Uber Rolling Out Scheduled Rides In Seattle

Scheduled rides are coming to Uber. The ride-hailing announced on Thursday that users in Seattle can now schedule a pickup request as far out as 30 days in advance. GeekWire reports: The ride-sharing service said scheduling is a top-requested feature from business travelers and the company said priority access will be given to riders who have Business Profiles or are linked to their company's Uber account. Uber says it will bring it to other "major" cities soon.

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[NotInHere]

If your restaurant is anything but shit and produces the food from fresh ingredients (maybe this kind of restaurant doesn't exist in england and its former colonies like America, dunno), then the owner is actually really happy if you pre-order by a day or two. They need to know what to buy. Their alternative is to let stuff rot away, and maybe sell it to customers just before its too rotten to be kept longer. Or to say "its out" when the customers want it. But neither of them is pleasing for the customer. S

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[Anonymous Coward]

program will just send all the drivers a ride request 15 mins before your "scheduled" time

Which is a dramatic improvement on Uber's current sending it only after you request the ride! Those fifteen minutes easily could save me waiting fifteen minutes for the uber driver.

So.. yeah, even that is an improvement.

Surge

[fluffernutter]

I can see it now. "Oops, your scheduled ride came up during a period of high surge pricing! That will be $100 please."

This and some more exists in competitors apps

[untelp]

I use Uber and its Chinese competitors in Shanghai (or in China I'd rather say I use the Chinese car hailing apps and their competitor Uber).
Yidao and Didi already have those scheduled rides and quite some other options:
- Pick-up at the airport, where you provide your flight number so the car adapts to the plane being late
- Hire a car for a half day or full day
- Choose your driver instead of letting the system select
- Integrated text message facility, where you can save your usual messages to be sent in one click to your driver

Uber big advantage is its translated app and worldwide support team that is able to handle cases in your language.

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[serviscope_minor]

- Pick-up at the airport, where you provide your flight number so the car adapts to the plane being late

This has been a feature of booked cabs and minicabs about since about forever. AddisonLee have offered it through their app for years too.

Fantastic if it works after-hours

[PeeAitchPee]

I can generally get an Uber driver within 10 minutes during the day, but sometimes I take the first flight out, and no drivers are available in my area before 6 AM it seems. So those days I'm stuck waiting 45 minutes for a foul-smelling, expensive cab ride. This is a huge value-add for business travelers if it helps cover more of the clock -- but perhaps we have to wait for the self-driving cars for that.