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.)
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