirical evidence to the contrary, why in this case is a monopoly preferred to competition?

Every monopoly in history got there by cutthroat competition, because guess what... competitions are cutthroat by nature.

So the answer isn't to prolong or encourage more competition, but to expedite the process going from competition to monopoly. There's no difference between a Lyft or Uber monopoly, but there's a huge difference between one of them winning, and both of them surviving.

No consumer wants to use two apps. No driver wants more pay cuts. Just like no advertiser wants to run campaign on two different search engines.

Hence why I said, one of them should win already.

So long as it's legal to operate in this way, if Uber + Lyft do combine and raise rates, what's to stop a new company from coming in and undercutting them on price? I think that, barring any laws preventing companies from using this business model, we're now in a race to the bottom on price, which seems to be what the medallion system was all about preventing.

Uber and Lyft are just market makers, they only have so much power to "set" the price.

True. Now the question is how much is "so much"? Answer: if you have a near-monopoly as the middle-man between people in a market, you have almost all the power. In this case, "so much" is "SOOOO much".

you must be 12

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