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Getting the most out of Lyft's 50 free rides
- FatalLogic 12y agoThis is interesting. Who is being gamed here? How likely is it that someone at Lyft not only realized that users would take advantage of the $25 free rides, but was also smart enough to realize that some of those users would share their interesting stories, and generate free publicity for Lyft? (99% likely, I guess)
- dangoldin 12y agoI think the problem is that with this much demand if a few people do this they will make it very hard for others to get a car - which will end up just annoying them about the Lyft experience. Lyft would prefer shorter rides that would be distributed around more people. Now it's basically investors subsidizing a few long trips and pissing off other potential riders.
- FatalLogic 12y agoI wonder if they really thought through the consequences of this then? They got another $250 million in funding recently, so money isn't a problem. Probably the money prompted this program, in fact. As you said, they could get things under control by forbidding back-to-back free rides in the same car, assuming the terms are flexible. That would be more in the spirit of the offer, and nobody could really complain about that.
- Scalar 12y agoThe offer is already very generous, isn't really too fair to game it.
- dangoldin 12y agoYea - I definitely felt guilty but the driver was okay with it and when you get 50 free rides over 2 weeks you do have the incentive to use them all up. If they gave fewer trips over a longer time frame I imagine people would be more conservative.
- apptoss 12y agoWhen they launched here, two friends of mine basically rented a Lyft car for the night, driving around nearly non-stop. They took the driver to dinner. Can't imagine what Lyft's burn rate is.