When The App Cheats

Long-time readers of the blog are aware that I've compared rideshare to a triangle, with passengers, drivers and the aps all holding different corners. There are times when things favor one more than the other, and so forth.

As a driver, I've learned through trial and error that trusting the ap to get you paid the most is an express route to leaving money on the table. If you just turn on the ap and take everything that comes your way, you'll have great ratings and poor per hour returns. As my family can not eat my ratings, yeah, I don't much care about them any more. I keep them above the minimum on the number of rides accepted and canceled, and I keep my passengers happy. I'm platinum status on both platforms as I type this.

So instead of just leaving the ap on when driving the current fare, I switch on last ride as often as possible. It's the only way to keep Lyft from piling on random fares in any direction, and the only way to keep Uber from giving me non-surge pricing from some distant area. It's how the game is played. It also helps to keep me in the areas where I feel comfortable driving, because I know where the potholes are, where the speed traps are, where I can find a clean bathroom, and so forth. If you take me to an unfamiliar area, I take you there, and then I go the hell back to my home area ASAP. Again, trial and error.

So when you are out of the ap, you see a map of the area that has surge pricing areas, if any are firing. If you are close enough to get to one, you should, because if you do the job without surge pricing, you make less. A *lot* less.

These surge prices can change every 15 to 30 seconds during busy times, or if you are having phone connection issues. It leads to a lot of hey, that's not the surge price I was expecting, and as soon as you get that next fare for less than what was advertised seconds ago...

Well, you can Like It or you can Lump It, but you are still doing the job if you want to stay in the platform. (Oh, and Uber is especially "good" at this, with half or a third of the advertised price coming your way if you are just a few hundred feet away from the dollar amount when you re-enter the driver pool. Needless to say, this also doesn't really do much for the safety of driving while in the app, but after 10K hours in both aps and +22.5K fares, I'm safe enough. So far.)

Tonight, I was just about to flip on Uber in a $19 surge area... and the zone just melted away entirely as my finger was over the button. I rebooted my phone, because that sometimes works, and the surge was still gone... but hey, just drive a few more miles down the road, because it's $11 there. Or turn on Lyft for $4 extra and...

I just shut my phone off and drove the hell home, because on that day I could. 

Tomorrow or next week, not sure.

So if you're wondering why there aren't any drivers, ask yourself this question: 

If your compensation for working was this arbitrary, would you want to do it?