In this week’s round up, rideshare faces some challenging questions, new opportunities for transporting seniors, and Lyft’s new suite of updates for drivers. Senior RSG contributor John Ince covers that – and more.
Uber Revenue Slows as Quarterly Loss Surges to $1.1 Billion [Bloomberg]
Sum and Substance: Uber’s sales are dramatically slowing even as the ride-hailing company is spending more to fuel global growth, particularly in its food delivery business. Revenue growth of 38 percent in the third quarter was almost half of what the growth rate was six months earlier, when the company was negotiating a $9.3 billion investment led by SoftBank Group Corp.
That’s a troubling sign for a serially unprofitable business that hopes to get valued like a technology company in a planned initial public offering next year. Uber Technologies Inc. lost $1.07 billion in the quarter ended Sept. 30, an improvement over a year ago, but the loss widened 20 percent from the second quarter.
Highly valued companies typically grow quickly or generate big profits — and great ones do both. In the fourth quarter of 2005, Amazon.com Inc. had about the same revenue as Uber’s today — just under $3 billion, not adjusted for inflation. Yet, Amazon earned $199 million in profit and was worth about a fourth of Uber’s $76 billion valuation.
Uber released a limited set of financial information on Wednesday, a move the privately held company voluntarily does each quarter. The San Francisco-based company also offered a glimpse into its food delivery business for the first time. A spokesman said Uber Eats generated $2.1 billion in gross bookings. That represents 17 percent of Uber’s $12.7 billion in gross bookings last quarter…
My Take: Uber’s new Chief Financial Officer Nelson Chai is trying to put a positive spin on some pretty dismal figures for Uber. The hope was that Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi would move Uber on a positive path to profitability, but instead they’re moving in the opposite direction. The fact that Uber cannot achieve profitability in its largest market – the United States – should be very troubling for investors.
Uber announces 21 categories of sexual misconduct to report [ABC News]
Sum and Substance: Uber announced a new system to identify sexual misconduct on its platform — introducing 21 categories from staring and leering to non-consensual sexual penetration — in a step toward transparency with customers and rehabilitating its public image.
“You’ve probably heard ‘Do the right thing,’ which we’ve really made an organizing principal for everything in the company,” Uber’s chief legal officer Tony West told a handful of reporters at a private event on Monday in New York City. “I’ve talked about the importance of acting with transparency, integrity and accountability in everything that we do. …
“We believe if we improve the safety of the platform for women, we can do it for everybody,” West said. The company is preparing a “transparency report” for 2019, in which it will publicly detail incidents of sexual assault and harassment for riders and drivers.
The move deals with one pervasive problem with preventing sexual misconduct: data collection can be tricky because bad behavior is under-reported and can be loosely defined.
“People want to go down the rabbit hole of which statistics are accurate, if you don’t have the same definitions to use, it can be challenge,” said Kristen Houser, the chief public affairs officer for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, who, along with the Urban Institute, worked with Uber to create the new taxonomy, or classification system.
My Take: We’re talking about a very sensitive subject here, and I applaud Uber for taking a baby step in the right direction. From the outset, the prospect of anyone getting into the intimacy of a car with a complete stranger has been ripe for abuse. The abuse has been a steady stream for years, often exploding in Uber (and Lyft) face with salacious stories that the press loves to feature.
The article suggests that more information might be forthcoming, with perhaps some hard data on just how big a problem this is. I suspect it’s a much bigger problem than Uber has been willing to acknowledge, for obvious reasons.
GreatCall Expands Lyft Partnership to Pick Up Seniors Nationwide [Xconomy]
Sum and Substance: GreatCall, the maker of the Jitterbug cellphone and other products and services for older adults, has extended its partnership with the San Francisco-based ride-hailing company Lyft to offer GreatCall customers the ability to schedule rides without a smartphone app. No financial terms were disclosed.
The San Diego-based healthtech company said Tuesday it is rolling out GreatCall Rides nationally, after testing it with customers in California, Florida, Arizona, and the Chicago and Dallas/Fort Worth areas for more than two years, since August of 2016. GreatCall was acquired by Minnesota-based Best Buy earlier this year from private equity firm GTCR for $800 million in cash.
To schedule a ride, customers press “0” and tell an operator their destination. GreatCall adds the cost of the ride, plus a “nominal fee,” to its customers’ monthly bills. That means users get to skip the steps through which Lyft users typically to hail a ride: Downloading a smartphone app, making an account, and requesting pick-ups via the mobile app.
My Take: As a senior, I find this partnership to be an important acknowledgement of diversity. Seniors often don’t have a facility with smartphones and might be missing out on an innovation that could greatly improve their lives. Kudos to Lyft for moving ahead with this.
Uber vs. Ambulance [22NewsWWLP]
Sum and Substance: (WWBT) – Alane Cameron Ford does a lot of waiting for a ride to work. She’s a hospice chaplain and bereavement counselor working at hospitals across central Virginia. But she’s temporarily unable to drive because of a medical condition.
“I have to use Uber and Lyft services to go and see my patients,” Ford says. “I use it all the time. Sometimes I’ll see four or five drivers a day.” But lately, those drivers picking her up are a little more cautious.
“They think that I need to go to the hospital as a patient and so sometimes I have trouble getting a ride,” Ford says. “I know you’re out there and yet it will still say searching, searching, searching and finally when I do get a driver, the driver will come and they’ll look at me very carefully.”
Ford is seeing the side effects of a new phenomenon. According to a study by a University of Kansas professor and a San Diego doctor, there’s been a 7 percent drop in ambulance calls since Uber started up in hundreds of U.S. cities.
My Take: I’ve had several emergency visits to the hospital and everything has worked out just fine. But what happens if it doesn’t? Who is liable? The driver? The company? I don’t know and this concerns me.
The difference between the cost of an ambulance and the cost of an Uber or Lyft is so astronomical that clearly people are incentivized to opt for an Uber. But drivers have no training for this kind of thing. I just hope this doesn’t end up in a bad way. What is you experience with ambulance runs? Do you refuse, potentially creating more hazard? Or do you just go with it?
Lyft launches default tipping, rating protections and more to keep drivers happy [TechCrunch]
Sum and Substance: Lyft announced Thursday a half dozen new driver-friendly features, from default tipping and in-trip tipping to ways to protect their ratings and an events planner. Lyft also committed to rolling out at least one new feature or enhancement from its driver community each month.
All of these new features came out of Lyft’s Driver Advisory Council, which was formed in 2016.
Lyft has allowed tipping through its ride-hailing app for years. It’s a feature that has helped Lyft drivers earn $1 billion in tips, according to Lyft. Now it’s expanding tipping to help boost earnings.
Beginning next month, Lyft will add a default tipping option and in-ride tipping for select riders. There will be a broader roll out after the New Year. If riders select default tipping in the app’s settings, Lyft will automatically apply their pre-set tip percentage to the driver’s earnings when they don’t proactively rate a trip and add a tip themselves.
Christian’s Take: Lyft is announcing quite a few changes here. I’ve summed them all up for you below:
Improvements To Tipping
- Lyft will add an option in the passenger app for passengers set a “default tip” for each ride.
- Riders will now be able to tip during the middle of a ride.
- These features are getting slowly rolled out in the next 2 months and then expanding rapidly after the New Year.
Lyft says that an improvement to the rating and tipping screen earlier this year resulted in a 20% increase in the amount tipped to drivers.
Ratings Buff For Drivers
- Lyft will now toss out your worst rating in the last 100 rides.
- Passengers who leave a poor rating will be prompted to leave a reason. Reasons outside of the drivers control (traffic) will cause the rating to get tossed out.
- All rides that are not rated by a passenger will now default to 5-stars.
Improved Demand Graph
- The daily demand card within the driver app will be updated in December to show anticipated hourly demand throughout the upcoming week.
Lyft says that all of these tweaks to the app have come from their in-house Driver Advisory Council. I’ve definitely seen drivers request every single one of these changes over the last few years. It’s good to see these features getting rolled out by Lyft, but since they are still testing the rollout in a few markets, we will have to wait and see what the end product becomes and if they are effective at increasing our tips.
I particularly think that “default tipping” should be part of the passenger on-boarding flow, though, so passengers will be more likely to think about, and set a default tip. Lyft will also be allowing passengers to tip drivers from within the app while the ride is still ongoing. This will be useful because the next time a passenger says “I’ll tip you big-time” I’ll be able to ask them to put their money where their mouth is by showing me 😉
Drivers, what do you think of this week’s roundup?
-John @ RSG
