The problem is almost everyone in the US uses credit cards etc -> so having the driver handle the money is not easy - it almost always will need to go through someone else (usually a merchant gateway, merchant processor etc.).
Taxi's do it by saying the credit card machine is "broken" to avoid the merchant / middleman charge - is that what you are proposing?
If the drivers process all the amounts gross will they properly deduct the commissions paid to uber / lyft?
I actually like the idea - just you are putting a fair bit on the drivers -> merchant accounts, chargeback handling and dispute resolution, etc. And you generally need good credit to manage all this.
It seems to me that the option to refuse drives is the bigger change.
But regarding pricing, Uber is no longer "mandating" the drivers accept a price, instead Uber drives agree to the rates Uber sets. Maybe that has some bearing? I'm no expert.
Yeah, that'd theoretically work. But I wonder how it would go in practice with the limited information of each driver. Perhaps if they provided drivers with statistics (average offering price, bottom 10% offering price, ride volume over time, peak areas etc) then it would work. Interesting proposition.
They could do it dutch auction style. Suppose there are five drivers and three rides. The drivers bid per-mile rates of $.75, $1, $1.25, $1.50 and $1.75. The rides go to the three lowest bidding drivers and they all get $1.25, i.e. the highest rate of the drivers who get rides.
It gives everyone the incentive to bid their actual threshold past which they wouldn't want the ride, because if you bid too high you don't get any rides, but if you bid lower you may still get paid more than that unless bidding that low was actually necessary to get the ride. And at any given time all the riders pay the same rate as each other.
>They could do it dutch auction style. Suppose there are five drivers and three rides. The drivers bid per-mile rates of $.75, $1, $1.25, $1.50 and $1.75. The rides go to the three lowest bidding drivers and they all get $1.25, i.e. the highest rate of the drivers who get rides.
The problem with all these variables is that the more "preferences" you introduce into marketplace to matching, the longer your pickup time will be.
The 2nd most frustrating change is going to be the increase in pickup times because drivers will now optimize for rides that are exclusively in city limits.
You can address things like that with predictive matching. You don't actually wait until there are three rides before matching anybody, you just look at the data for this timeslot and expect that statistically there will be three rides this hour, use that rate based on the drivers who are on, and assign the nearest of the three lowest bidding drivers as they come. If a fourth ride appears that hour then you immediately raise the rate to the fourth lowest bidding driver starting with that ride, and so on, and next time have more data and make a better prediction.
This is actually really clever. Maybe Uber can set a base rate of $0.75 per mile and then the driver can elect to increase it at a 25c per mile interval so that the supply is grouped together
The advantage is that since drivers know where a passenger is going before accepting, riders can be assured that the driver wants to take them to the destination they have set.
No more waiting for the driver to arrive to hear they are declining a super long distance trip; they won’t even know they’ve been declined even multiple times.
If it takes one longer to get a rides’ information with Uber, take a look at their rating. Indeed, It is becoming more important.
Try to keep an Uber rating sharp. I’m likely to accept a 4.86 score for $4-6 fare, decline a 4.63 for a $25-30 trip.
Don't bring your kids. I had a perfect 5 until I brought my kids with me.
They were well behaved and quiet, but it took me a minute to install the car seat and uninstall it, and the driver was clearly annoyed.
Look man, the law says they have to be in the seat, and for their safety, they have to be in the seat. I'd pay more if I could, but I can't.
Now I usually tell the driver to start the ride as soon as I get there so they get paid for waiting for me to install and uninstall the seat.
I just wish Uber had a "I have a car seat" checkbox that would pay the driver a couple extra bucks (and charge me extra). Then everyone would win.
The driver would get extra for taking someone with kids and they would know in advance and not get annoyed.
Also I know I got dinged on my rating once because the driver couldn't find me. I can't help it if Seattle literally has streets on top of each other and there is no way to tell the driver I'm on the bottom road and not the top!
> Now I usually tell the driver to start the ride as soon as I get there
They already bill for wait time. I needed to get picked up from home once but my house is on a street that Uber's mapping system apparently doesn't understand how to navigate to properly. The driver went to the wrong place to try to pick me up, and they billed me for "wait time" even though I was exactly where I said I would be!
Uber sounds more and more like a Black Mirror dystopia. I think I'll go back to using taxis. (Where I live there is no Uber, but I've used a lot it while traveling)
Unfortunately Lyft only operates in North America, and I haven't traveled there in many years now. I have used some other regional competitors (Cabify in Spain)
Part of the problem is ratings are arbitrary on both sides. I take Uber every day for work, and I'm an Uber Diamond user, but I have a 4.50 rating, which my friend tells me is incredibly low. So I'm not taking drunk trips, and my trips are usually within SF, to SFO, or Mountain View.
However, I'm a minority and an introvert so I can't help but feel like I'm being dinged for not being an ideal passenger even though all that matters is going from A to B . So it sucks to read that ontop of my other perks going away there are drivers who will decide to not pick me up despite the fact I spend almost a grand every month on Uber.
I'm happy AB5 seems to be a win for driver, but its looking like a loss for riders and just pushing Uber into a taxi service with an app.
It changes the behavioral relationship between Uber and the drivers.
If the company controls what the worker does and how the worker does it then the worker should likely be classified as an employee. By fixing the rates and giving drivers control over which rides to take Uber is strengthening their argument that drivers are contractors, not employees.
I think the idea is "not Uber". If Uber is the only payment processor, then they look more like an employer and less like the middleman they want to claim to be. The money is coming from Uber to the driver rather than from the driver to Uber as their commission.
That is normal, e.g. if you travel through a federated regional bus/train transport system, you're paying through the platform and the company is processing your payment, sending money to individual transport operators. See flixbus as the most extreme example, but there are tons of these across Europe, many of them formed during post-communist privatization. Its similar with parcel delivery companies, these even are forced to have the PPL brand on their own cars!
If they were serious about the drivers being contractors, the drivers should process the payment and give Uber commission for the lead.