Uber and Lyft have seemingly abandoned all efforts to provide an accurate pickup time.
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My (Now Typical) Experience, And Yours Too
After hailing the rideshare, Uber or Lyft – it really doesn’t matter at this point – standing outside in the cold or the rain or the snow, rideshares roll by but not mine. I check the map, still four minutes away but my driver stopped making progress. I go to cancel but I receive a notice that I’ll be charged if I do, they are nearly to me, do I want to wait a bit longer instead?
Sure. Let’s do that.
Another five minutes rolls by but not my car service.
I click to cancel again, same warning, I follow through but the app asks me why I might want to cancel. “Driver is not making progress” so I am offered an opportunity to call my Uber. Yes, let’s just see if there’s a problem that will be resolved soon, maybe something is blocking the road.
Hold up, Faud doesn’t like to talk on the phone, he prefers to text (which is interesting because a notice appeared that he will be recording the audio from our ride and that I should be aware of it.)
I text. Nothing back. Damn your preferences, Faud, I’ve been stood here now going on 20 minutes while you’re four, no wait, three minutes away with no movement from your car.
There’s no answer, I’m cancelling for good.
I had tried Lyft before, and the experience was the ultimate in bait and switch. Here’s an attractive price, your driver will have you home in 25 minutes. Fair enough. I am instructed to wait 1-7 minutes for my driver to be selected. I’m cruising through the terminal heading to the commercial curb, 1-5 minutes, 1-4 minutes… then congratulations (mental confetti is tossed like flowers before the path of an arriving king) your driver is… 20 minutes away.
Cancel.
“But why?”
Because the driver is too far away.
“Are you sure? We are going to charge you since this driver [who is on the other side of town] has already [moved heaven and earth to make] his way to you.”
Hard pass.
Pickup Time Does Not Update
Uber and Lyft appeared to have completely abandoned all honesty and attempts for accuracy in their pickup windows and progression. You’re telling me we have AI that can now, in real time, translate almost any language under the sun, generate custom business plans, predict price changes – but it can’t accurately update an arrival time. It can’t see that the driver hasn’t moved and though they may only be three minutes away if they choose to drive but after 15 minutes, maybe the company should reach out to see why they haven’t?
At this point, it’s a choice. No, it’s a tactic. As long as it’s only three minutes away, and knowing that there’s a penalty for cancelling, I’m not going to cancel, try Lyft or hail a cab.
The purpose of Uber, as we know it today (well beyond the utilization of solely black cars in New York City), was to create transparency over taxis, rate drivers and riders alike to create accountability, lower prices when the market is sparse, and compensate drivers with a premium when cars are in short supply.
But that’s not what this is anymore.
There’s No Penalty For Drivers
The biggest issue is that the economy of rideshares are controlled by the drivers or lack of them. Without drivers, they have no service to offer customers. If Uber can’t hold drivers on the service, customers will use alternatives on the market today, or worse, flee to the next best thing that learned all of the lessons of peers before it but without the R&D cost to get there. Drivers must be kept happy at all costs.
Riders have no control over the matter. Sure, we can choose to pick a car based on what features they promote, Uber Black for something fancy, UberX when we just need to get from A to B. But when a driver decides to accept a ride, park their vehicle, and not move for 15 minutes while they do whatever it is they want, the rider is the only one penalized for cancelling.
In my most recent examples, I did the only thing I could to penalize both services back. I hopped in a cab. It was slightly more expensive (about 10% more than Uber), and honestly, I didn’t enjoy it as much as my Uber rides where the drivers take pride in their cars and their service and want customers to have a good experience (leave a tip and a five-star rating.) However, I waited longer for either service to get their acts together than my 15-minute ride home from the airport. Supporting entrepreneurs and fighting the taxi cab mafia is a nice idea, but when it’s midnight and I have been traveling all day I don’t want to fight for principles, I just want to go home.
Another example of this was found on social media this week whereby an UberEats delivery person was making the 4.5-mile journey on foot a “walker” and despite the 85-minute delivery window (and for the poor contractor, potentially a 170-minute roundtrip) the purchaser faced a cancellation fee. Absurdity at its finest.
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Not Everything Is An Asterisk
“The driver might have had car trouble.” Sure, that happens, but the driver didn’t respond to text messages or phone calls and didn’t bother to text when their car trouble occurred.
There are myriad valid reasons for drivers to legitimately incur a delay.
Not everything is an asterisk leaving the driver blameless. The driver also might have forgotten they accepted my ride and done something else, they might have fallen asleep, or been texting a significant other. It doesn’t really matter what the reason was.
Regardless, the rideshare services have created transparency and accountability only for drivers and not for riders. I’m sure they have invested in technology to sort some of these matters out but the fact remains, there are still glaring, obvious problems. These are solvable problems that both of the major services have chosen not to resolve.
Perhaps someone can text me when they fix these issues. I once avoided taxis in favor of a more honest and competent service, it appears I’ll be back in cabs and car services because at least they can give me a ride home.
What do you think? Have you been left out in the cold by rideshare services that don’t update pickup times? Have you been charged for cancelling an unreasonable ride?
Amen! Another tactic I’ve seen is not accepting rides at a lower price, but when you go to try searching again, the price is now surging (ex: when a flight lands and there is a large number of requests in a short period of time). It is totally a driver’s prerogative to earn more money for the same ride, but ultimately these tactics make me less likely to use the service in the first place when I can take another mode of transport for the same surging price without the wait or frustration.
How about when the driver shows up and waits forever for the passenger? Goes both ways, my man. Think about that you entitled ass! Common consideration has gone out the window,…
a driver that waits for a passenger gets paid, a passenger that waits for a driver has to pay, this difference cannot persist if uber/lyft want to surview
It seems to me they are hoping you cancel and maybe they get some money from you canceling?
Because of this stuff I haven’t used either one in a few years. Cancellation should be free. The companies can easily see why you canceled it.
@Kyle can’t you usually dispute those cancellation charges and have them reversed? It’s not as easy to do as it used to be, but that’s still an option.
My Uber showed way before everyone in my party was ready. The driver took off BEFORE my requested pick up time and CHARGED ME a cancellation fee. I contested to Uber, who did nothing, so I challenged it via my card issuer and had the charge reversed. To this day (five years later) I’m blocked on Uber for failure to pay their bogus BS charge.
At some airports there is a concerted effort among drivers in the “cell phone waiting area” to accept rides and toggle their devices on and off in an attempt to drive up the price.
I was reading this article and then I messaged my friend on my cellular telephone because she’s overseas and I was like, ‘dayymm Matthew’s eaten some spicy word sausage fritata today’ LOL and then she told me it was Kyle who is the author, not Matthew. ROTFLMAO it was really funny.
So yeah I thought this was a well written and considerate article. But whoooh was it spicy LOL
Lol. That happens most often when I start writing the review on my phone waiting for the Uber in the rain…
I’ve been a driver for a very long time. There is so much I can tell you about why you’re having problems.
At many airports like OAK and BUR, I just hop in a taxi. They are there and ready to go. And prices are not too different from rideshare. Plus, no waiting around or coordination issues.
@Arun … +1 . Another advantage is : we can select or reject any taxi until we find one which fits our needs . I automatically reject any taxi whose driver appears unhelpful or unintelligible .
Uber takes a +50% cut on the fare and then forces the driver (b/c acceptance rate and benching the driver) to take some trips that are not even worth it for example paying less than $13 an hour and/or $0.50 per mile and on top of that driving across the city to pickup a passenger when there’s plenty of drivers close by, also the passenger can cancel the trip even when the driver is already on route and plenty of times the driver is not getting a dime out of that cancelation fee specially when you get stuck in traffic as for not responding your messages well texting and driving don’t go well together and incoming calls from passengers are now coming as regular or unknown numbers so some people don’t like to answer those and in some cases the driver took the ride just so he/she won’t get hit with the acceptance rate or benched and won’t move in hopes that the passenger will cancel the ride after a couple of minutes since Uber doesn’t pay the driver any cancelation fee just for a few minutes it would be safe to assume that the passenger won’t get charged and last but not least ETA’s on Uber/Lyft are useless as a driver Uber/Lyft is going to give you an aprox ETA which must of the time is useless 5min to pickup a passenger can easily be +10 which means a lower return for the driver… there’s much at play here so I would suggest to reach some drivers and even Uber/Lyft to get the complete picture
Uber and Lyft have been awful for at least the last 5 years. I’ll always rent a car, even if I’m only driving a short distance.
I’ve had this happen many times. A couple months ago I nearly missed a flight as the driver sat for almost a half hour just 3 minutes away after “completing another ride nearby” and then she smelled overpoweringly of cheap perfume and had the window down even though it was snowing slightly (the kinda cheap perfume people in high school would douse themselves in after smoking weed at lunch), and then made multiple wrong turns despite having the navigation coaching her.
I used to live in a metro area with two major airports. One was known for lower fares and would have a lot of people going one way there. I lived in that city. At night especially would have drivers call to confirm where I was going and usually was not the direction they wanted to go (wanted a live ride for the 30 miles back to the other end) and would just sit and sit and stop answering.
One time I sat for almost an hour as no rideshare available then after 6-7 minutes of finding driver it would say the person is a half hour away. Yeah never worked out.
Best scam is small towns where the drivers also drive cabs and are in cahoots with the people who work at the airport or hotels. They keep the app turned off until told a couple people are waiting and then boom turn it on and it goes to surge pricing and now they are Uber and cab company isn’t available. Happened to me in Mason City, Iowa (where Enterprise has a branch at the airport that is not actually open when 75% of the weeks flights come in and refuses to do after hours rentals… probably in cahoots). Came off a UA Express flight and agent asked me if I needed a ride. Same for two others. Suddenly Uber available and wanted $50 to go about 5 miles.
Rider charged $42.00 and driver given $20.00!
Debate that!
What part of this is caused by Uber relentlessly lowering the fees the drivers earn after Uber takes its cut? I’ve talked to several drivers who tell me that quitting Uber is widespread. Of course, that reduces the supply, causing prices to go up. Those who are left probably hate Uber and decided now they’re going to get even by screwing around with the platform to try to advantage themselves, without caring what it does to the reputation of the company. We have ultra capitalism to thank for this, folks.
Costs and wait time for my 15-minute ride to the airport have doubled in the last five years but there’s simply no way the eight-mile journey costs that much more even with fuel price increases and lower driver earnings. Wait times have increased from a few minutes to more than 30 in this example. For a $20 ride to now cost $40 (which I was willing to pay if Uber or Lyft would have delivered accurate pickup times) has me hopping in a cab.
As a driver, it’s pretty clear that Uber is willing to have the passengers wait much longer before they’ll post surge prices for drivers to motivate more drivers to get out (they may be charging passengers surges and not passing those on to drivers, who knows).
Your only real option is a taxi, and you can only really street hail a taxi at the airport, outside of NYC.
So, this is the service that was bought and paid for. Anonymized service with no real quality controls, and it was a race to the bottom. The only thing that would motivate different behavior from Uber is to have a viable competitor, and those are all dead by now.
I try to take public transportation when possible. I don’t have a lot of bags with me and it’s worth the longer trip journey for only $1-3 fare. Then I also look to see if rental cars are competitive. Might as well work on status there
How about the Lyft scam “priority” pickup where you supposedly get picked up quicker by paying a bit extra but almost always takes as long as a regular ride.
@ChiHsuan … Yep , sounds like a scam fee .
As an Uber driver (seven years) I don’t understand why other drivers do this. Perhaps they dislike driving for Uber and want to make their riders suffer. I really shouldn’t even guess.
I will offer a tip that other drivers will hate me for. If you are at O’Hare at a busy time, when you request a ride look to see on the map where they are coming from. Uber has two waiting lots for drivers, one in Rosemont and the other is south on Mannheim Road. If the ping shows them coming from Rosemont immediately cancel (you won’t be charged) and request again. Do this until you see the driver is coming up from the Mannheim road location. The Rosemont location only has one lane to get out from a huge lot. And the drivers are all total a-holes about letting another driver merge. So it crawls. The other lot has fewer drivers and a four lane road. Much better. Good luck.
It works both ways. Both will tell us a passenger is six minutes away, prompting the driver to accept. When you do accept, you’ll find out it’s more like 10 minutes or more.
That’s a fair point. Either way, Uber/Lyft need to do a better job for both parties.
Am I unusual in that I only order an Uber once I’m at the kerbside and ready to travel?
I stopped doing rides, I feel your pain from a riders perspective, but the drivers are paid next to nothing also. Bear that in mind. You see a $40 fare, but the drive likely only gets $18 – $20. The apps also are terrible with directions, traffic predictions make drives take longer than the hour a fare of this cost would normally be, and the wear & tear on one’s car. Gas is out of pocket too. So, given your complaint, don’t we drivers have a right to complain about our lost time and your static fare amount? You only get charged partially for cancelling, whilst we get nothing for the un-factored extra traffic, our extra wait time, and we can’t simply cancel the ride with you in the car when it goes over the fare’s worth. Please think before you write in the future.
I think a lot of this presumes that the driver being “4 minutes away” is actually accurate. They might not represent real drivers at all, or they may be optimistic projections by the app.
You’re just figuring this out?
I can’t recall the last time a rideshare delivered as promised. Every ride over the past two years changed the pickup time for the worse and not just a minute or two.
It is not just rideshare. Amazon is pulling the same crap. Fill the cart. delivery in 2 days, pay, and then more often than not, the shipping date changes.
All very frustrating!
This is very much a problem. I’ve had several occasions where the app tells me a driver is 4-6 minutes away, so I click to accept, then after a wait (often several minutes), the driver is magically 20+ minutes away instead. Lyft is also,notorious in the Dallas area for drivers accepting, you find out it’s a 15 minute wait instead of the 5 promised, then the driver cancels halfway through and you get reassigned to another that’s 10-15 minutes away again. Very frustrating.
As a driver I get very frustrated when passengers are not outside waiting for me. Especially if I just drove 10-15 minutes to get them. I assume they can see my progress on the app.
Former cab driver of nine years here. Expecting customers to be waiting outside when you arrive sounds like unimaginable luxury to me. Our average wait time was about five minutes. Often I would have to go inside if it was a business and search for my customer. You guys don’t know how easy you have it.
I have Uber One because it saves me enough to justify it’s cost if I place two to three UberEats orders a month. It also comes with 6 percent UberCash back on Uber rides, but also matches you up with top rated drivers most of the time. Still, I have issues, and I signed up for Alto and paid their annual fee. Once you do that, you get a full size SUV with a paid drive, no tipping needed and they are reliable. None of the monkey business with Uber and Lyft drivers trying to game a system set up to benefit the companies not them. Alto is not everywhere but they are in my city. The other downside is they do not operate 24/7 as they pay their drivers a salary so no service in my area from midnight through 5am.
Kyle, you have correctly identified the problem but not the cause. What is happening here is that drivers are scamming customers by deliberately taking rides, they have no intention of completing, with the expectation that the customer will eventually cancel the ride – the driver then gets free money from the cancellation fee.
It is pretty obvious when there is zero movement of the driver vehicle that he is not stopping for any valid reason. This is ratified by the lack of communication from the driver.
My solution is to wait a maximum of one minute from the time a vehicle is stopped. If I do not see progress, I immediately cancel and switch to the other app i.e. Lyft, if I was previously on Uber. I have found the apps do not charge me a cancellation fee if I pull the trigger quickly.
I have had the same experience several times. I believe they get a part of the cancellation fee, so this habit is worthwhile for them, I once had a ride accepted and canceled after several minutes 5 times in a row, waiting and waiting at the aiport and one after another the drivers canceled.
But, I have an even better story. I qm not sure anyone could top that. A year ago I was waiting for an Uber pickup at Universal studios to take us back to Burbank airport, about a 20 min car ride. So I am waiting, the car says “driver is here” except I don’t see anyone. Then suddenly it says that I am on my way, while I qm still standing there. And I can see on the app that I am supposedly driving away while I qm still standing there. And you can NOT cancel or do anything because, it says I qm in the Uber riding to my destination. I can’t call another Uber either because I am already on my ride supposedly, But wait, it gets better, about 5 mins later it says “I updated my destination ” which is now not the Burbank airport but somewhere in Northern California, about 200 miles away and now I am in my new ride for like 500+ bucks. I was actually able to contact Uber and they stopped this. But that was an unbelievable scam.
In all these case, a driver not moving, or as in my case, the ability to have someone claim I am jn the car, while clearly their app can see my GPS location isn’t moving – the rider can’t do anything. While the driver can do as he please, claim whatever he wants.
The fact that Uber is paying driver so little now means the good drivers go away and the bad drivers and summers remain. But they can do it because the killed the taxi cabs in most cities.
Instead , it should be like in Europe or Japan, you have an app that just calls a taxi. Same app convince but reliable drivers.
What I dislike about Lyft at SFO is the continuous switching to another driver. After waiting 8 minutes for the first driver, you are switched over to another driver where you have another 8 minute wait. This can go on for several times. My destination is San Francisco, so it’s not like I am going to a remote destination. What I now do is screen capture each driver that is supposedly arriving. I then send the screen captures to Lyft, and Lyft usually refunds me for my ride or applies a $ discount to my account.
This is the result of the drivers being contractors instead of employees. If the prices were slightly higher with guaranteed pay there would be better reliability. Given the low unemployment rate, it is not surprising there are so many issues when the drivers have the power since the rideshare companies need them more than they then them.
Thanks for this post! I’ve been complaining about this with Uber for some time and it’s getting to the point that I dread having to use the service. I live in the DC area and I’ve honestly reverted back to taking the Metro whenever possible, with surprisingly good results. I’d urge everyone to try to do the same.
I see a class action lawsuit against the ride sharing services at some point in the future (and no, I’m not a lawyer). But they are knowingly allowing this situation to continue without a fix, and riders are unfairly penalized. And sure, if it works the other way where drivers have to wait insufferably long for riders to show up, there will eventually be a suit for drivers being penalized.
Either way, both Uber and Lyft know this is a problem and not only are not doing anything to fix it, they continue to allow and aid it to happen
Taxi driver here, and maybe NYC is an exception but this article going at taxi drivers as less honest and more expensive is… well, that’s some bullsh*t, to say the least.
In fact, in most cities, it’s the same drivers, most taxi drivers have dabbled in Uber/Lyft and if you think they aren’t getting screwed over every bit as much if not more than the riders, YOU ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION.
Screw Uber and Lyft, and screw anyone walking around pretending that Uber and Lyft are still in any way better than taxi service. Y’all are the problem as much as anyone.
I thought it was a common scam for a driver to accept a ride and then try to get the rider to cancel to collect money for doing nothing. Luckily, everytime I’ve gotten a cancellation fee, I’ve been able to get it reversed. Not that I don’t really use rideshare very often unless traveling.
My first and last experience with Uber was a 6:00 AM request for a 3.5 mile ride from home to mass transit, to get to the airport for a 9:00 flight. First the app said 4 cars are in your area, 20 minutes later 3, 20 minutes later 2, then none. Fearing I would miss my flight, I walked. Friends in Las Vegas have great experiences with rideshare but I’m done with them.
Guys, stop canceling. Leave the app/ride open forever and switch to the other app (either Uber or Lyft). The driver sits there indefinitely and eventually cancel it themself (hurts their rating) and in the meantime, can’t take additional rides. Just never cancel the ride.
Completely agree… Uber and Lyft are a complete JOKE when it comes to their estimated times of pickup!
I’ve been told 3 minutes, yet wait 10 – 15 and it’s not just once or twice, it’s nearly every damn time!
I’ve pretty much given up and gone back to using taxis more often now.
The ONE time I ordered an Uber (XL), he shows up 20 minutes EARLY. Not everyone in my party is ready and I tell the driver. Fine. He waits about two minutes & not only does he TAKE OFF (about 10 minutes BEFORE my requested pickup time), but he has the audacity to CHARGE me for a no-show. I’ve never been a fan of ride share services to begin with, and haven’t tried Uber since – five years ago. I refuse to subject myself to these games.
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The creeping delays bother me. I am ready to go when ordering the ride. It is fraud to continually update the ride to where the pickup is 20 or more minutes later than originally quoted. Both ride share services suck, but taxis can be worse…