I love Uber, but there are a number of things they do which really annoys me, and shows just how much profit they always want to make over trying to actually help the customer/employee.
PROS:
- Can split fares between more than one person
- Rating system, however I always wonder how a passenger is rated. If they don't talk, doe the Uber driver thing they're rude, therefore rate lower?
CONS:
- They take from what I've heard around 30% of every fare for themselves, which since the platform is cheap in general, it means the drivers are just being literally taken for a ride. Even if they took $1 off the passenger, and $1 off the driver they'd still be making a TONNE of money!
- Seems the Google Maps feature isn't always amazing
- The new UI I think stinks. Whenever you book your ride - it then moves your pin marker to ask if "you're here" and if you're in a location you don't know too well, you have no idea if you are there, or where your GPS pin dropped you
- Their help support is terrible. Someone new will reply to your chain of emails going back and forth and not know what you're talking about
Split fares. My heart always sinks a little when I hear my passengers split fares. Only a little, but it's still money out of my pocket. There's a small fee charged for splitting fares, and Uber keeps it all, but I have to pay GST on it.
I rate all my passengers five stars unless they stuff me around, or are rude, or damage the car or do something pretty ordinary. I've only rated one or two 1-star, and one of them was for putting the wrong location on the map, making me wait there for about five minutes, and then texting confusing directions to where they really were. I'm not a frigging mind reader - I can't work out which of the hundred random people standing around with their phones out on a busy street is my passenger, and if the pin isn't in the right place to start with, it just adds to the delay and difficulty.
Uber in Canberra keeps 25% of the fare, which leaves 75% to pay for fuel, insurance, maintenance, depreciation, phone data, government fees, income tax and the whole 10% GST. Uber pays none of that. It works out about the same hourly rate as for driving taxis, which isn't a real lot, but I'm lucky in that I'm not living off this, and it's essentially a little gravy on top of my pension, paying for the car and some travel. And I like the job, so long as I'm not working twelve-hour shifts like I did as a cabbie.
Uber is set up to maximise its own profit and minimise its own taxes. I detest this business model, and if some local group with more ethical practices were to start up in Canberra, I'd certainly give them a go.
Oh yeah. The surge pricing model sucks. Fair enough to charge a bit extra to effectively jump the queue when there's (say) five cars in the area and a hundred passengers, but to charge a multiplier over the entire trip is just wrong. There should be a top-out of ten dollars max on top of the regular fare. When a normal thirty dollar fare turns into over a hundred that's wrong, and I've heard some horror stories far worse.
The recent changes to maps and pickup points suck. About a quarter of the time the pin will be where the passenger isn't and neither party knows this until there's a bit of back and forth on the text or the phone. I'll turn up at an address, as indicated by the pin, there'll be nobody there and I don't know if it's because they are still getting their stuff together or they are actually a few houses away. If they don't show after a couple of minutes do I take a chance on driving up and down the street or around the block to see if I can spot someone, or do I stay where I'm told to be?
The help system seems to assume that you haven't read the FAQ, you are a complete idiot, you will find one of the canned responses useful, and you like dealing with call centres. Or email/text robots.
So, not fully gruntled, but more so than driving a cab. Most of the time I enjoy chatting with the passengers - or not, if they want to be alone with their thoughts - and being useful in the community.
