Not surprised. Lyft really failed to keep up over the past couple years and just year-to-date their stock price is down almost 70%. A lot of talk about companies laying off just to lay off, but if one company really needed it, it's Lyft.
Yep. For all its flaws Uber has been really trying to invest in the right areas and is frankly much more promising long-term. Lyft was always just 2nd fiddle to Uber for ridesharing.
I've been a supporter of Lyft as the underdog and tried my best to give them as much business as I could. I was trying to get a ride at an airport, and I got so frustrated that I gave up and had a very good experience with Uber.
What happened was this: I requested a ride, and it was confirmed by the driver who was about 15 minutes away. After waiting 10 minutes, the driver would cancel (and presumably go pick up someone else who had a higher fare). This happened literally 3 times, and I sat outside at the curb waiting for 30+ minutes. I gave up, requested a ride with Uber instead which had a similar price (<$2 delta, I think). The Uber driver not only not cancel on me but also was significantly closer causing me to wait less from the moment I requested a ride.
My airport doesn't have a taxi line. Also, traditional airport taxis in my area (which you have to call and wait for a dispatcher to dispatch a taxi anyways) are about 2-3x the cost of an uber/lyft ride.
Then the taxi driver tried to scam me multiple ways, including demanding cash because they "forgot to start the meter" and attempted to take the long way to my home (I live about 1 mile from the airport).
I'm healthy and enjoy a good walk, but I wouldn't really want to bring luggage a mile from an airport, especially not if the weather isn't nice; it seems rare for foot traffic out of airports to be particularly easy.
I walk nearly a mile (1.2km) just to get to the nearest bus stop (that buses come to often) from my airport. I only travel with a backpack though. You're right in that they don't have sidewalks though out of the airport area.
Because there are no sidewalks out of the airport. This is depressingly common. Airport designers only think about cars and busses. Maybe the train if it is near a city that has it, but even that is far from a guarantee. Usually the only access is a high speed road that connects to an even more pedestrian unfriendly highway.
Boston Logan you can definitely hop onto public transit pretty easily. But I'm pretty sure you're not just walking to anywhere in East Boston from there easily.
Indeed. Silver line (to South Station, where you can transfer further) is free to get on at the airport, precisely to encourage riding public transit out of the airport.
Cabbies can be scammy for sure, they try to take advantage of people who don’t assert themselves. An approach I’ve had success with is agree on a flat cash price with the cabbie before the ride starts. If you already are halfway through ordering an Uber/Lyft you have a good idea of what’s a decent price point to offer them. Of course, check what’s in your wallet before you make the deal!
If you're going more than 30 minutes usually the taxi line has hilarious "out of jurisdiction" charges they tack on
From SFO I once went to South Bay, Uber would've been $50, taxi was $150 because of some esoterically worded rule that tripled the mileage cost outside of SF proper. I wasn't even in SF to start! What a joke
I haven't had occasion to look at the options for years but SFO to San Jose or thereabouts used to be horrible. (Whereas BART to downtown SF is easy/cheap.)
Taxis are often far more expensive than Uber/Lyft and such. Going from the local airport to a hotel the first time I came at $location, cost me about 20 euro, going to the airport in the middle of the night from my apartment cost about 5.
I live in Chicago and find that Ubers/Lyfts are sketchier than taxis. Not to call a taxi luxurious by any means, but just compared to a lot of the sketchy cars i've had for Ubers I find taxis predictable at least.
For that reason, I don't use UberX at all anymore. I always upgrade to UberLux or Uber Comfort or Uber Electric if its available. Even the Uber Comfort's are not that great most of the time. If I have to use UberX, I will just take a taxi. Taxis in my part of Chicago at least are pretty good and predictable (but other cities might not be so lucky).
I think this is market specific. Because when I go back to Oregon to visit family, the UberX there are super nice. I had a brand new Tahoe on my last ride there.
I've started taking taxis from Airports instead of Ubers. There is often a line of idle taxis waiting for rides, and then a bunch of people on their phones in the corner refreshing Uber/Lyft competing over the same handful of drivers.
People have the impression that Taxis are more expensive than Ubers, but that's actually rarely the case. I've found they are pretty close most of the time. I find that Uber/Lyft is cheaper for short trips (< $10) and Taxis are cheaper for longer trips ($10-50).
Also, LPT for everyone. Many/Most airports actually have flat taxi rates between the airport and the city. Be sure to ask about this. A lot of big cities will have a flat price for taxies of like $20 or $30 between the airport and city. I really like this. Also, all taxis nowadays take cards and most take ApplePay too.
Because you don't want to pay 4 times as much for the ride? My local airport has an exclusive agreement with one taxicab company and to go to my house less than 2 miles away is $20 if I take them. And that's the base price before you add in the gas surcharge, COVID surcharge, luggage surcharge, airport surcharge, depreciation surcharge, and tax. Lyft doesn't hit me with any of that bullshit. Also with Lyft I don't need to make sure I have cash, because of course the cab's card reader is always broken.
To use SFO as one example: "Destinations either 15 miles beyond the limits of the City and County of San Francisco or 15 miles beyond the boundaries of San Francisco International Airport are charged at 150% of the metered rate."
Also if you need an SUV or larger vehicle for more passengers, it's much easier to just use Uber.
Could be a coincidence, but my experience has been that Lyft have generally been faster and cheaper than Uber. However the quality of both the driver and the car has generally been higher with Uber.
I'd still call Lyft over taking a traditional cab though.
Do you take the cap to downtown? If so, why do you take a cab over the Link?
I have taken a cab ones, but to Fauntleroy, and I was missing a ferry (which I missed anyway because the driver took a weird way). However, the transit options to West Seattle aren’t nearly as good as to downtown though.
Cabs/Ubers/etc are too expensive to use daily, but for a one time thing (such as flying into an airport), it's so much less stressful than trying to deal with public transportation.
I'll give an exception to certain cities that have superb transit options, but none of those cities are in the US.
The transit option between SeaTac and Downtown Seattle is superb. I admit it can be improved (e.g. you have to walk through the parking garage to the station, and it is a bit slow going through Rainier valley) but for 2.50 USD it is the best option going from SeaTac to Downtown.
We stopped taking cabs years ago when the cab we ordered for very early in the morning didn't show up, ending in a scramble to get to the airport and parked.
What most people like about Lyft or Uber: known price, known route, and backup drivers automatically located if there's an issue with the first driver.
The "hack" that a couple of the comments in this chain are referring to is only ever taking cabs _from_ a major airport into a city. Often you don't have to play the waiting-on-someone-to-show-up game, there's just a line of them right outside the airport that you can hop in immediately. In some cities there's even flat rates they have to adhere to, depending on where you're going ("$20 to midtown").
I was gleeful when Uber and Lyft came on the scene to have an alternative to cab BS, but the one place they still shine is when going from an airport into a major metro area.
In Chicago, the taxis are generally cheaper than Uber/Lyft from the airport. It is about $30 to the city with a Taxi. In the best conditions, i've seen Ubers for $38 to the same place, but it is generally in the $60-80 range.
It is so much more expensive that my company has stopped reimbursing ubers in most scenarios where taxis were otherwise available.
I've driven heavily in both and taxis are often nicer and safer than some of the craziness of UberX rides. If I take an uber I just pay the 10-15% premium for Comfort or Electric. I won't use UberX in the city anymore, it is so much worse than the taxis.
I called a Lyft the other day and saw that there was an option for priority pickup, which flags a driver who's close to you but going to pick up someone else and has him pick you up instead.
In the moment it was nice: I was running late and that got me on track. But it seems really really bad for the ecosystem in general. I'm not sure I can rely on being picked up at a reasonable time again without paying for it. And once everyone realizes that and starts paying more, then we're back to where we were before.
If Uber isn't doing that, maybe it's time to give them a try.
I landed in JFK a couple of nights ago after a vacation with my GF. I get Lyft priority for free because of some credit card thing. We both called Lyft cars at the same time. She got one faster than I did, and it arrived earlier, whereas I had to wait 5 minutes to find a driver and 5 more for them to arrive. It 100% had to have been because of our destinations - mine is less lucrative for a driver to hang around in (less activity).
Priority Pickup has done a lot to turn me off from Lyft. It seems like most of the time I try to use it, it takes so long to identify a driver that I didn't save any time off the original wait time. The UI is a total dark pattern to make it feel like you're getting a driver faster, too, which I really resent.
- App offers a 7 minute pickup time or a 3 minute "priority"
- Select priority, app pops up a "searching for drivers" screen with a loading bar
- as the loading bar gets closer to the end, it gets slower. The loading bar does not actually represent progress to completion in any meaningful way.
- the app begins throwing out bs "reticulating splines" explanations like "tidying up a few last minute details!" I hate that kind of teehee-cute fake message, there are no details to tidy up, you are just waiting for a driver close by enough to agree to my ride
- after a minute+ of this, tap "cancel" to call an uber instead, and get a popup pleading to wait just a few more seconds since this will happen any moment now
- after another minute or two, finally get a driver 3-5 minutes away.
Total elapsed time until lyft arrives: 6-7 minutes, for $5-10 more.
It's not just the unreliable functionality, but the way the energy invested into this part of the product appears to have gone into fooling you into thinking it is useful, not actually being useful. I'd rather just call an Uber that will actually arrive at the time the app predicts it will show up before I call it.
> which flags a driver who's close to you but going to pick up someone else and has him pick you up instead.
This sounds incorrect based on my experience on the driver’s side - I’m pretty sure it just puts your request at the front of the queue and doesn’t reassign drivers already en route to a pickup. Where did you see that’s how priority pickup works?
That's what the driver said - he was on his way to a spot near me to pick up someone else, then was rerouted.
He said he'd only recently learned of the feature himself when a similar thing happened a couple of days prior. He was supposed to pick up person A, then was redirected to person B, but B was at the same place as A so he got an earful from her, because she thought he canceled on her.
Lyft changes assigned drivers for reasons that have nothing to do with priority pickup. Absent a confirmation from Lyft, I’m skeptical that was the reason.
What would be a reason that correlates almost exactly with me requesting a priority pickup? This was a Sunday morning, about 30 minutes from Pittsburgh and 20-25 from the airport, so not exactly a time and place with a lot of activity.
The rider could have changed their destination in the app. Or Lyft could have swapped drivers and then the other driver canceled. Or the driver’s phone could have gone offline without him noticing due to bad cell reception. Or about a million other reasons - I don’t know the specific circumstances so it’s hard to say.
Driver switching has been happening for years though, way before I saw priority pickup as a rider.
Lyft's UI is also just worse. When you order a ride, they use a particular dark pattern to make it seem as if the driver has immediately been found, when it's still searching for one.
And perhaps Uber has some heuristics (ancient English for AI) or competitor intelligence to detect if a driver has accepted a Lyft ride. Uber can then offer a carrot to that driver to get them to cancel the Lyft ride. They could offer the best fare that turns up in the next 2 minutes. Costs Uber little, causes three damages to Lyft (Lyft lost profit, annoyed Lyft customer, driver happier with Uber).
Yes, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they have ways to do that and micro target better rates on fares that have a pending Lyft pickup.
Remember on the driver side they run on different phones generally, but on the client side the customer is running all these apps on their single phone. A lot of these apps have privacy issues and snoop a lot on the client side. So they can basically detect frequency/recency of Lyft app being open on your phone, and then offer Uber drivers better rates for pickups at your GPS location.
It seems to be very city specific.
Had exact experience a few times while in Miami and switched back to Uber for rest of trip.
Drivers are smart, they network, and they talk. I'm sure theres some idiosyncratic thing going on where Lyft is more gameable for drivers in some cities. Could be Uber-Lyft price spread plus cancel policy / penalty on drivers.
Most of these guys drive around with N apps running, so they switch to more lucrative ride / app / etc on the fly.
That's happened to me, and it does suck. On the map inside the app, I one time watched a Lyft driver take my order, then drive to a McDonald's, then cancel my order. Weird thing to do.
The thing is, your Uber driver was probably also working for Lyft at the same time. The one who canceled probably was too. So I don't know if one company is better for that than the other, or if you just happened to get a game theorist Lyft driver by luck of the draw, who decided to optimize his expected value.
I was in DC for business 2 weekends ago and had 3 Lyfts cancel on me. Never had that happen before on either platform. Checked my rider rating just in case and it's 4.97. Really frustrating to deal with, especially when timing matters.
That was my experience last year (first time using Lyft; never used Uber). I was trying to get a ride from a Holiday Inn in Austin that sat next to the freeway. I had about 4 accept it and bail out five minutes later (even the person who accepted it the night before when I scheduled it). I had to wait around 20 minutes past my scheduled pick up time until someone decided to follow through. This was around 7am and was scheduled for surgery at 8am. I don't know if it's a perfect storm situation but I wasn't impressed. I didn't need any more anxiety, and I'll probably stick with the traditional taxi service next time.
A huge part of what made Uber great when they first launched UberX was the driver ratings. This forced the drivers to provide good service, unlike the previous standard for taxis.
The problem now is that you can't give your driver a rating until the ride actually starts. This allows the drivers to play all sorts of games before the ride starts. If I match with a driver, and he drives around aimlessly for 10 minutes, then calls me, asks where I'm going, and then demands I cancel the ride (and get charged), that should be one star, but currently it's impossible to rate this bad driver.
They know fare in my recent experience, but not where you are going. Probably theoretically for “diversity” reasons but also because Uber’s interests probably line up with giving all the rides rather than only the ones going to “good neighborhoods.”
Drivers on the other hand, want to know mainly so they can decline up front to take someone 50 miles in the “wrong” direction from where they are trying to be next.
When you cancel an Uber ride there is an option to choose "the driver told me to cancel" or "the driver was not moving" - I would hope that has some impact on their rating internally, but I wonder what it actually does.
This game is played by Uber drivers as well, so it's just a matter of luck. Not sure if related to particular cities or just bad people, of which we had enough in the taxi business already.
unsurprising. the experience with Lyft is terrible. the last three times I attempted to call one I had to give up waiting for a driver after nearly 40 minutes.
drivers will accept the ride, and then just never show up. I watched them on the map---I think they are driving Uber routes for other customers while simultaneously "accepting" my ride
They definitely are. When I take Uber/Lyft I notice that most drivers are running both apps. As they get towards my destination they will start bobbing for fares between the two apps. Maybe Uber is paying slightly more for drivers? I don't know, but maybe that is why they tend to favor Uber rides over Lyft. Maybe they are more likely to get tips on Uber. Just some theories. But I have noticed the same thing, most drivers tend to favor Uber. So if they gets rides from both, they will cancel the Lyft one.
I used to switch between the apps based on price of rides. Now I have AMEX rewards for Uber plus I get Marriott points when I ride, so that is why I have moved exclusively to Uber.
But the drivers are the same. It's the same pool of drivers, using both apps.
Off topic, but I deleted the Lyft app last month after I rode one of their scooters home. Apparently, they have a geofenced area around downtown, and any ending of the ride outside of that area is considered "bad parking" and they will charge you a $50 fee. They put the fee on my receipt, along with a $50 credit, as a warning I guess.
The issue I have with this is that there are many "no go" areas downtown, like the pedestrian mall, and the scooter will simply stop working if you go into those areas. You have to manually push the scooter back out of the area before it will start working again. Great, perfect, fine, good, so then why did you let me drive it outside of the valid downtown area to begin with?
I ran into something very similar in DC. They let me unlock a scooter that was in a 'no-go' zone and began billing me, however it wouldn't operate because I was in that zone. I ended up having to walk it over a mile to get it to function, while it was billing me the whole time.
So frustrating they even would let you unlock these in the first place. I'll never use it again.
Probably because the "no go zone" is time based? Here in Germany, cities are experimenting with all sorts of policies to try and combat the various issues (drunk partygoers, people throwing escooters into rivers or into bushes, ...).
Unless the OP logged on within <1 minute of the zone switching designation, then this is still an unethical business practice. They have the code to make the scooter not run. They just didn't apply that code so that the sale can't go through.
Where I live there is a high-speed road (45 mph speed limit, no sidewalks) going through a park. Lyft and Bird have both designated the entire park as a prohibited zone except for the road. The city has also designated the road a "cycling route" despite it not having bike lanes.
I found this out while trying to ride a scooter through the park. Google Maps directed me to take the road, which I was not thrilled about but seemed like a better idea than carrying the scooter through the prohibited zone. But then the fuzzy geofencing on the scooter thought I was in the park anyway and kept intermittently cutting off the scooter.
Dang. That's really unfortunate. I live in SF and don't own a car. I can't say I've had appreciably better/worse experiences with Uber vs Lyft, but I am very fearful to live in an Uber-only world. I feel like their strategy since Day 1 has been "First, take over the world. Second, raise prices." and if their primary competition gives up the chase then I'm going to be between a rock and a hard place. I really value the convenience and confidence I get by using apps vs calling a taxi service, but I have to assume Uber knows that, too, and are going to push quite a premium for it once unfettered.
Lyft is still around. They aren't going out of business. They are just consolidating their workforce.
Remember that Uber has had 2 rounds of layoffs already I think. One was for 16% of their workforce and another was for 5-6%. So it isn't a whole lot different. I wouldn't expect anything to change. Facebook has had 4-5 rounds of layoffs and Instagram and Facebook aren't going anywhere.
It's true that Uber has laid off people, but, according to layoffs.fyi, all of their post-covid layoffs have occurred either outside of the U.S. or applied to Uber Freight. Uber had two rounds of layoffs in SF during 2020 for 14% and 13% of their workforce. Nothing since. (source: https://i.imgur.com/MqNYdhT.png)
In contrast, SF Lyft has gone through four rounds of layoffs: 17% in 2020, 2% + 13% in 2022, and 26% in 2023.
If Uber cuts their SF workforce by 25% in the next month or so then I'll feel better about the mutual competition. Otherwise, my stance remains that they're entering into the winner-take-all phase of their strategy.
> I feel like their strategy since Day 1 has been "First, take over the world. Second, raise prices."
I'm not sure it's as nefarious as you present it. The "raise prices" portion is more like "raise prices to what it actually costs to provide the ride". They'd been pricing rides at a loss for years to get traction and customers.
Anecdotally, though, I haven't found Lyft to be much better. Even with Lyft Pink (and no Uber One or whatever it's called), Uber is usually fairly competitive with Lyft, at least where I live.
That's fair. I guess I just really like the golden period where I get discounted services off the back of VC funding. I also sort of thought that Uber's end-game strategy was to eliminate drivers with their self-driving division, and that they were willing to take on greater operational inefficiencies along the way to gain ground. Since they dropped their self-driving division it makes me fearful that their operational inefficiencies will result in significantly higher prices than taxi services which, I assume, run leaner (but I have no proof here)
Usually I see these announcements and think "How could they have had that many employees?" But in this case I'm kind of surprised that they only had ~4,000 employees.
I mean if you really weren't profitable, and you wanted to try to be, why not freeze feature development and run the company with ~500 employees, <100 engineers? I learned Uber takes as much as a 50% cut of taxi rides. The margin for profit is really there if you see the company's primary goal as "make a taxi marketplace, and leave it be" like craigslist does.
For a while before the pandemic it felt like Lyft and Uber were roughly equal in my market, most drivers did both, saturation was about the same, prices about the same. Now I see a lot more Uber drivers, I wonder if the ability to do food deliveries with order size based tips on the Uber network has an impact on that?
My last Lyft ride home from the airport the driver was really ripping into Lyft and how terrible they treat their drivers compared to Uber, says he only drives Lyft as a last resort if no Ubers are available. He agreed that Lyft used to be the underdog and preferred them but something changed.
I have noticed that Lyft rides frequently get cancelled, and Uber rides aren't as often (still happens though).
I think drivers are preferring riding for Uber over Lyft. It used to be that every driver had both apps in their cars and now I am seeing fewer drivers running both apps. So I think many are settling down with Uber.
In the end, this is actually kind of exciting. It means that the two companies can compete on treating drivers better and the drivers will move towards that app and the riders are noticing (based on this thread). Competition that treats the drivers better I think is ultimately a good thing. The market was so crazy for a while it didn't matter, but now this might be an important factor between the two.
How would that work, though? Treating drivers better pretty much always means paying them more, no? If Lyft has to pay drivers more to entice them away from Uber, that means rides get more expensive, which will push customers over to Uber. Drivers on Lyft will feel less demand for their services and go back to Uber.
For perspective, Microsoft has ~200,000 employees. Lyft never had 2,000,000.
You might be thinking 2,000,000 drivers. But I checked that fact and apparently they have 20M registered drivers. Maybe 2M of those are active. I don't know. But Lyft never had anywhere near 2M employees. It looks like at their peak they had around 4,500.
This is all ridiculous and just there to push stock prices up. The asset owners getting richer on the back of the white collar worker (see META stock since all the layoffs).
One of the companies that decide to build the most complex engineering systems, very expensive social programs, while keep losing more money every year. Hopefully company will be able to focus on what’s important for their business moving forward.
What all employees of megacorps should do: quit and work for themselves.
Doesn't have to be a startup, a worker-owned co-op doing consulting or a business products company can bring home the proverbial bacon and the profits can be shared fairly amongst workers.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 168 ms ] threadWhat happened was this: I requested a ride, and it was confirmed by the driver who was about 15 minutes away. After waiting 10 minutes, the driver would cancel (and presumably go pick up someone else who had a higher fare). This happened literally 3 times, and I sat outside at the curb waiting for 30+ minutes. I gave up, requested a ride with Uber instead which had a similar price (<$2 delta, I think). The Uber driver not only not cancel on me but also was significantly closer causing me to wait less from the moment I requested a ride.
Then the taxi driver tried to scam me multiple ways, including demanding cash because they "forgot to start the meter" and attempted to take the long way to my home (I live about 1 mile from the airport).
Won't make that mistake again.
- lots of luggage
- traveling with family/kids
- area was designed for cars and is not pedestrian friendly
- too tired after long travel
- late night arrival makes walking unsafe
From SFO I once went to South Bay, Uber would've been $50, taxi was $150 because of some esoterically worded rule that tripled the mileage cost outside of SF proper. I wasn't even in SF to start! What a joke
As a result now, I'd rather wait 30 minutes for an Uber/Lyft than take the cab sitting right there.
For that reason, I don't use UberX at all anymore. I always upgrade to UberLux or Uber Comfort or Uber Electric if its available. Even the Uber Comfort's are not that great most of the time. If I have to use UberX, I will just take a taxi. Taxis in my part of Chicago at least are pretty good and predictable (but other cities might not be so lucky).
I think this is market specific. Because when I go back to Oregon to visit family, the UberX there are super nice. I had a brand new Tahoe on my last ride there.
People have the impression that Taxis are more expensive than Ubers, but that's actually rarely the case. I've found they are pretty close most of the time. I find that Uber/Lyft is cheaper for short trips (< $10) and Taxis are cheaper for longer trips ($10-50).
Also, LPT for everyone. Many/Most airports actually have flat taxi rates between the airport and the city. Be sure to ask about this. A lot of big cities will have a flat price for taxies of like $20 or $30 between the airport and city. I really like this. Also, all taxis nowadays take cards and most take ApplePay too.
And i've been turned down once or twice. I use cabs a lot, so I could call those experiences extreme outliars.
- I can hail an Uber of my choice before stepping off the plane
- I get free Uber rides via AMEX
- I don't carry cash
- Taxis are hit and miss when it comes to cleanliness
So are ubers lol. Especially mid-day when the only ubers that seem to be out are old tiny cars.
Also if you need an SUV or larger vehicle for more passengers, it's much easier to just use Uber.
I'd still call Lyft over taking a traditional cab though.
I have taken a cab ones, but to Fauntleroy, and I was missing a ferry (which I missed anyway because the driver took a weird way). However, the transit options to West Seattle aren’t nearly as good as to downtown though.
I'll give an exception to certain cities that have superb transit options, but none of those cities are in the US.
What most people like about Lyft or Uber: known price, known route, and backup drivers automatically located if there's an issue with the first driver.
That peace of mind seems worth paying for.
I was gleeful when Uber and Lyft came on the scene to have an alternative to cab BS, but the one place they still shine is when going from an airport into a major metro area.
It is so much more expensive that my company has stopped reimbursing ubers in most scenarios where taxis were otherwise available.
I've driven heavily in both and taxis are often nicer and safer than some of the craziness of UberX rides. If I take an uber I just pay the 10-15% premium for Comfort or Electric. I won't use UberX in the city anymore, it is so much worse than the taxis.
But the convenience depends on which terminal. I normally fly American--ez taxi from JFK.
Once I flew in on JetBlue. Nightmare taxi stand with a winding, immobile line. Had to call an Uber.
In the moment it was nice: I was running late and that got me on track. But it seems really really bad for the ecosystem in general. I'm not sure I can rely on being picked up at a reasonable time again without paying for it. And once everyone realizes that and starts paying more, then we're back to where we were before.
If Uber isn't doing that, maybe it's time to give them a try.
- App offers a 7 minute pickup time or a 3 minute "priority"
- Select priority, app pops up a "searching for drivers" screen with a loading bar
- as the loading bar gets closer to the end, it gets slower. The loading bar does not actually represent progress to completion in any meaningful way.
- the app begins throwing out bs "reticulating splines" explanations like "tidying up a few last minute details!" I hate that kind of teehee-cute fake message, there are no details to tidy up, you are just waiting for a driver close by enough to agree to my ride
- after a minute+ of this, tap "cancel" to call an uber instead, and get a popup pleading to wait just a few more seconds since this will happen any moment now
- after another minute or two, finally get a driver 3-5 minutes away.
Total elapsed time until lyft arrives: 6-7 minutes, for $5-10 more.
It's not just the unreliable functionality, but the way the energy invested into this part of the product appears to have gone into fooling you into thinking it is useful, not actually being useful. I'd rather just call an Uber that will actually arrive at the time the app predicts it will show up before I call it.
This sounds incorrect based on my experience on the driver’s side - I’m pretty sure it just puts your request at the front of the queue and doesn’t reassign drivers already en route to a pickup. Where did you see that’s how priority pickup works?
He said he'd only recently learned of the feature himself when a similar thing happened a couple of days prior. He was supposed to pick up person A, then was redirected to person B, but B was at the same place as A so he got an earful from her, because she thought he canceled on her.
Driver switching has been happening for years though, way before I saw priority pickup as a rider.
if they get punished $5 but Uber fare is gonna be $10 more, switch.
Remember on the driver side they run on different phones generally, but on the client side the customer is running all these apps on their single phone. A lot of these apps have privacy issues and snoop a lot on the client side. So they can basically detect frequency/recency of Lyft app being open on your phone, and then offer Uber drivers better rates for pickups at your GPS location.
Drivers are smart, they network, and they talk. I'm sure theres some idiosyncratic thing going on where Lyft is more gameable for drivers in some cities. Could be Uber-Lyft price spread plus cancel policy / penalty on drivers.
Most of these guys drive around with N apps running, so they switch to more lucrative ride / app / etc on the fly.
The thing is, your Uber driver was probably also working for Lyft at the same time. The one who canceled probably was too. So I don't know if one company is better for that than the other, or if you just happened to get a game theorist Lyft driver by luck of the draw, who decided to optimize his expected value.
The problem now is that you can't give your driver a rating until the ride actually starts. This allows the drivers to play all sorts of games before the ride starts. If I match with a driver, and he drives around aimlessly for 10 minutes, then calls me, asks where I'm going, and then demands I cancel the ride (and get charged), that should be one star, but currently it's impossible to rate this bad driver.
Drivers on the other hand, want to know mainly so they can decline up front to take someone 50 miles in the “wrong” direction from where they are trying to be next.
drivers will accept the ride, and then just never show up. I watched them on the map---I think they are driving Uber routes for other customers while simultaneously "accepting" my ride
I used to switch between the apps based on price of rides. Now I have AMEX rewards for Uber plus I get Marriott points when I ride, so that is why I have moved exclusively to Uber.
But the drivers are the same. It's the same pool of drivers, using both apps.
The issue I have with this is that there are many "no go" areas downtown, like the pedestrian mall, and the scooter will simply stop working if you go into those areas. You have to manually push the scooter back out of the area before it will start working again. Great, perfect, fine, good, so then why did you let me drive it outside of the valid downtown area to begin with?
So frustrating they even would let you unlock these in the first place. I'll never use it again.
I found this out while trying to ride a scooter through the park. Google Maps directed me to take the road, which I was not thrilled about but seemed like a better idea than carrying the scooter through the prohibited zone. But then the fuzzy geofencing on the scooter thought I was in the park anyway and kept intermittently cutting off the scooter.
Remember that Uber has had 2 rounds of layoffs already I think. One was for 16% of their workforce and another was for 5-6%. So it isn't a whole lot different. I wouldn't expect anything to change. Facebook has had 4-5 rounds of layoffs and Instagram and Facebook aren't going anywhere.
It's true that Uber has laid off people, but, according to layoffs.fyi, all of their post-covid layoffs have occurred either outside of the U.S. or applied to Uber Freight. Uber had two rounds of layoffs in SF during 2020 for 14% and 13% of their workforce. Nothing since. (source: https://i.imgur.com/MqNYdhT.png)
In contrast, SF Lyft has gone through four rounds of layoffs: 17% in 2020, 2% + 13% in 2022, and 26% in 2023.
If Uber cuts their SF workforce by 25% in the next month or so then I'll feel better about the mutual competition. Otherwise, my stance remains that they're entering into the winner-take-all phase of their strategy.
I'm not sure it's as nefarious as you present it. The "raise prices" portion is more like "raise prices to what it actually costs to provide the ride". They'd been pricing rides at a loss for years to get traction and customers.
Anecdotally, though, I haven't found Lyft to be much better. Even with Lyft Pink (and no Uber One or whatever it's called), Uber is usually fairly competitive with Lyft, at least where I live.
I think drivers are preferring riding for Uber over Lyft. It used to be that every driver had both apps in their cars and now I am seeing fewer drivers running both apps. So I think many are settling down with Uber.
In the end, this is actually kind of exciting. It means that the two companies can compete on treating drivers better and the drivers will move towards that app and the riders are noticing (based on this thread). Competition that treats the drivers better I think is ultimately a good thing. The market was so crazy for a while it didn't matter, but now this might be an important factor between the two.
For perspective, Microsoft has ~200,000 employees. Lyft never had 2,000,000.
You might be thinking 2,000,000 drivers. But I checked that fact and apparently they have 20M registered drivers. Maybe 2M of those are active. I don't know. But Lyft never had anywhere near 2M employees. It looks like at their peak they had around 4,500.
Doesn't have to be a startup, a worker-owned co-op doing consulting or a business products company can bring home the proverbial bacon and the profits can be shared fairly amongst workers.