Payment/ride summary: July 18-24

Not a very busy week this week - well, except for the fact that I was too busy to post this earlier. So I guess busy, but not driving for Uber busy. :)

3.76 hours online, 8 trips, 4.9 stars total rating. 92% acceptance rate and 2 driver cancelations (because they keep sending me UberXL fares, dangit!). Those 4.9 stars brought me back down to 4.93 overall, so sad.

The most interesting thing I learned last week was that the PoolPass program that Uber is running in Boston (and possibly other cities, I'm too lazy to look it up. Internets are hard) does, in fact, still pay the driver regular fares, not the $0.01 fares that riders pay for their rides from the pass. I figured that had to be the case, but I had never had a rider I knew was using the pass until this week, when I took a pool rider from downtown out to Brookline. The fare (before toll - not sure how that works with the pass) was $12.06, netting me $10.29 (including the toll). The pool pass math definitely works out well if you use that trip as your basis, I've got to say. But you know my thoughts on UberPOOL.

UberPOOL - great for riders, not so much for drivers

With UberPOOL, riders with 1 or 2 passengers and a pre-determined destination can save money and eliminate ambiguity by paying a set fare, with the understanding that they may be matched with other riders along the way. Uber sells this to riders as a great way to save money, and sells it to drivers as a way to make more money by being more busy.

While it is certainly true that it can keep you active and on paying rides longer, a big problem with UberPOOL from a driver's perspective is those set fares. The actual fare calculation is opaque to both driver and rider - it's not at all clear what time and distance are being factored in. What this means is that if you hit traffic, or need to take a longer route due to traffic or construction, there's no adjustment. You're still getting paid based on the rider's pre-set fare.

Additionally, that "longer trips" logic doesn't quite work out, because when you're being diverted off the route the rider did pay for to go pick up another rider, you're not being paid for that - neither rider's fare includes it. Sure, it's possible you would have been off-fare entirely during that time and not being paid for that as well, but it's certain that you're taking longer to get the one (low) fare you are getting to their destination, and thus missing out on possible revenue.

Finally, the rate is just plain lower, whatever it is (see above about opaque fares) - Uber is again incentivized incorrectly - they make their flat reservation fee on every ride, plus their percentage, they're not paying a portion of vehicle upkeep, gas, etc, which is what the fare calculation is supposed to include.

Bottom line, I think UberPOOL is a pretty bum deal for drivers. If I could opt out of it, I might, though Uber is pushing it so hard with promotions like a PoolPass in Boston that I'd be a little bit afraid of missing out.

Payment/ride summary: July 11-17

Woot, pay day! I was online 14.82 hours last week, completed 44 trips, and got all 5 stars, supposedly. Total earnings were $279.70. That said, my rating actually went down and then up during the week - I have 5 4-star ratings now, instead of my old 4, which briefly brought me down to 4.93, but now I'm back up and higher at 4.95, yay!

Interesting conversation of the week award goes to the law student I had on an UberPOOL ride, who is planning to go into youth offender public defense - an extremely noble plan. He apparently helped with a bill that is/was before the Massachusetts Senate (having already passed the house) to allow youth records to be expunged at age 18, rather than the current 3 year waiting period to age 21 (I may be oversimplifying, this was a short conversation). I was horrified to hear that just being picked up by the police, even if you're never charged or even see the inside of a jail cell, can be on someone's record until three years AFTER they turn 18, and even then, expunging isn't automatic. During that time they'll potentially have to disclose that record and lose out on job opportunities, scholarships, etc. It's no wonder we have a youth crime problem when the system closes off legitimate routes for youth who may not have even done anything wrong.

Anyway, off my soapbox, that's it for this week. I should be getting approved for Lyft soon once my background check completes, and then I'll have more fun things to talk about! :)

Day 6, Night Driving Part 1 (Surge: Low)

A few weeks back, I was awake after a Red Sox night game and decided to give the late night / closing time hours a try. This is the last of my "details about all of the rides" posts (and it's out of sequence with more recent stuff), but it's got some exciting ones in it. Well, it'll probably be multiple posts, we'll see.

I picked up my first ride of the night on Huntington Ave in Boston, around 11:15pm, heading out to Somerville. This was a very nice surge, but overall a pretty quiet ride. Perhaps it was lulling me into a false sense of security...

Trip 1 earnings: $22.06

I headed back towards Boston because that seemed the likliest to have activity - no hits on the way there made me sad, but eventually I got a quick ride from Wally's Jazz Cafe to The Gallows - all in the South End, nothing exciting, again.

Trip 2 earnings: $3.75

But now it was after midnight, so the exciting started... my next ping was at Jacque's Cabaret - of course, I didn't realize that when I accepted it. But it became clear enough when I got there, from the crowd outside. And then in piled the ladies... four ladies in varying states of intoxication. They were heading over to the Cambridgeside area - okay, no problem.

Well, it was the longest 10.5 minute ride ever. :) Turns out they were a bachelorette party from New Jersey, and boy did they hit the stereotypical New Jersey accent/attitude/volume when drunk. The bride-to-be was probably the most drunk of them all, and kept addressing me as "TIMOTHY" (loudly, imagine the caps talking for real) the whole trip.

They spent much of the trip asking random questions, talking about all the ludicrous bachelorette things they were doing, inviting me back to their "afterparty" (with the more sober ones rebuking and basically retracting the invitation - don't worry Liz, I declined regardless of the number of offers :)), and discussing the show at Jacque's, and just what are drag queens, transvestites, etc. It was... entertaining. And noisy. But thankfully otherwise uneventful. A harmless example of drunken hilarity.

Trip 3 earnings: $6.11 (hardly enough for the earplugs I really needed!)

Trip 4 wasn't particularly noteworthy, a couple going from Kendall Square area to the Fenway.

Trip 4 earnings: $5.67

While I was trolling for my next trip, heading out towards Brookline because it seemed likely there'd be some college kids still going out or something (in retrospect I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense), at one point I opened up the Uber passenger app, to see how many other Ubers were around me... and literally every car I could see around me, on both sides of the road, appeared to be an Uber. Suffice to say that was my signal to turn around and get out of that hell of Ubers.

I eventually got a pick-up while still in Brookline, and they headed back where I'd started before, Kendall Square area. Again nothing exciting (aka I don't even remember any details now because I didn't write any down).

Trip 5 earnings: $7.31

I think that's enough for this post - the night wrapped up with a couple of UberPOOL trips, which can maybe fill their own post. At least, I need to pad my post count, right? ;)

100 trips! And a 5-star comment!

Went out for my usual evening tonight, waiting on a milestone - my 100th trip! I was at 99, so my first trip of the night was the ol' century. Woohoo! My very first trip was June 6th, so it took a bit over a month to hit 100 trips. Not too bad for doing it very part time.

Tonight was three different pool groupings, each with two sets of riders. Not a lot of money, $26.26 for a bit under two hours online.

Also exciting, I got my first 5-star comment! I've been pretty consistently managing the 5-star ratings - I'm currently at a 4.94 overall rating on 105 trips - 70 of which were rated, and 66 of those were 5-star. I haven't gotten a sub-5-star rating in a couple of weeks now. Tonight, though, I actually got a comment attached to a 5-star rating, which was a first! It was super exciting, too: "Thanks, Tim!" :) But it shows someone cared enough / was happy enough to type, rather than just hitting the stars. So thanks, rider!

Oh, and with all of that, my first pair of riders were quite talkative. We talked about a wide range of subjects, from Pokémon Go, to the political situation in Venezuela, to the state of the US justice system, in particular as it relates to underprivileged youth, to self-driving cars. Very interesting and totally the reason I started doing this!

Last couple of weeks' earnings

Uber issues pay statements on Mondays covering the previous Monday - Sunday period, so since I'm not doing detailed write-ups anymore (though I still owe you the post from my late night run, I know!) I'll at least try to get some interesting insights out of those for you. So, here's the last couple of weeks.

June 27 - July 3

18 trips
9 hours 32 minutes online
86% acceptance rate
0 driver cancelations
$226.70 total earnings (including $53.49 promotional/incentive credit for the outage on June 30th)
$1.25 tolls included in total earnings

July 4 - 10

24 trips
10 hours, 35 minutes online
83% acceptance rate
4 driver cancelations
$156.42 total earnings
$8.24 tolls included in total earnings

I think the driver cancelations here were largely UberXL trips that I had accidentally accepted. They may also account for my lower-than-I-would-expect acceptance rates. They had fixed my classification to stop me from getting UberXL requests, supposedly, but I'm getting them again now, so who really knows...

ZOMG Tips!

It finally happened. On my 89th trip as an Uber driver, I got my first tip! A couple of nights ago I took a couple down to Quincy, and we had a good chat on the way down, and at the end of the ride they handed me $2. Woohoo, a tip!

And then, the next day, I got another tip! Also $2, apparently when it "rains" it "pours"!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not ungrateful for the tips. They're just not really something I expected - after all, as an Uber passenger, I've never really been one to tip. I've always bought Uber's line that it's part of the trip, or that they're fairly compensated. That said, I'm not so sure of that anymore. I haven't changed my behaviors as a rider, but I certainly do think about it more.

What do you think? Do you tip Uber drivers? What about Lyft, where they offer you a tipping option in the app (I'm told; I haven't ever actually ridden with Lyft)? Does that make a difference to you?