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!

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? ;)