Why Cancellations Happen

The other night, I'm working in Lyft on a 3-ride streak that will provide a $12 bonus. My Lyft acceptance numbers aren't over 90% at the moment, so I don't know where I will be going before I accept the ride. Even if they were, Lyft doesn't tell you anything about passengers in queue, and if you are working on a streak, you have to take anything and everything anyway. It's less than charming, and dramatically worse than Uber, which is why Lyft generally needs to up the ante for me to work for them now, and I really dislike streak work. But I digress.  

In the shift, I've also seen occasional moments of white-hot surge pricing on Uber rides in my area, some of the highest of the year. I also haven't hit on any of them, and no one's tipped, so I'm running late in the shift and short on the money target.

I arrive at the pick up point for my final ride of the Lyft streak. Now that I'm here, Lyft lets me know where I'm going, and it's to a remote location in a neighboring state. I won't be getting any rides once I am there. Making matters worse is that the passenger's rating from previous drivers is suspiciously low, the pick up is in a dicey area to wait around in, and they aren't at the pick up location when I get there. Lyft will now start a 5-minute clock that compensates the driver at a rate of less than $8 an hour. Meanwhile, Uber is offering me a monster surge price at my present location, with rider destination information at the ready, provided I'm able to start taking rides on the other platform.

So the nature of rideshare is this:

> I'm not an employee of any platform. I'm a third-party contractor. So long as my numbers are good enough (and they are), canceling a passenger's ride does not harm me in the slightest.

> Taking this ride will cost me money, as well as time and opportunity in a surge zone, since you often can do more than one before the surge fades. By the time that I get back from dropping this passenger off, it will be too late in the evening for a likely surge price to still be in effect.

> The surge price in question will be over an hour of my likely wages, and my income is entirely fluid. It's also necessary for me at this time to stay ahead of my bills.

> Passengers can and do cancel on drivers all the time. It's also not as if the app gives the passenger the ability to go back and review which drivers have canceled on them.

> This isn't a long-term business for anyone, really. Eventually, the cars will drive themselves and drivers will not have this opportunity. Platforms routinely grind drivers over nickels and dimes, and the vast majority of passengers do not tip.

There is no benefit to the driver in this scenario to stay and wait. There is every benefit to the driver to cancel on the passenger.

So, did I cancel my passenger, log out of Lyft and save my shift, or did I wait it out and take the lesser fare?

I'll leave that to the reader to decide.

But if your driver cancels on you?

It's a lot more understandable now, yes?