Pick up trick: flashing color

Hey Uber and Lyft, I just had a great idea for you. How about when a driver gets close to their rider, you assign the rider a reasonably unique color and ask them to hold their phone up, facing the street, with the display facing out, flashing that color brightly. Alternatively or additional, give drivers a way to have a programmable display on their car that does something similar. Would make pick ups in busy city areas a lot easier across the board.

My Gear

Geeks gotta have gear, right? Let's talk about my Uber/Lyft setup! I've been promising this post for a while, but now I'm actually writing it!

First off, the most important "gear" of all, the car. I drive a 2013 Ford Explorer XLT, in gray, with black leather interior. It's pretty well loaded - we got a great deal buying it used in 2014, with only just over 10k miles on it, and it's still under 25k miles. We didn't really drive it all that much before I started the Uber/Lyft thing (and really I still don't, in the grand scheme of mileage).

Even though the car is 3 years old and we weren't even the original owner, I still have riders all the time telling me it still has new car smell. It's nice to hear, though funny to me because I totally don't notice it. But hey, if it keeps the five star ratings coming, I'm happy!

A nice feature for my passengers is that the car has rear climate controls, so they can set the AC or heat however it suits them. I'm not sure how often people actually change it, but I do sometimes point it out, especially when I'm not sure how well-cooled the back has gotten on a hot day, etc. It can't hurt, and I know as a passenger I love having this feature!

On the phone side, I've been an iPhone user since the start, and like to stay on the "S" train, so I'm currently using an iPhone 6S. I haven't gone Plus because it just seems too close to a phablet, though I keep thinking about it, we'll see.

I of course have a gajillion apps, but the important ones here are the Uber passenger and partner apps, the Lyft app, and for navigation I exclusively use Waze. Have I mentioned how awesome Waze is? I swear, every time I try to second-guess Waze, I end up paying for it (well, except for the route home from the north via I-93S and Albany St - but I can forgive Waze not learning that one well because of the tunnel and the hell it plays with GPS).

To keep that phone in place I've got a Ram X-Grip Mount, which was recommended by a colleague and is totally awesome. The suction and mounting are rock-solid, but the X-Grip is infinitely adjustable and super easy to take the phone in and out of, or rotate a little bit to get the right angle. Highly recommended, well worth the price.

Then to keep everyone in the car powered up, I have two AmazonBasics 4.0 Amp dual-port USB car chargers, one for me up front and one in the back for passengers. The back one has an AmazonBasics Lightning cable and an AmazonBasics MicroUSB cable, coiled and zip tied together. This goes over really well, especially with Pokémon Go's popularity. Gotta catch 'em all, and stay powered while doing it! I've found that this charger is easily able to keep up with my phone while running multiple GPS apps and streaming music over bluetooth. I really love Amazon's AmazonBasics line, I don't know that I've had a problem with it yet.

I'm currently toying with the idea of getting a dash cam. I don't know if I really NEED one, but you don't know you need it until it's too late, right? I just think it would be neat to be able to share some of the crazy stuff you see on the roads around Boston. It would also be handy for my Waze map editing, to help me remember intersections, speed limit signs, etc. Has anyone played with one? Are they any good?

Payment/ride summary: Aug 8-14

After the comparison of Uber vs Lyft I got in the previous week, I decided to go more Uber this past week. I don't know what has changed again, but I didn't get the oversaturated feeling enough at any point to switch back to Lyft - in fact, at some points I was busier than I expected or wanted to be!

Over the course of 3 days, I spent 7 hours and 30 minutes online, gave 21 trips, and earned $168.29. In the previous update I said tolls aren't summarized well, but I lied, they're in the e-mail, just not in the web interface. $10.75 of this week's total payout was tolls. And I did get an additional $2.00 tip!

My most notable trip last week was a combination, actually - I took a couple down from Boston down to the Blue Hills Reservation in Milton, and then was surprised to pick up a trip request from Quincy almost immediately. The pickup was 11 minutes away, which is one of the longest I've had, but I guess I just got lucky. Normally I expect to go riderless from down there, and I was getting ready to head home, so I had actually planned to fire up Lyft with a destination filter. But Uber magically provided, go figure! That ride went smoothly (though it was sadly a Pool, earning less money, but all the way to Cambridge, so at least there's that), and then I did just head home.

Payment/ride summary: August 1-7

Uber

So during the August 1-7 week, I did something kind of crazy - I drove both Uber and Lyft. Well, it's not that crazy, because it had been my plan / reason for signing up for Lyft all along - to drive it when Uber seemed too slow.

What ended up happening this week is that I drove Lyft for two evenings at the beginning of the week, then when I went online on Saturday I decided to go Uber. I really like that Lyft explicitly includes how long you've been online in their calculation of who gets allocated the next ride, but I just haven't really been feeling like there's as much activity, even when Uber is somewhat over-saturated. It seems like the ridership just isn't quite there on the Lyft platform yet (hence why they're advertising so heavily in this market, I presume).

Lyft

As you can see, I made more with Uber than with Lyft, and the total time online was actually comparable. The "type" of hours was very different though - weekday evenings vs Saturday daytime - and the weather was probably also different, so I'm not sure how much to read into it. My gut, though, says Uber is just busier. Also, maybe some of the drivers who were oversaturating the market left? It's really hard to tell.

Uber had 3 hours 6 minutes online, 16 trips, and $96.95 total payout. Some portion of that was probably tolls, but it's not that easily broken out on the summary screen and I'm too lazy to dig it up. I didn't get any tips from Uber passengers.

On Lyft I was online for 3 hours 18 minutes, 7 trips, and $49.40 paid out, including $3.00 in tips and $1.00 in tolls.

Overall, it continues to be the case that Lyft is better for getting tips, and also seems to have somewhat higher base rates, but if you're not getting as many rides, it doesn't seem to make up for it. My Uber rating at the end of this week was either 4.93 or 4.94 - I got another 4 star review that dragged it down. I haven't yet figured out how to actually find my Lyft rating, go figure.

Payment/ride summary: July 25-31

The week of July 25-31 I tried going all Lyft. "All" didn't turn out to be all that much time, but it sure did turn out to be a big difference in tips. In a single week of Lyft driving I got more in tips than I've ever gotten with Uber, I think.

To be fair, that number isn't quite right though, because I managed to screw up on my very first Lyft ride and hit the drop off rider button as soon as I'd picked the rider up. Doh! I still took them to their destination, and they were very understanding and offered to just use a custom tip amount to bring the fare up to what their app had estimated. I didn't know what else to do, since them re-requesting would cost them the base trip amount again, so we did that, even though I'm pretty sure it's not kosher. PS Lyft: if you're reading this and want to yell at me, please get in touch rather than just killing my account, I'd be happy to make it right and know this isn't the right way to do things. :)

Total rides: 10, total earnings $80.57, including $6 of "real" tips, $4 of tolls. 4 hours 25 minutes online.

Interesting thing I learned after saying "hey, what?" at the toll amounts - Lyft only pays out the "in state" toll amounts, and EZPass MA has a discounted rate for some of the Boston area tolls, only if you have an in-state EZPass, which I wasn't aware of. So my NH EZPass was costing me where I'm using it most, and discounting on NH tolls I almost never use - whoops. I've since fixed that glitch, since MA is on real EZPass now and has no up-front fee, unlike the old evil FastLane system. Now I pocket a little bit on Uber's toll reimbursement, and don't lose out on Lyft's.

Lyft vs Uber: Real driving impressions

So I've posted a few things about Lyft vs Uber impressions but haven't really talked about the actual meat of driving. Well, that's about to change!

The overall flow of Lyft is very similar to Uber. You go online via the app, and drive around waiting to get a ride request. When the request comes in, you get a name, location, and rating, and 15 seconds to tap and accept the ride. Then you launch your nav and head to the rider. The first real difference comes on arrival - you have to explicitly confirm your arrival (with two taps, no less), whereas Uber infers it from your GPS location vs. the rider's pin. These extra taps do come with a bonus, though - a countdown timer for 5 minutes, after which you can cancel the ride (preferably after giving the rider a courtesy call) and get paid the minimum fare cancellation fee.

Actually giving the ride, again, is very much the same as Uber. Navigate, get there, confirm drop-off, and wait for more rides. The in-app reporting, though, is very different. The Uber driver app provides quite detailed information on your earnings and ratings through several screens within the app. It's not always super live updated as you're driving, but you shouldn't be looking too much as you're driving, right? Lyft provides less detailed earnings data, and doesn't expose rating info at all that I could see in the app.

The really annoying / different thing about the in-app reporting is that Uber reports your net earnings, after they've taken out their cuts, while Lyft only shows your gross earnings - the amount paid by riders. It also doesn't include tip information in-app (though I guess this makes sense because riders have up to 24 hours to finalize that, as I understand it). This makes it a bit harder to visualize how much you've actually made in a session with Lyft, which is annoying, but not the end of the world.

Of course, the really big difference is buried in that paragraph - TIPS! Tipping is a built-in part of the Lyft platform, and riders are able to choose a tip amount. This amount is charged to the rider and passed through to the driver 100%, without any fees taken out of it by Lyft. In only 17 rides given with Lyft so far, I've gotten $8.00 in tips from 3 or 4 different trips - vs over almost 100 Uber rides given before getting my first tip! This is definitely a big difference for drivers - and to me it feels like it is indicative of a more driver-friendly attitude on Lyft's part vs Uber.

Of course, the best app / tip / etc experience in the world doesn't help if you don't have riders on your platform to keep your drivers busy. With all the over-saturation of Uber I've felt in Boston lately, Lyft has felt better, in general. They also have another driver-friendly policy - the longer you've been online but not on a trip, the further out you will be considered as "best driver" for a ride request. This potentially increases rider wait times (to a limit, I'm sure), but helps more evenly spread out the love among drivers, rather than benefiting drivers who are in the right place at the right time. I still think the distance algorithm should include rating as a factor, but it doesn't seem anyone is doing this yet. Maybe I should start my own Uber! (Yeah, right.)

Hilarious e-mail from Uber

I just got this e-mail from Uber, and I had to share:

Hi (tim)timothy, 

You’re one of our valued partners in Boston, but haven’t been driving with Uber lately. I wanted to personally reach out and see if you had any questions or concerns, or if you needed any support from the team. 

Uber demand in Boston is growing every month, and there's a big opportunity to earn even more this weekend helping people get around the city. If there's anything we can help with just visit help.uber.com and we'll get back to you right away. 

Best, 

Best, 

Melissa

(And yes, the e-mail did say "Best," twice.) Haha, yeah, right. I couldn't resist replying:

Really? Demand is growing? Because I've been finding it less and less possible to get ride requests around the city. When I look at the Uber passenger app, half the cars around me are other Uber drivers. It seems you've been recruiting too aggressively, and the "peak hours" promotions virtually guarantee during those hours it's impossible to stay busy.

My first week driving, I was never idle, but since then I've been idle more and more often, despite an extremely high rating. What value is my rating if it doesn't keep me more busy throughout the day?

Tim

I'm interested to see if I get a response, will keep you informed.

 

Lyft vs Uber: App First Impressions

I did my first significant Lyft driving last weekend, and it was very interesting comparing their app experience to Uber's.

The first big difference is the app setup itself - Uber provides a separate driver ("Partner") app, which you have to download from them and trust their developer certificate for - it's not published on the app stores (at least not on iOS). Lyft, on the other hand, built the driver functionality right into their regular passenger app - instead of opening a different app, you just open the Lyft app and switch to driver mode. I'm not yet sure what, if any, difference this will make from a practical standpoint, though it is nice to have one less app to deal with.

Another app thing I really noticed when driving was the way that Lyft interacts with Waze. Like Uber, Lyft lets you choose what navigation app you want to use. When it launches Waze, though, unlike Uber it does some sort of "data sharing" thing that Waze asks permission for, and you actually get a Lyft logo in the Waze map that you can use to go back to the Lyft app. That's pretty neat.

Lyft also seems to actually send destination info to Waze differently. With Uber, your destination is always a pin, which appears to be set with lat/long coordinates to match the pin in the Uber app, even if the app displayed an address. When you go into Waze from Uber, it dives right into navigation mode. Lyft, on the other hand, sometimes (maybe always? I wasn't quite sure) seems to send the street address shown, into search mode, so you have to select it, then hit Go twice, to actually start navigation (I think both "Go"s have timers on them to auto-select but still).

On the one hand, Lyft's way is better in cases like Newbury St in Boston, where there are back alleys on either side, and if the pin Uber sends is closer to one of those than to Newbury St, Waze will incorrectly route you to the alley, thinking you really want to be on that side. By contrast, when Lyft sends an actual street address on Newbury St to Waze, Waze can "know" the real destination better and apply its own logic. On the other hand, the additional clicks are annoying, and when I had a fare to the airport, the search results were super weird and made me nervous, so I re-searched and put in the airport manually. So that was sub-optimal.

Next post: more about the meat of the app, driving, and getting paid.

Lyft vs Uber: Onboarding Experiences

I mentioned this briefly in some other posts, but after the Boston market started to feel over-saturated with Uber drivers, I decided to sign up with Lyft to see if things were any different with them, and to have another option if things seemed too dead and I wanted to try something else. I'll be doing a few posts about the differences, so, yay, content!

First, the onboarding experience is very different. For Uber I had no actual human interaction - I just submitted my info, and a while later, everything cleared, and I could go on the road. That said there was a decent amount of documentation on the site, and the opportunity to go to their Boston driver center if I wanted to, I just didn't particularly feel the need. No one ever looked at my car, etc. I don't know if background check / age of car factored into that or if it was just par for the course.

Lyft, on the other hand, requires a "mentor session" before they'll actually fire off your background check. This is a session conducted with an experienced Lyft driver, who goes over the basics of Lyft with you, and also does your initial documentation verification and photos. They also do a very basic inspection of your vehicle (lights, horn, signals) and take a "test ride" with you (mine was literally just a loop around the block). The mentor walks you through the app and some of their various promotions. Overall the session took less than 30 minutes, and was quite easy - and would have been even if I wasn't familiar with the concepts from driving with Uber.

One interesting thing about this was that the mentor I had actually doesn't really drive much any more - he just makes money by doing these mentor sessions. He gets a flat rate from Lyft for each one (I didn't have to pay; presumably it comes out of their part of riders' fees, as a way of building their network), and in the income summaries he showed me from his e-mail (I didn't closely inspect them but they didn't seem fake) he was bringing in on the order of $2000 per week from doing it - not too shabby.

Lyft only starts your background check after your mentor session - which is smart business on their part. If you don't pass (crappy car, can't drive, etc), it doesn't make sense for them to spend the money to run your background check. It is frustrating, though - I waited a week for a mentor session appointment that fit me, then my background check took another whole week. With Uber I actually got my background check complete before I had uploaded all of my documents, because I was being lazy about it. It makes sense, though, just a little sad.

I went out and did my first real Lyft driving last weekend, so next up I'll have some impressions from the actual app / driver experience!