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Uber

Piggybacking off of that last post, with not having bonus zones for 2 weeks, I signed up for Uber. I always knew I'd add in Uber too, in my head I just figured that Uber was the big player in the ridesharing scene so if I was going to sign up for it I wanted to make sure I liked doing it and have some hands on knowledge about how it worked. Also, there have been a lot of internal issues with Uber as a company I wasn't a big fan of.

The signup process for Uber was much easier than it was for Lyft. I signed up and answered a few questions on the Uber website, and was given an appointment for the inspection. With Lyft it was a Pep Boys which sort of made sense, but with Uber it was a table set up in a Sprint store. I only had an address to go by so I pulled up to the empty storefront next to the Sprint store thinking someone would come out of there. I went into the Sprint store and gave my name and there were two Sprint employees working and two guys sitting at a table for Uber. There was a man talking to the Uber guys who had just signed up to drive, but there was no one else there. With Lyft there were about 10-15 people in this small area in the back of the Pep Boys filling out paperwork and taking pictures of their registration and insurance information and taking selfies for their profiles. The Uber system was so much more relaxed, I was the only one there, they took some information and verified it to what I gave online and did a quick inspection. One of the guys took a picture of my insurance, and gave me the run down about how the app worked and how the process would proceed from there (background check would be complete in a few days, then upload banking info so I can be paid, and a picture for my profile, and then start driving). He gave me the Uber emblems I have to display on my windows and I was on my way.

It was a really smooth and easy process. Not that the way Lyft did it was complicated, but it was a lot less personal and more scattered with so many people running around, I don't think I spoke to the people checking me in at all. In total the inspection and them taking my information took less than 12 minutes. The guys doing it were really nice and explained everything to the point I didn't have any questions (I'm sure if I was just signing up for Uber, not having driven for Lyft already I might have a few questions). I am still waiting to be approved as a driver, I timed it so that I would be out of town for the first few days so when I got back everything would be set up and I could hit the ground running.

Apparently, back in September I "signed up", I don't entirely remember doing that, I think I was just trying to see what the sign up bonus was. I don't think I gave the more than just my email address, but when I went to sign up in November I had to sign in to do it. I'm not sure how this will effect the sign up bonus or if it will at all. Honestly, if there isn't a sign up bonus available because I gave my email address 2 months ago I probably won't drive for them, but I'll update this post when I find out.

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6 Months

A funny thing happened right around the time I hit 6 months of driving for Lyft, they stopped giving me bonuses. I started driving for Lyft on May 4th of 2017, and I've seen a bunch of changes on their app mostly how bonuses are set up. For a while, it was if you gave a certain number of rides in certain areas you'd get bonus money. That went away, and it was something else for a while. More recently it's been Power Zones, certain areas would be outlined on the map (they range from being a 3 block area to being the length of a highway for many miles), and if you were inside that zone when you accepted a ride you would get whatever bonus was in that area. The bonus amounts I've seen range from 10%-110% and everywhere in between, usually the zones around where I live were in the 30%-50% zone, meaning if the zone was 50% and I gave a ride that was $10, Lyft would kick in another $5 as a bonus. I exploited this bonus and started going out only during the times when the bonus zones were happening. It was awesome, and it made it where unless I was getting that bonus money it didn't make sense to go out. The week before and the week of Halloween there was a bonus zone about 15 minutes away from my apartment that had a bonus zone of 110%. It was a small area, but it was worth it for me to wake up a little earlier and try to get extra money. The other zones were around 50% as well, so even if I got out of the 110% area I would at least get a decent bonus nearby. The zones went from 110% or 50% for two weeks, down to 10%-20% for a week. It's something, but such a drastic drop with no explanation is kind of odd. I drove a little bit with those percentages but what I quickly realized is that without those bigger bonus areas it doesn't make sense to be out there driving. I'd be out for 2 hours in the morning from 6-8 AM and would have 3 or 4 rides and only make $18 before Lyft takes their fees, which just isn't worth my time and energy. I'm just not making money doing that. I figured that maybe it was just an off week, maybe the first week of November is bad for rides or really good for rides so they don't need to offer bonuses, whatever it is just isn't working for me. I only did a few rides that week because I wasn't making enough money, and figured the bonuses would be back the next week. Well, the next week came along and there were 0 power zones. None, all week. Usually, even if the zones are a low percentage or are scarce during the week, there will be power zones on Friday or Saturday night because that is when a lot of rides happen, but there are none this week at all. I don't know if Lyft is maybe getting rid of those power zones completely, or maybe they'll bring them back. But for me it just doesn't make sense to be out there giving rides for $2.40 for a 10 minute drive and 7-10 minutes to get there. That isn't worth my time. Something that just occurred to me recently is that the drop in these bonus zones happened almost exactly at the 6 month mark of me driving for Lyft. It could be coincidental, but it just struck me as an odd coincidence. I've read about people who do Lyft and Uber full time for years, so I'm sure there are different bonuses and maybe just better rides for them but right now with no bonus zones I'm not making enough money. Also, in conjunction with the lack of power zones, Lyft changed their weekly bonus structure. For months, the weekly bonus was give 25 total rides, 15 rides during peak hours, and have over 90% acceptance and earn an extra $30 (this is the bonus I've been doing for months, so I ended up only giving 25 rides a week). The step above that is give 55 rides total, 30 peak hour rides, and the 90% acceptance for $100 extra, which is a big jump, in my experience you know pretty early into the week roughly how many rides you're going to give, for me 25 rides total is more realistic. Now, they've completely gotten ride of the $30 bonus and you have to complete 65 total rides, 35 during peak hours, and have a 90% acceptance rate for $75. So, you have to complete 10 more rides than you had to do last week to earn $25 less.

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Best Ride...so far

On July 3rd, Lyft sent me 2 texts and an email telling me that they were having a promotion for the 4th of July, if I gave 15 rides between 12 PM-12 AM they’d give me a $100 bonus. Since I was planning on going out anyway I just shifted when I was going out to after 12 PM. I had some pretty good fares taking people to BBQ’s or to the beach. I had a few really short rides, which normally would bug me but for the purposes of this bonus I was ok with.

Then it came to my 14th ride, I picked up 2 guys and a girl and they were headed to the beach. It was a 20 minute ride, shockingly the traffic that day around the beach wasn’t bad at all. As I pull up to their destination the girl asks “Is this 47th street?” and I say “No this is 30th”. Apparently, the person who ordered the ride put in the wrong address, they talked for a second and decided to just walk the 17 blocks (which for me turned out to be a very good thing).

It was a dead end street where I dropped them off, so I turned around and looked at the app and it was dark pink. The surge areas show up in different shades of pink, lite pink being 10-25% usually to dark pink being the most surge percentage. I kept saying “I just need 1 more ride to make 15” and by the time I got to the end of the block I had another ride. The ride was 2 minutes away, which was awesome since I worried they might cancel.

The ride was about 35 miles, from one area of the beach down to their house on the beach. The ride took 38 minutes. As I’m driving I start doing the math in my head for how much the surge pricing was, I almost felt guilty about how much it was going to cost them, but figured they saw how much it was when they ordered the ride. The couple chatted with each other the whole time, she kept showing him places where her friends live, or where she went to high school along the way. As I got closer to their destination I started getting really excited to see the total for this ride. After I dropped them off it popped up that the 35 mile, 38 minute ride, cost them $136. The ride would have normally cost them $37 + toll, but there was a 250% surge on the trip which added another $92 to the trip. I made $102.77 for 38 minutes of my time.

Of course, since the trip was my 15th trip I was going to call it a night, and as I got closer to their destination Lyft added on a ride to my queue. The next ride was a few houses down from where I dropped them off, it was 5 people that squeezed into a car that could comfortable fit 3 passengers. They were a little drunk, but not too bad, it was a short trip about 10 minutes and I was happy to be done. I managed to make it home before it got too dark and the fireworks started going off. I ended up driving for 7 1/2 hours, averaging 2 rides an hour, and I made $257 + $100 bonus, that averages out to be $47 an hour. Not a bad way to spend the 4th of July.

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Longest Ride

I’ve had more than my fair share of trips where I earn the bare minimum fare ($2.40). I’ve taken people 7/10 of a mile, and to distances they clearly could have walked. I’ve also done quite a few trips that were over 40 miles long.

Depending where the ride starts to LAX it’s about 45 miles, I’ve had trips take anywhere from 40 minutes to 2 hours. Usually these trips are during rush hour. On average these cost the customer about $60, and I make $45. In theory, that’s good money for an hour and a half, but when you figure in the hour to get back home, the money isn’t that great. I usually use the destination mode, where you put in where you are headed and Lyft will only give you rides heading in that direction, but I have yet to pick up a ride using it.

But my longest trip was from Irvine to Palm Springs. It was about 6:30 AM and the request came from an apartment near where I live. I arrive and I see him walk towards the car and he’s got 2 back packs and a stick that is about 6 feet long, not a walking stick it was a lot thinner. You don’t get to see the destination until after you’ve arrived, it really didn’t register where I was going or how long it would take because the map was so zoomed out to show the beginning and the end of the trip. After he gets in I start the trip, and see we’re going to Palm Desert, which is 90 miles away.

We chatted for a little while, apparently he was going to film a nature/survival show for Netflix at a white water preserve in Palm Desert. He kept telling me how late he was, but since he was the talent they’d just have to wait for him, and how he didn’t even want do it but they paid him what he wanted so he was doing it. He got a call a little while into the trip and he was talking to someone about what shots they were going to do, and what set ups he needed when he arrived. After his phone call he clammed up and fell asleep for a while.

When we arrived, I was surprised to see there was actually a film crew there. Sometimes people tell you things on these rides and you don’t know what to believe so I’m always suspicious. As we pulled up he said “Yup there’s some douche-y looking PA’s with their coffee cups, this must be the place”. He got out of the car and completely ignored me as I helped him with his bags and stick. Where I dropped him off there wasn’t any cell reception so I wanted to go find service so I could end the ride. As I got into the car and put it in reverse to leave I noticed he left my door standing wide open. Classy

After I drove down the road a little bit I found service, I ended the ride, the ride which took 90 minutes cost him about $95. After I found service I decided to go back to the preserve and walk around a bit, it was gorgeous and it’s definitely a place I want to go back to. The downside was since I was in the middle of the desert the likelihood of finding a ride was next to 0, and I drove the 90 minutes home without a ride.

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Airports

Airports

Airport pick ups are interesting when driving for Lyft. Where I live in Orange County there is a small airfield, John Wayne Airport, which is where most of my pick-ups and drop-offs are to. About 45 miles away is LAX, which unfortunately I’ve had a few rides take me out there. There is also Long Beach Airport which I have been to a few times.

John Wayne Airport is a fairly standard thing, drop off at departures, pick up in arrivals. There is an airport zone (that you can see in the picture) that when you drive into you are placed into a virtual line. How this works is, once you enter the zone the app will drop down something that says “There are X drivers ahead of you”, depending on the time of day I’ve seen the number range from 15-50. And then you wait, as passengers arrive and request rides the number will start to drop, I have waited in excess of an hour to get a ride before. Ironically, the airport is not actually in the airport zone, what has happened a few times is as I’m dropping off a passenger upstairs in the departures area, I will get a ping from downstairs to pick up a customer, bypassing the airport zone completely. Eventually, as it gets closer to 0 you will get a ride, I’ve never actually had it get to 0, usually I get a ride when it tells me there are 12-14 drivers ahead of me. When you leave this zone the app tells you that you have left the zone and you have 5 minutes to return or you will lose your spot. Sometimes it feels like that 5 minute countdown is blocking you from getting any further rides, but that’s not always the case.

LAX is a horse of a different color. First, before I could even get rides to LAX I had to take a quiz through Lyft to receive a placard. It was a tutorial on where to pick up and drop off passengers and about the rules, you could take it until you passed. Then they mailed me the placard, which must be displayed below the Lyft emblem on your front window for pick ups and drop offs or you could incur a $1000 fine. LAX requires you to pick up and drop off passengers in the departures area of the terminal ONLY. There is also an airport zone around LAX, I have had mixed results with it. On my first time to the zone as soon as I drove into the zone I got a ride, more recently I went into the zone and it was full and a message appeared that said “Please leave the aiport zone or you will be subject to fines” needless to say I left immediately. LAX isn’t my favorite airport to go to, on my first ride there it was an hour and twelve minute ride. I thought we made really good time getting there, and as we got closer to the terminal thought something was wrong with Google maps because it still said there was 25 minutes left, but I was almost there. Well, never question Google maps, it took 25 minutes of bumper to bumper traffic to travel into the terminal to drop my customers off. We’re talking maybe 3/10 of a mile once we hit the traffic to finally dropping them off.

Airports are usually great rides, you will quickly know exactly how to get there and for me it’s usually a quick $20. Rides from the airport can be pretty great, since I’m close to Anaheim I’ve taken a few families to their hotel around Disneyland. It’s only happened once but after I drove a customer to LAX I was able to get into the airport zone and got a ride that took me almost the entire way home. That’s very rare to have a ride take you somewhere and get paid to come back, but that was a good day.

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How Much You Earn

How much do you earn?

Lyft takes 25% of your earnings. You get to keep 100% of your tips. In my first two days (before the accident) I gave 21 rides and drove for 14 hours. I earned $123.18 in ride payments, $1 in tips, $66.99 in driver referrals, and Lyft took $30.83 for their fees, and I got paid $160.34. This isn’t a great example of earnings because I was still figuring things out, where to go, and when to go.

My most recent week (where I am getting the hang of things) I did 73 rides and drove for 39 hours. I earned $733.98 in ride payments, $30 in tips (plus $10 in cash), $10 in cancel earnings (when a rider cancels more than 5 minutes after they request a ride, the driver gets paid $5), $178.64 in driver referrals (I finished my 110 rides, where I was earning an additional $3.18 for each ride about 2/3 of the way through those 73 rides), $24.98 in tolls, Lyft took $183.52 in fees. I also earned $22.09 in incentive guarantees (which I’ll get to later), and $85 in power driver bonus (again, I’ll get to it later). For a grand total of $901.17. That’s basically a 40 hour work week, and after you subtract the $183 in fees, and $24.98 in tolls, it is $692.67. That doesn’t account for gas money, and wear and tear on your vehicle.

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Power Driver Bonus

Power Driver Bonus

There is a weekly incentive bonus called the Power Driver Bonus on the app. What is required to get this bonus is to have a 90% acceptance rate, give 35 rides during Peak time, and give 70 rides in a week. For doing this I get an extra $85, I have read about how it used to be you could work down the percentage that Lyft would take, so it would be 20% if you gave a certain amount of rides, and 15% if you gave more. For me, it’s always been the $85 or the $120 bonus.

I’ve only gotten this bonus once, I ended up driving almost 40 hours that week. Between my earnings, tips, incentives, and this bonus I mad over $900 that week. That includes $178 in driver referrals, and that was the week I finished the rides for that bonus.

I typically only drive Monday-Friday, usually only during the day. I know this isn’t the best times to make the most amount of money but it’s the times I have available to drive. During these days I have 4 hours a day that are the “Peak” times. Peak times are when people need rides the most, typically it’s taking people to or from work/school. The Peak times were the rides I had the most trouble with this week. I ended up having to go out on Saturday to get a few rides just to make this bonus.

For most of the bonuses my advice is to not pay attention to them, if they show up at the end of the week on your payment activity great, but if not don’t go chasing them. This bonus is one you should keep an eye on, which Lyft helps with because it keeps track of it for you on the app at all times. At the end of your week, if you’re close to completing it, it’s worth going out to make that extra bonus money, but don't stress out about it. The extra money is nice, but it’s not enough to go out of your way to make it.

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Cancelled rides

It happens, you get pinged for a ride, accept it, and start heading in that direction, and boom you get a text that your passenger has cancelled the ride. Sometimes, it’s immediate before you are too far into the trip, and sometimes you’re in their driveway when they cancel. The Lyft policy is that if a passenger cancels a ride more than 5 minutes after they requested it, the driver receives a cancellation fee. Of the 163 rides (I'm a little behind on posting) I’ve given I’ve probably had a passenger cancel on me 30 times. I’ve had the same passenger (Thalia) cancel on me 5 times, maybe she doesn’t like my driver photo or my name. I’ve had people cancel as I turned into their driveway. I’ve found that if a passenger is anywhere from 0-6 minutes away there is a good chance they won’t cancel, anything over 6 minutes there is a 80% chance they will cancel. A driver can also cancel rides. The Lyft policy is once you arrive and tap that you have arrived a clock appears counting down from 5 minutes. If the passenger hasn’t shown up in those 5 minutes you can call them. Once you call them, if they still don’t show up you can cancel and get a cancelation credit. I’ve received the cancellation credit twice. The first time, I got pinged and showed up at the address only to be greeted by a message saying that it was a scheduled pick up, but the time wasn’t for another 8 minutes. I sat there for the 8 minutes waiting, and then an additional 5 minutes, and called her. English wasn’t her first language so we were having trouble understanding each other, but I couldn’t tell where she was, and she couldn’t find me, so I had to cancel. The second time I’ve cancelled on a passenger was the same situation, I showed up to a scheduled pickup but this time it was 12 minutes before the scheduled time. I waited and somehow they still weren’t ready. I called and again there was a communication issue and we couldn’t figure out how to get to each other and I had to cancel on her. I don’t like cancelling on passengers, I am there to make money and to give rides. It’s a waste of time, and in this job time is money, while I sit there and wait I could be out giving a ride and making money. I honestly think some customers order both Uber & Lyft at the same time and will take whichever arrives first. It sucks to be on the drivers end when you accept a ride and have them cancel after you’ve done a U-turn and are heading in their direction. But it happens, and soon you learn that it comes with this job and to just take it in stride.

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Bad Rides

I’ve been lucky enough to only have a few, what I consider to be, bad passengers. I try to be friendly, or as quiet as I think the passenger wants but sometimes things go bad. I tend to work the mornings and the afternoons, so 6-9 and 2-5, it’s typically people going to and from school or work. I don’t work weekends or nights mainly because I don’t like drunk people, and really don’t want drunk people in my car. The first passenger I had a problem with I picked up when I shouldn’t have been out, but I was trying to make some extra money for a trip so I went out and drove at night. I picked him up and immediately I could tell he was drunk. It was a short ride so it wasn’t a big deal, then he started giving me directions that weren’t on the gps. Then he wanted to go to a gas station to pick up more booze. You’re only supposed to take the passenger to the destination they entered, but it was one of my first days driving so I was trying to be a people pleaser. After he got back in the car he started asking if I got high, and drank, and had ever slept with a woman, when I answered no to all three he didn’t believe me. So, I offered up that I’m gay so that last one wasn’t for me. And after this incident I realized I shouldn't have offered up that information, it’s too much information to share with a complete stranger, but here we were. After I said that he got quiet, and then went on about how expensive girls and booze were. When I finally got to his destination he got out, and before he closed the door kind of yelled back that I should “go out and sleep with some women”. At first I thought he was joking, because the conversation wasn’t aggressive or anything, it was a normal conversation. I rated him 4 stars. He was my last ride of the night and when I got home I checked my driving history and my driver rating had dropped considerably. Since I was still new any low rating would change my rating drastically, and I quickly figured out that he rated me 1 star. Lyft doesn’t really count your first few ratings when you’re new because you’re still figuring things out, his comments didn’t really bother me (I’ve heard worse), but him rating me 1 star did bother me. The second bad passenger was a guy by the name of Gerard. He was an older gentleman. I picked him up from his house and as soon as he got in he announced he was going to the Elks Lodge, kind of like you would when you got into a taxi. No big deal, to some people Lyft is a new experience. We weren’t more than 3 blocks into the trip when he says “Where the hell are you going?”. I tell him I’m just following the directions to the destination he put into the app. He says I’m going in the complete opposite direction and starts barking orders at me (turn left, go right at the stop sign, turn around). We eventually make it to the Elks Lodge and I drop him off, when I dropped him off the GPS was still saying I was 4.1 miles away from his destination. I know sometimes the GPS might take me a way you aren’t familiar with but if I’m going the wrong way it’s because of the destination you entered. For the most part the passengers are fine, there are the chatty ones, the quiet ones, the ones who bark orders at me, and the ones who are preoccupied and ignore me. I’ve started to withhold my rating of the passenger until they’re completely out of the car and walking away, a few times I have rated someone 5 stars as they’re getting out of the car only for them to slam the car door aggressively. I’ve also started leaving comments for the really great passengers, I feel like for some passengers a 5 star rating isn’t enough, they deserve more.

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Flags

Lyft sends you a weekly report on your feedback. It tells you how many 5 star reviews you’ve gotten and how many 4 star and below you got. They will also include 1 of the 5 star reviews if someone chose to write something and 1 of the 4 star and below feedbacks. They send this email out on Friday. It can be a real bummer to read negative reviews while you’re trying to maintain energy to keep driving.

There are also Kudos and Flags, obviously kudos for good things and flags for the bad things. They don’t give you any information either way on these feedbacks, you don’t get a name or a trip to know who the feedback is from. This makes sense, you could track them down since you have where you picked them up and dropped them off on your phone.

Most recently I got my feedback for the week I only gave 10 rides. I had kudos for: 3 for friendly, 1 for great driving, 2 for clean car. I got flagged for: 1 safety, 3 for navigation, and 1 for cleanliness. And those flags have really bothered me, I’ve spent a while remembering the rides and which order I gave them in and who could have flagged me. It’s not the 3 people who tipped me, so that leaves 7 rides. I know I should focus more on the kudos but the flags really bother me. I hate to think that someone felt unsafe in my car. I don’t understand the cleanliness flag at all since I only drove on Monday and Wednesday and I cleaned the car inside and out on Sunday. The navigation flags really bug me, it’s not the first time I’ve gotten this flag either. I follow Google Maps exactly, I’ve yet to miss an exit or turn with a customer in the car.

There’s really nothing I can do about either the kudos or the flags, and the positives out weigh the negatives but the negatives bug me more. Part of me is wondering at what point does Lyft step in, I mean they provide this information but haven’t given me a warning or advice on correcting the problems so I’m guessing they don’t matter much to them.

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Accidents Happen

On my first day of driving I was still trying to figure out when to go out to get the most rides. I was sitting around that night and decided to drive around to find some rides, I didn’t get any in the hour + I was driving.

On my second day, I went out in the morning, and then decided to out driving at night. I had 4 or 5 rides fairly close together. Then I got a ride to pick up 2 girls at a church, I picked them up and saw that I was dropping one of them off. I dropped her off and was taking the second girl home. I was trying to use the entrance ramp to the highway, but there was some construction going on in the lane I was in. I was stopped and trying to find a break in traffic, and then I heard a loud boom. I heard it before I felt it, we were hit from behind. A truck wasn’t paying attention and rear ended me. We pulled over on the side of the highway to assess the damage and exchange information.

It was a fairly traumatic experience in the moment, but the passenger was fine, I was fine, the car sustained very little damage. It could have been much worse.

So what happens when you’re in an accident while driving for Lyft? After we exchanged information and went our separate ways, I took the first available exit and dropped the passenger off at the nearest populated area so she could be on her way. I apologized profusely and checked to make sure she was alright a couple dozen times, she had apparently been through a similar situation. I then pulled over and called Lyft to report the accident, since I had a passenger in the car I was covered by the Lyft insurance. There was a 15 minute Q&A about what happened, and they deactivated my account until they could assess the damage. The next day I had to send pictures of the damage (which ended up being just a scratch). The accident happened on Thursday night, and they didn’t reactivate my account until the middle of the day on Monday. It was unfortunate timing because it was Cinco De Mayo, and the weekend which is where you can make a lot of money. But I would much rather have everyone involved be alright and have to miss a few days of making money than the alternative.

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Fun Rides

Not to say a lot of my rides are boring but the majority of them are taking people to and from school/work and people are tired or thinking about work. Every now and then I get fun rides Recently, I was out around 5 PM and I picked up a ride. I was waiting at her apartment for about 4 minutes when she showed up. She had a plastic cocktail glass with what I would later find out was wine. Yes, she got into my car with a glass of wine. Then we started chatting and she was on her way to a date. She saw him while working and asked him out, which I thought was pretty bad ass of her. But she was a little nervous so she had her glass of liquid courage (she had clearly had a few more before the trip as well). We’re driving and chatting and then she starts going off about how she gets slut shamed, and how straight women are the only ones who get slut shamed and she’s tired of it. She told me about all the guys lined up for her that she could choose from. She told me about a trip she took with a sort of boyfriend and how he broke it off with her with a few days left to the trip, so she went out the next night and found someone new. She got very explicit in our conversation, but nothing shocks me anymore so it was all kind of funny. Typically, I don’t like drunk people, but she was fun. I was tempted to park and go check out her date but that is probably crossing a few lines. It was a fun trip and I kind of wish more of my rides would open up like that, it made for an interesting trip

[ridesharingiscaring]

Underage Kids

Since it’s summer I haven’t had too many fares from high schools, which has been nice. But one day a couple of weeks ago I had two underage passengers in one day. For the first ride I arrive at the destination and after waiting the full 5 minutes that I’m required to by Lyft, I call them and they say they’ll be right out. Out walks a kid no older than 13. He gets in and says “We need to wait for my cousin”, so I figure oh ok this will be the adult. No, out walks a kid who is maybe 14. I honestly thought about cancelling the trip, which is the Lyft policy. I ended up giving the ride because it was only 5-8 minutes, I took them to an office building but it had reserved parking spots for Priest, and wife of Priest and stuff like that so it might have been some sort of church. Immediately after dropping them off, I pulled into a parking spot and reported them to Lyft. I got a couple back and forth emails about the customers and the final one I got said they had been banned from the app. The second set of kids was a little trickier of a situation. I accepted a ride and got a call from the passenger, this happens sometimes if someone needs to give special directions or a gate code or something. The caller was a woman who told me I would be picking up her two kids. I arrive and can’t find them at first, then circle back around and there they were at a learning center. The mother had me call her back after I had picked up the kids. They were both teenagers, maybe 14-15. I took them home and after the underage kids earlier considered reporting them. But I felt differently about this ride since the mother called me. I tweeted about the double underage rides I gave and Lyft responded back I needed to report both of them, and maybe I should have I don’t know. Later that day I was telling a passenger about these underage riders and she pointed out how unsafe that was for me. I always knew how unsafe it was for these kids to be getting into a strangers car, I sort of feel like if I am the one who drives them that’s one less chance for a creep to pick them up, at least I know they’re safe with me. But she pointed out that having underage kids in a car with an adult man could turn very bad for me very quickly. I won’t take that risk again in the future. I really wish parents would see what a bad situation this could be by sending your underage kids in a car with a person you don’t know.

[ridesharingiscaring]

High School

Where I live I am fairly close to a community college and the University of California Irvine, so I am used to picking up college kids going to or from class. On my first day I got pinged, and when I arrived I saw it was a high school. I really never considered I would be driving around high school aged kids. This trip it was two girls skipping class to go shopping for prom dresses. After this trip I looked into Lyft’s policy on picking up people under the age of 18. As it turns out, children that are 17 and under are not permitted to ride in the car without a parent. The problem with this policy is: how am I supposed to know how old they are? Do I card them before the enter the car? As long as you have a smart phone and a credit card on your account you can request a ride. As a driver, you’re supposed to tell them the policy and then report them for being a fraudulent passenger. But if you go to any high school either in the morning, or when school lets out for the day, you will see a ton of Lyft and Uber drivers picking up kids. I would prefer to not pick up kids, but I have no way of knowing who they are until I get there. Lyft has the ability to block pick ups from high schools, or block users who request rides to high schools, but based on the surge pricing that happens around high schools at the end of the day something tells me they won’t. I’ve picked up probably 6-8 rides that are either going to or from a high school. Some of them are fairly innocuous and just wanting to get to class. Most of them are (at least to me) fairly shocking. Almost all of my riders to/from high schools are female and in groups of two or three. What is interesting is passengers in pairs of two or three will talk like the driver isn’t there, but we are and we hear everything. These girls are almost always talking about a boy and how that boy is an asshole, occasionally they talk about getting fucked up and hooking up with someone, one set of girls was playing a video of what happened the past weekend because she was so messed up she doesn’t remember anything from the video. Honestly, I wish I could contact these girls parents and narc on them, they are not making good life choices.

[ridesharingiscaring]

Front Seat Vs. Back Seat

An interesting aspect of driving for Lyft has been talking to people. I can be as chatty as anyone, or I will absolutely sit in an awkward silence for the entire length of the ride. What I quickly noticed was that people who sit in the front seat are more receptive to talking. People in the back seat typically are silent trips. Whenever I’ve used Lyft or Uber as a passenger I have never sat in the front seat, I always assumed everyone sits in the back seat. It wasn’t until I started driving that people would ask to sit in the front seat. I’ve had a few quiet passengers in the front seat, but for the most part they are the most friendly and willing to chat. Very often, since a lot of my passengers are college kids, people will get into the car with headphones on, or talking on the phone. These people are sending a very clear message they aren’t interested in talking, and that’s fine. I don’t get paid more or less if we talk or not. I’ve had some rides where the passenger and myself talk for the entire trip and it’s great, I’m almost a little bummed to drop them off. The trips that I do have a problem with not talking are the rides that last over an hour. I have done a few trips from Orange County to Los Angeles, all during rush hour, so the trips have lasted nearly 2 hours. I can literally count on one hand the words spoken to me from a customer during these trips, that all together have lasted over 5 hours. One customer fell asleep shortly after I picked him up and slept the entire ride, one trip was for a woman who I suspect English wasn’t her first language so communicating was a little hard for her. One trip had me pick up one person, and drive an hour to pick up his two friends, and drive another hour to LA. For the first hour, the single passenger was completely silent, once I picked up his two friends they sat in the backseat watching Youtube videos and making voices to each other and laughing the entire time. I don’t mind being ignored for short rides, but if you spend nearly two hours in a car with someone and they’re providing a service to you, you might acknowledge that they exist.

[ridesharingiscaring]

My (actual) first ride

For my first day driving I really had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea where to go, where the people might be, or where they might need to go. I decided to drive down the street I live on, which is a fairly major street in the area. I didn’t get any pings along the way so I decided to turn down one of the streets near a college. That’s when it happened, Ryan popped up on my screen and this time I accepted and I was off (not before I had a little panic attack). He was only about a mile down the road and I was able to find him pretty easily. He was nervous, since instead of asking me my name he said my name like it was his. He was a college kid going to class and was going to the college I was just near. He sat in the front seat and I told him he was my first ride and we chatted a little bit, but he needed to study for a math test. Then I dropped him off and it was over, I had done it, I was officially a Lyft driver now. I made $2.40 for that ride.

[ridesharingiscaring]

My (almost) first ride

After I got notice from Lyft that I passed my background check and was ready to start driving I decided to check it out on my way to the store. I figured, I’d turn the app on and head to the store and if someone pinged me before I got there I’d go pick them up, if not well at least I could get my grocery shopping done. I was about to pull into the parking lot for the grocery store when suddenly my phone chimed in. It was my first ride, but since I was already at the place I wanted to be I decided I would pass on that ride. I thought you could be selective about the rides you give. When you get pinged for a ride it makes a sound and a picture and a rating pops up on your phone, you have 15 seconds to accept the ride. Well, after I let the 15 seconds expire I received a message from Lyft about how if I wasn’t going to accept rides I should just sign out of the app. The tone of that message was pretty straight forwards, so much so that I have had a nearly 100% acceptance rate since that first (almost) ride.