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!