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Businesses Transportation

Uber May Stop Letting Drivers See Destinations and Name Prices (sfchronicle.com) 141

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: A year ago, Uber let its California drivers see ride destinations before picking up passengers and let them set pricing in an effort to prove that the drivers were truly independent contractors. It was part of the company's strategy to block drivers from being reclassified as employees under AB5, California's gig-work law. Now, Uber is acknowledging that the move has hurt business and is considering axing its visible destinations and price-naming policies, The Chronicle has learned. The see-saw may disappoint drivers who appreciated that extra control over their work.

Too many drivers cherry-pick lucrative rides and decline other requests, making the service unreliable, the San Francisco company said on Monday. Uber no longer has to worry about proving that drivers are independent contractors, because Prop 22 -- the November ballot measure that Uber and fellow gig companies spent $220 million to pass -- enshrines their non-employee status.
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Uber May Stop Letting Drivers See Destinations and Name Prices More

Uber May Stop Letting Drivers See Destinations and Name Prices

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  • Ride-sharing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Calydor ( 739835 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2021 @01:08PM (#61243520)

    When Uber started the whole point was that if two people were going to the same place anyway they could share the ride. Hence, ride-sharing.

    How do you do that if you don't know where people need to go?

    • Switch the model (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2021 @01:19PM (#61243574)
      Uber should switch to a model where drivers can enter their origin and destinations and a price they are willing to take a passenger along. the passenger start and end can be within 0.5 mile of the routes entered by the drivers. Than passengers can see what is available and choose the lowest one. This way Uber is not setting prices. Drivers are. But passengers also get to see the price upfront. This will be more like Point to Point Bus service than taxi service. If you have a weird route noone wants to drive , you may need to take 2 or more Ubers. The benefit is this lets Uber drivers stay within an area they want to stay and they are not stranded far from their home base. It still preserves the surge supply which is the main benefit of Uber over Taxis. More people will put out routes for well known demand routes.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      I thought Uber was more of a "become a limo driver" type pitch.

      It was Lyft that pushed the narrative of "there's so many empty seats in cars, let's use money to facilitate car pooling".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thomn8r ( 635504 )

      When Uber started the whole point was that if two people were going to the same place anyway they could share the ride. Hence, ride-sharing.

      I don't think that was ever really the premise;they coined the term "ride sharing" as code for "a taxi service bu you use your own car"

    • When Uber started the whole point was that if two people were going to the same place anyway they could share the ride. Hence, ride-sharing.

      How do you do that if you don't know where people need to go?

      It's almost as if Uber is a taxi company and not a "ride sharing" service.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Alumoi ( 1321661 )

      And if you believe(d) that, I have a bridge to sell you.

  • I can understand that, but if you're offering rides at a price that no drivers will take, doesn't that mean that the price is too low to provide service? Employees you can have do uneconomic work in the name of customer attraction and retention. IE give the occasional uneconomic(for the provider) ride in order to keep your name/application as the first one checked.

    Contractors doing piecework need to be paid a realistic amount for every job.

    Like most independent contractor jobs, you need to keep an iron gr

  • So I guess they're employees after all (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oh_my_080980980 ( 773867 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2021 @01:11PM (#61243536)
    "Too many drivers cherry-pick lucrative rides and decline other requests, making the service unreliable, the San Francisco company said on Monday. Uber no longer has to worry about proving that drivers are independent contractors, because Prop 22 -- the November ballot measure that Uber and fellow gig companies spent $220 million to pass -- enshrines their non-employee status."

    Isn't that the point of being an INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR. You can refuse jobs. Sorry Uber, you're a fucking taxi service. These are your employees. Get over it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      Isn't that the point of being an INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR. You can refuse jobs.

      Drivers can still refuse jobs, they just have less information about the jobs. Heck, drivers don't have to work at all. They can work whenever they want. That where the employee/contractor line gets blurry. In general, if a company is telling you when to work, you are an employee. It's one of the criteria, anyways.

      The Uber drivers I've talked too all say the main reason they drive for Uber is that they can set their own schedule.

      • In general, if a company is telling you when to work, you are an employee. It's one of the criteria, anyways.

        But the reverse is not true. Many exempt employees are not told when to work. That doesn't make them contractors.

    • Isn't that the point of being an INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR. You can refuse jobs.

      They can still refuse jobs. They just can't name prices for jobs they want to take. They choose to accept a fare requested.

      Having been a contractor myself off and on, that sure sounds like a contractor to me. I could quit at any time, but I had to take the salary the job was offering or not. It wasn't like I could charge per UI element if desired.

      • Re:Why do you guess that? (Score:4, Informative)

        by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2021 @01:52PM (#61243774)
        How can they refuse a job if they dont know what the job is? if they only find out the destination after picking up the passenger, they cant ask the passenger to get out without getting kicked off the platform. So, No they are not free to refuse jobs.

        • Re:Why do you guess that? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2021 @11:25PM (#61245568)
          They may find work-arounds (eg scams) as they do now. Uber drivers at San Francisco airport have learned the trick of stopping on the level below where the passenger is calliing. Indicating a passenger pickup, then if they don't like the destination, saying the passenger canceled the ride. Happend to me a few times as a passenger when I was traveling at a busy time and my destination was unpopular. (at least at that time driver couldn't learn the destination until after pickup, unless the destination was beyond some range). I'm sure there are an endless number of tricks and the drivers will find ways to get around these restrictions.

      • In the near future they can only refuse the pickup. Once they take the pickup, completely blind to what the job is other than the origin, they are contractually bound to complete it.

        So no, they won't be able to refuse jobs in any meaningful sense.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Exactly being able to set prices means you have pricing power, it does not really make you a contractor or not. I can't just decide my services are worth $600 tomorrow well not an expect to get any work anyway.

        What is shitty about this from a drivers perspective is not knowing the destination means they don't know what the prospect of getting an pickup nearby for their return trip and they don't know the 'risk associated'. Personally I was never really interesting in driving for Uber but not knowing the des

    • If your business model, fails to operate as it suppose to on paper. The problem is with the business model.

      If they are not going to allow drivers pick and choose which jobs to take. They should factor in the price for the rider, the cost to return from home base, if such location is so many miles away their normal territory, So if you have to drive 30 miles out from the city to drop off some guy who got drunk at a bar. The drunk probably should be charged twice as much, and pay the driver for the return

      • I can request an Uber from LA to NY and they are locked into that trip?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          If I understand correctly it will still tell them its 4000mi or whatever; just not were. So they won't know if you are going to NYC or Richmond but they will know it will take a while.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ghoul ( 157158 )
            But what if he wants to go to NYC for his cousin's wedding? And when he picks up the ride he discovers he has to go to Richmond?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Hadlock ( 143607 )

          We've taken ubers from Stockton to San Francisco (85 miles), and Monterey to San Francisco before (115 miles), in an emergency. Was about $90 both times. Coming back from Monterey we split it two ways, from Stockton three ways, was pretty reasonable.

    • in California with about half a billion in advertising. That's chump change next to the benefits of redefining 100 years of labor law in their favor.

      If they're doing this they feel confident that they can buy laws elsewhere (or just plain don't need to).

      Remember, they're coming for us all [bloomberg.com]

    • Wasn't there a big hulabaloo a few years back wherein the ride sharing apps *stopped* disclosing destinations to drivers, prior to them accepting the fare, because drivers were refusing rides to "bad" (i.e., Black) parts of town? And now they're doing the exact opposite, to try to give the drivers some de minimis amount of control so that they aren't subject to wage and hour laws?

  • Grounds to overturn Prop 22 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2021 @01:14PM (#61243552)
    This will lead to a court case saying Prop 22 does not apply to Uber. Uber is trying to be too clever and it will bite them big time
    • This. I'm waiting for the lawsuit from Uber drivers using this as an argument for why they aren't contractors at all, because hey, having no control over the job you do isn't being a contractor, it's being a dependant worker.

      • The general rule is that an individual is an independent contractor if the payer has the right to control or direct only the result of the work and not what will be done and how it will be done.

        Drivers are being paid to pick up riders and drive them somewhere. The driver's are given a pick up location and a price for the ride. They are free to refuse the pickup. Drivers are free to take whatever route, to talk with the rider or not, etc. Technically, drivers are allowed to have a dirty vehicle and drive like a maniac although this may limit their future earning potential.

        • Drivers are being paid to pick up riders and drive them somewhere. The driver's are given a pick up location and a price for the ride. They are free to refuse the pickup.

          Yeah, no. At the very best, we're talking about contracts of adhesion here since the "contractor" suddenly doesn't have a right to negotiate their price, and it can be argued that by not being able to see the destination, they don't even have a meaningful basis on which to decide, by being denied relevant information. At this rate, you m

    • and buy another law. What we need to do is get Americans interested in protecting each other's labor rights. Not their _own_ mind you, each other's.

      There's a real "every man for himself" mentality that's built up over the last 40 years. It's being exploited and it's going to bite us all in the ass. No man is an island, and outside of a few top level geniuses individuals cannot effectively negotiate with mega corporations. And those geniuses are few and far enough between that they can be isolated and neu

  • From the article ... (Score:3)

    by timholman ( 71886 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2021 @01:17PM (#61243566)

    But on the streets, the move backfired. A third of California drivers declined more than 80% of their ride requests, making the service unreliable, Uber said this week. About a fifth of potential passengers in California now end up not finding a ride, a sevenfold increase from previously.

    So basically Uber drivers, when given the opportunity, immediately began acting like taxi drivers and pretty much negating the entire reason for using Uber in the first place.

    If I have to hire a ride service that may or may not show up, and and may or may not choose to take me to my destination, what's the point? I'll drive myself. I certainly won't be calling a cab.

    Uber and Lyft are popular for a reason, and it's not because people want them to behave more like standard taxi services.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fluffernutter ( 1411889 )
      Uber and Lyft are popular because they pay you to take their rides. You don't use a cab because you don't really want to pay the full price for someone to give you a ride.

      • Re:From the article ... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2021 @01:28PM (#61243630)
        I think of Uber and Lyft more as NGOs engaged in spreading Math literacy than as ride sharing companies. The only people who sign up are those bad at math. After 6 months driving for Uber they become good at Math and figure out that with insurance, depreciation and unpaid waiting time they are actually not making even minimum wage , they move on. This increases Math literacy in the population.
        • Also just like NGOs they dont make a profit though they pay high salaries to their employees. Heck Uber investors should get a tax deduction for their investments.

        • I think of Uber and Lyft more as NGOs engaged in spreading Math literacy than as ride sharing companies. The only people who sign up are those bad at math.

          Well, that is not quite true. I have a PhD in mathematics, and signed up to be a driver with Uber.

          Your larger point still stands, though. As expected, I made fairly little money -- I was doing it for amusement value, unlike the overwhelming majority of rideshare drivers. It really was a fun way to spend some time during a mandatory non-compete period. I met interesting people, got some great restaurant recommendations, etc. (In that interlude, I also took motorcycle lessons, and generally crossed thing

          • I'm not sure the overwhelming majority of rideshare drivers are doing it for the giggles. I'd guess there are more that are desperate for the immediate cash than there are looking to have a conversation while they ride out a non-compete.
            I have zero research though and have only used rideshares a few times with somebody else that had the app so that's just my anecdote and supposition.

            • oops - I misread your "unlike the overwhelming..." as "like the overwhelming" so my reply makes no sense :)

          • So you could say you did it for... shits and gigs?
        • I really wish we could stop this nonsense were we always shift blame to the individual.

          Uber is a payday loan where the interest is the miles on your car. Watch the adverts, they talk about how it helped the driver pay rent.

          People know they're getting screwed, but you're making $8/hr, $15 if you're lucky and your kid needs antibiotics? Uber to the rescue, and more miles on your car praying it doesn't break down...

      • The death of the taxicab industry had almost nothing to do with the prices they charged.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tippen ( 704534 )

        Uber and Lyft are popular because they pay you to take their rides. You don't use a cab because you don't really want to pay the full price for someone to give you a ride.

        Not even remotely true for (pre-COVID) business travelers. I didn't particularly care how much a cab or Uber cost. It's all about the convenience, reliability and service.

        If you ignore the condition of the cars, cabs are perfectly fine going from the hotel to where you need/want to go. The problem is getting back. Maybe you'll be able to wave a cab down. Maybe the cab will bother to show up if you call and order one directly. It's a total crapshoot...

        Uber/Lyft eliminates all those pain points utterly. Not o

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ghoul ( 157158 )
      Nobody uses Uber as an alternate to driving themselves. It is always cheaper to drive yourself if you have a car. Most people use Uber as an alternate to taxis when either they dont have a car , visiting another city, going somewhere where parking is expensive and inconvenient, will be drunk coming back. In noe of these cases is driving yourself a viable alternative. Stop using Uber because its cheap. Use it for what its meant to be used for.

    • If I have to hire a ride service that may or may not show up, and and may or may not choose to take me to my destination, what's the point? I'll drive myself. I certainly won't be calling a cab.

      Conversely, if I have to haul your ass somewhere for a pittance, especially after subtracting the costs which Uber graciously passes onto the drivers, I'll rather open a can of beer.

      Uber basically demonstrates a trivial economic truth - if you fix the price for a service at a level where it just isn't worth i

  • Too many drivers cherry-pick lucrative rides and decline other requests, making the service unreliable,

    They should respect that some destinations may be problematic for some drivers. So why not solve that problem by cherry-picking which drivers get first dibs on more lucrative rides?

    Something like.. an algorithm should estimate a "favorability" score, and drivers who have a high acceptance and successful completion rate get offered more favorable rides first. Have drivers that decline or pass up on

    • Re:Cherrypicking is NECESSARY (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2021 @01:28PM (#61243632) Homepage Journal

      Have drivers that decline or pass up on a lot of rides get downgraded in some manner that will hurt their ability to cherry-pick.

      So when a19 year old girl driving for Uber is forced to take a ride into gang territory.... Cherrypicking isn't just about pricing/earnings.

      • What difference does the sex of the driver make? The correct answer is none whatsoever.

        • Yes. Because males and females are victimized by violent crime at the same rate. Rapists, for example, are well known for their progressive views on gender equality.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ghoul ( 157158 )
            Rape is not about sex. Its about power. Men are under social pressure to be providers. When they fail it breaks their self esteem. Some broken men act out their feelings by attacking women. it has nothing to do with sexual attraction. If society was egalitarian in letting men fail at the same rate as women incidences of rape would go down. if it was equally acceptable to be a house husband as a housewife or to live off alimony for a man or to be a kept boyfriend , losers would not feel the societal pressure

        • Your sex matters:

          - when you have to stay late at work and then take a long walk to your car after most others have left.

          - when you are jogging at night

          - when it's raining and you're wandering if you can take a shortcut through an alley

          - when you're going to the bathroom at a bar

          - when you're meeting someone new for a Craigslist/etc trade

          - when you're negotiating salary

          - when you're driving to a seedy part of town to pick someone up or drop someone off

          Sure the potential bad outcomes could also occur to men,

  • Would be for Uber to "evolve" into an online marketplace for anyone to sell taxi services, including taxi companies. I would assume that if they did that, they could easily stick a hot poker in the eye of every regulator.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ghoul ( 157158 )
      Thats like saying every restaurant should sell through Doordash even those with an existing delivery infrastructure. Taxi companies already have a dispatch system. Many also have an app. The only reason to join Uber would be scale and if Uber is so big that other competitors are being driven out of the market we now are in Anti-trust territory.

  • Other demotivators (Score:3)

    by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2021 @01:42PM (#61243728)

    Or perhaps, some drivers don't want to go to sketchier parts of town.

    • Are taxi drivers allowed to refuse those fares?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ghoul ( 157158 )
        Taxi drivers are employees with eligibility for workers comp and sick leave if they get mugged by going to a bad area. Also they dont own their vehicles so if its torched they dont take the hit on the gap between what insurance pays and what it costs to replace the car.
        • Really? Not in Arizona [pollartmiller.com]. Whether a taxi driver is an independent contractor is often subject to local laws because while they may qualify for independent contractor status under IRS rules, local and state laws may require they be employees. Conversely, local and state laws may allow or require independent status.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ghoul ( 157158 )
            So I guess Uber will love Arizona. Actually not really. if the Taxi companies are allowed to operate in Uber mode in Arizona, Uber really has no competitive advantage. it needs a highly regulated taxi market where others have to follow rules and it doesnt. Uber's core competency is lawyers who let it skate on breaking laws which competitors follow.
      • Not if they want to keep their jobs.

  • Thousands of people drive for Uber around the world. If driving for Uber is so bad, why do people do it? (Don't tell me they have to. There are plenty of other low wage jobs they could do in America.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ghoul ( 157158 )
      Uber is meant to be part time. Something you do in your free time. If people are doing it full time something somewhere has gone wrong. Maybe they are not getting jobs because they are the wrong skin color or dont speak Spanish. Maybe they have criminal convictions or drug issues. It pays less than minimum wage once you figure in insurance, maintenance, depreciation and unpaid wait time. So its a job for people who cant get minimum wage jobs. its also a job for those who had good jobs but have fallen on lea

    • Re:If driving for Uber is so bad, why do it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LeeLynx ( 6219816 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2021 @02:16PM (#61243904)
      You have just assumed away the correct answer as inconvenient to your point. If a person needs work badly enough to take a shit job, there is probably a reason - lack of education, lack of experience, outsized family obligations, etc. That person is likely already working one or more of those low wage jobs and not earning enough to live on, and between things like child care or just the schedules of those other jobs, Uber is all that remains that fits. So yes, many people are working for Uber due to a lack of other meaningful choices. Uber is counting on this - if they were actually relying solely on those drivers who are legitimately just doing this in their goof-off time, they wouldn't be able to reach the necessary critical mass for this to be a worthwhile business model.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ghoul ( 157158 )
        Uber to be viable needs a recession. A recession creates a cohort of folks who had good enough jobs that they bought cars but now suddenly cant find jobs and are too proud to take min wage jobs. They still have their cars so they sign up for Uber. I bought Uber stock when Covid first hit as I thought it would lead to a recession which would be good for all the gig economy companies. However I have sold all the gig stocks as I see the economy is going to whether Covid without a recession due to the massive s

        • Uber to be viable needs a recession.

          No. It just needs people who want to make some extra money driving their cars.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ghoul ( 157158 )
            That cohort is just not big enough to have the scale that Uber advertizes. if it was just part timers than Uber would be an augmentation of existing taxi services not a replacement for taxis as Uber claims to be.

      • Don't tell me they have to.

        Is that assuming away the correct answer? Is someone holding a gun to their head saying they must drive for Uber rather than, say, flipping burgers, washing dishes in a restaurant, or digging ditches? I know for a fact that working as an industrial electrician apprentice pays more than minimum wage but it also requires doing things like using a pickaxe to dig through hard pack.

        Now, explain why someone has to driver for Uber rather than working as a janitor, flipping burgers, washing dishes, working day l

  • How can I decide to share a ride if I don't know where you want to go until I pick you up? What if the grocery store I was going to is in the other direction?

    Yet, somehow I don't think Uber would get many customers if passengers only have the option to be dropped off somewhere within a mile of whatever route the driver was planning to take.

    So there you have it, Uber is an illegal unlicensed cab company.

  • reap what y'all sowed: lower pay for everyone

  • That's what they are. They're part-time, on-call employees.

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