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Based on my rides recently I have seen the quality of drivers plummet on both Uber and Lyft. I'd be much more willing to wait (and maybe even pay) for a higher
by chrisabrams 8y ago
Based on my rides recently I have seen the quality of drivers plummet on both Uber and Lyft. I'd be much more willing to wait (and maybe even pay) for a higher quality driver. Having a driver who cannot follow a GPS and takes you in a circle 3-4 times around the airport or does not speak English well enough to understand your request to stop on the right instead of the left like the GPS shows can be quite frustrating depending on the scenario.
I wonder if this is the first step towards offering a "limit" option. For example, where I live the average price from our house (Jersey City) to the mall is $7, but some days it jumps up to $15 or more. My wife and I usually choose to walk those days, but it would be nice to say "hey we want to go to the mall today, let's set a $7 limit and when that hits we'll go." For the flexible consumer it's easy to wait for a better price and not need to constantly look at the phone to see what the current market price is. The limit price could help create a queue which could provide a driver with a continuous supply of rides during non-peak hours.
- godzillabrennus 8y agoIsn’t that what uber black car is? Pay for better service?
- chrisabrams 8y agoDepending on where you are, that is not an option unfortunately. It is odd, some days uber black is an option, some days we can only choose between uber x and the black suv option.
- tomsthumb 8y agoCustomers should pay a premium for the driver to not park a block and a half from them at pickup?
- chrisabrams 8y agoIf you're in a suburb that should never happen. If you are in the NYC area for example, the GPS just really struggles between all the buildings. What's more frustrating is when you are on the other side of a busy street, you wave to the driver or even call them to let them know you're on the other side of the street, and they just sit there...
- chimeracoder 8y ago> If you are in the NYC area for example, the GPS just really struggles between all the buildings. What phone are you using? In a decade of living in Manhattan, I've never had any issue like this. The location services on my phone (Pixel 2 XL) and every Android phone I've ever used have been spot on.
- ReverseCold 8y agoGoogle and Apple do some tricks based on WiFi to fix GPS in dense urban areas. Raw gps is basically unusable in these areas.
- _jal 8y agoI don't think too many Uber drivers are running their gigs on GlobalSats dangling from Arduinos. They tend to have phones.
- chimeracoder 8y ago> Google and Apple do some tricks based on WiFi to fix GPS in dense urban areas. Raw gps is basically unusable in these areas. Location Services doesn't just use raw GPS, no, but that's what most drivers (and passengers) are using. In any case, for several years, I only used the device GPS (instead of the full location services), and I never had any issues like what OP is describing.
- always_good 8y agoSince you have to set a pickup pin explicitly, how does GPS matter at all, here?
- d4l3k 8y agoDrivers sometimes go to where the live GPS signal tells them you are instead of the pin. Likewise the pin is sometimes required to be in dumb spots (like the airport) even when there's a much more convenient spot 100 feet down the street.
- jessriedel 8y agoI have had the opposite anecdotal experience. Things have stayed the same or gotten better.
- chrisabrams 8y agoWhere are located out of curiosity?
- jessriedel 8y agoMostly Toronto, plus some Santa Barbara lately.
- chrisabrams 8y agoNice. I don't recall having a bad experience with ride sharing in Toronto :)
- mlthoughts2018 8y agoI have the reverse service expectations. I want absolutely cheap but non-shared point-to-point rides. Beyond some very minimal, basic safety and competency as a driver, I stop caring and just want it to be as cheap as possible. If I could indicate that I’ll happily be paired with a low rating driver if it is cheaper, I would. And it sounds like adding this functionality could satisfy both of our use cases too!
- chrisabrams 8y agoI would argue that your desired use case is a closer reality as it just requires adding a new option with lower score or similar. Increasing the quality is not as simple.
- magicbuzz 8y agoThat mindset has made flying in the US the experience it is today.
- mlthoughts2018 8y agoYou mean, something that even lower middle class people can afford? Your comment rings sanctimonious to me. While I agree that major airlines should do better in some areas, they are also just responding to consumer demand. Should the people who cannot afford higher fares just exist in a lower caste where flying is not achievable? Those people for whom lower fares are the priority, you feel they just shouldn’t be able to attend a family member’s funeral or college graduation? That is how things are in my extended family in the US. A spare couple hundred dollars for even a routine round-trip fair between major cities is still a very difficult stretch for them. If grumpy people who can easily afford the flights are annoyed by the lack of frills and the cheapness, yet people who are less well off can possibly afford more flights, that seems like a positive overall for society to me.
- ghaff 8y agoThe problem is that it's often hard to cleanly separate the cheap vs. comfortable use cases. It works reasonably well for intercity buses in the US which people mostly take because it's the lowest cost option and people with more money mostly don't take. Unfortunately in the airline industry we've tended toward an overall race to the bottom which explicitly budget airlines and different classes of service only help to a limited degree to separate out people with different preferences.
- elvirs 8y agowell, as a weekend uber driver that drives only when prices go up I have to tell you that those 7-8 dollar trips pay us only 3 dollars and some change. Driving 7-10 minutes to pick you up and then drive for 7-10 minutes to your destination is not worth it because that comes to $10 per hour minus gas and maintenance and depreciation. Drivers have to pay for lease/finance, maintenance, insurance and still pay rent on the apt and put food on the table. Expect the quality of service to go down, not up, if you you think $15 is too much for a trip to the mall.
- koolba 8y agoI’ll settle for waiting 5 min extra for a driver that doesn’t have to stop for gas.
- chrisabrams 8y agoDo they stop the fare when this happens, and/or do you get out and end the ride?
- koolba 8y agoNo and no.
- scrollaway 8y agoHere in Greece, we recently lost Uber. We're back to taxis. It's incredible how bad an experience those are after going back to them. Cars that smell like cigarette (that's if the driver isn't outright smoking in your face), don't have AC, are old, dirty and with uncomfortable ripped-up seats. Send your lower-quality drivers my way. I miss not wanting to vomit whenever I take a cab.
- biztos 8y agoI was just in Thessaloniki and got to the airport in the middle of the taxi strike -- leaving lots of us with no other option but the public bus, which was actually not so bad, but next time I'll book a private car in advance. On my way back I used the Beat app. It's got a slightly wonky UI and the street names are in Greek, which I'm too ignorant to read, but for getting from the apartment to the airport it was great. Taxi was clean, driver was polite, fare was reasonable. I don't doubt there are bad taxis, just want to point out there are good ones too.
- tomp 8y agoWhat about Beat? I heard it works different than Uber, you can actually choose your driver based on your desired characteristics (e.g. speaks English, has A/C, ...).
- StavrosK 8y agoBeat is pretty much the best of both worlds for me. It doesn't have Uber's "let's flaunt all the laws because disruption" attitude, but it still has all the advantages, and every single driver I've booked with Beat has been fantastic. I'm never getting a taxi without using Beat these days.
- scrollaway 8y agoHm. I'll try it out... Thanks for the recommendation.
- 8y ago
- magic_beans 8y agoOnce I had an Uber driver get me from manhattan to Williamsburg with no GPS and I was SHOCKED.
- eli 8y agoProbably a former cab driver...
- tarr11 8y agoIf the airport in question is Newark, I wouldn't make any assumptions about the driver. Circling around EWR and missing your exit is pretty easy to do in that airport. It's pretty confusing.
- duxup 8y agoMaybe but if this is someone who drives people around for money I would expect more than some confused country mouse driving.
- ttsda 8y agoI've got the same experience in Lisbon. When Uber showed up drivers were great, they could follow directions, they always asked about the radio and the AC, they never complained about the pick-up/drop-off places and didn't have inappropriate conversation, they spoke perfect Portuguese and/or English. 4 years later, we have drivers that can't follow basic directions, that don't speak either English or Portuguese, that leave the turn-by-turn voice on, default to the terrible EDM stations (they used to default to neutral, low-key radio stations) and worst of all, drive very dangerously.
- gambiting 8y agoThis has always been the Uber experience for me in the UK - drivers who cannot speak English, and when the road is closed for repairs(which google maps doesn't know about, because it seems incredibly poor in this country) they have no idea where to go and now suddenly it's up to you to tell them where to go. I've had maybe 1-2 good competent and friendly Uber drivers, but whenever possible I go with any local taxi company instead.
- dalore 8y agoI've had the opposite. Lots of professional Uber drivers in London. They all pretty much use Waze and not Google Maps, which usually knows about road closures.
- candu 8y agoAs a cyclist, I cringe every time I see an Uber or Lyft sticker on a car now. These are amateur drivers doing a job that should require at least some professional training, and it shows: blocking bike lanes (and often traffic lanes too!), failing to look for cyclists when merging back into traffic (or turning right, etc.), not signalling turns half the time... I've narrowly missed getting side-swiped more times than I can count, to the point where I'm seriously considering mounting a handlebar cam just to capture license plates. So: if you're a Lyft or Uber driver, please please please please learn your obligations with respect to cyclists / pedestrians and associated infrastructure. (For instance: did you know that many jurisdictions have a mandatory minimum passing distance (usually 3ft / 1m), or that cyclists have "take the lane" rights in California? [1]) Otherwise, you shouldn't be on the road, and you definitely shouldn't be driving other people around for money. [1] http://www.calbike.org/bicycling_in_california_sharing_the_road http://www.calbike.org/bicycling_in_california_sharing_the_r...
- craftyguy 8y ago> blocking bike lanes (and often traffic lanes too!), failing to look for cyclists when merging back into traffic (or turning right, etc.), not signalling turns half the time... As a fellow cyclist, I don't think you've described any qualities that are specific to uber or lyft drivers, you've effectively described about 90% of the drivers on the road.
- hardlianotion 8y agoSadly, professional taxi drivers are often no better