Today, RSG senior contributor John Ince takes a look at what it’s like to be an Uber driver/therapist, Uber’s new selfie security checks, ghost drivers in China and more!
Uber Drivers Are the New Bartenders [The Ringer]
Sum and Substance: Harry Cross, who works in sales at a logistics company by day, has only been an Uber driver for a shade over two months. Already, he’s turned into a sounding board. “At first, I’m doing it for the money, and then all of a sudden … it was like the craziest shit I’ve ever heard of or been involved with,” he says. Cross started driving to save for a family vacation, but says he became “addicted” to the work. “It’s the most entertaining thing you can do for money,” he says. Cross documents some of the more interesting stories riders tell him on Facebook (all names are changed, for the record). “It’s unbelievable, the things you’re going to hear. Some people have no filter.”
Cross rattles off some of his favorite rides that turned into therapy sessions: There was the guy who needed advice about a potential threesome with an ex, the girl who told him about how horrible she felt for sleeping with her ex’s best friend, and the bouncer who’d had a fight with his girlfriend and wanted to know if he should break up with her even though he’s close to her kid.
“I’m like Dr. Phil … It’s almost like an art form to me now. I like to have that Danny Tanner moment, you know, ‘ah, Tiffany, you should make better life choices,’” he says with a laugh. After riders repeatedly started opening up to him and even asking for life advice, Cross started wondering: Is it just him, or is this an Uber phenomenon?
There’s a sort of contractual intimacy that has generally taken place over a drink that is beginning to happen on these drives. Ride-sharing drivers have become the unofficial new bartenders, or arm-chair therapists. They’re those people you meet at a party’s golden hour, when you’re just tipsy enough to engage in a conversation that would, under other circumstances, feel like an overshare. Drivers keep (or, in Cross’s case, share) passengers’ secrets; they offer advice or sympathy, or sometimes they just listen. The ride-sharing economy is based on a few things: ease of use, on-demand availability, the mobile revolution — and also, contractual, short-term friendship. Sure, the larger sharing economy has elements of this (the incredibly casual, friendly texts I exchange with Postmates delivery people is evidence), but there’s something incredibly intimate about stepping into someone else’s space.
My Take: This has been one of the most intriguing aspects of this gig for me – especially since I’m writing a book about my experiences. It never ceases to amaze me how willing people are to share intimate details about what they’re feeling or thinking. I actually had one passenger who has a startup that charges people for talking to complete strangers over the Internet. I wondered as I talked to him, “why would anybody pay good money to talk to a stranger and not at least get a ride out of it?”
Uber’s new selfie check helps make sure riders get the driver they’re promised [TechCrunch]
Sum and Substance: Uber is rolling out a new selfie security measure which will eventually cover the entire U.S. It’s a selfie system for drivers designed to help prevent driver fraud, so that you can more reliably count on the person who picks you up being the one whose picture you see in your app.
The system is actually called Real-Time ID Check, and it uses Microsoft machine learning to compare a selfie snapped in the moment against a driver’s registered profile pic, which Uber says is designed as a protective safety measure for rider and driver alike. Drivers are “periodically” asked to take a selfie in their Uber driver app before being allowed to accept fares, and if the selfie doesn’t match the pic on file, the account is temporarily locked down so Uber can investigate further.
On the rider side, the safety benefit is obvious; at the very least, it means the driver you’re getting is the same one who went through Uber’s onboarding process (which includes background checks), rather than someone who may have just been using the phone or account credentials of another driver. It’s not a guarantee of perfect safety (nothing is), but verifying driver identity should definitely lead to the elimination of edge cases where riders would otherwise be in danger. Plus, it would avoid things like this “ghost driver” phenomenon in China. (See Below)
My Take: I’ve got mixed feelings about this. Up until this Uber pretty much accepted any photo as a placeholder for the driver’s image. That was a system ripe for abuse. So on the one hand, this corrects one of the defects of Uber’s security apparatus. But by asking drivers to periodically take selfies, it’s just one more hassle of the job. What are your feeling about this?
Uber’s terrifying “ghost drivers” are freaking out passengers in China [Quartz]
Sum and Substance: Halloween is still weeks away but some Uber drivers are already painting their faces to scare unwitting passengers in China. Passengers using the ride-hailing app in several Chinese cities have reported seeing their requests picked up by drivers with creepy profile photos of zombie faces. According to Chinese news site Sixth Tone, the point of these ghostly profiles is to scare passengers into canceling the trip, so they are fined for a few yuan (less than a dollar), which goes to the driver. “Ghost driver” complaints have emerged across China, including in Tianjin, Qingdao, Chengdu, Xiamen, Beijing, Shanghai, Zhengzhou and Suzhou, according to NBD News.
Other passengers have reported seeing their rides accepted, but then their trips were “started” by the driver on the app before they even get to the car. These “ghost rides” last less than a minute, with the driver charging customers between 8 and 15 yuan (about 1 to 2 dollars) for a ride that never happened. Calls to the drivers in these cases are never picked up, according to The Paper, a state-owned media. Passengers can however eventually be reimbursed by Uber China if they lodge a complaint.
It is not the first time Uber China faces driver scams.
As Quartz reported last year, Uber drivers in China receive a subsidy from the company for each trip they make. The generous original subsidy, intended to attract drivers to use the Uber platform, amounted to up to 300 yuan (about US$50) for every 30 trips and 400 yuan for every 40. In June, the Financial Times reported that subsidies had been steeply reduced, though drivers say they still benefit today. Subsidies incentivize drivers to bump up the number of rides they make. Instead of hoping for longer trips like a normal taxi might, Uber scammers may try to earn starting fees and subsidy cash on fake and cancelled trips, while saving on fuel.
My Take: One of the fascinating sub plots in this ridesharing space is the ongoing game of cat and mouse between company and drivers. Each is trying to outsmart the others with ever more complex schemes to squeeze a few extra bucks out from the system. But this scheme in China takes this to the absurd extreme.
Lesser versions of this tactic are commonplace even here in the U. S. and they seldom serve any larger purpose other than to damage the brand. Just yesterday, I ran into a neighbor who had been waiting for over an hour for a ride to the airport. First he tried Uber and had a driver who supposedly was 14 minutes away, en route. But the driver’s car wasn’t moving. My guess is that the driver was working towards a PDB (Power Driver Bonus) and didn’t want to drive that far for pickup. But he also didn’t to get the blemish on this record of a cancellation – so he was just playing possum, waiting for the passenger to cancel, which my neighbor eventually did. The neighbor went through the same routine again with Lyft, until out of desperation he called a taxi, which probably cost him a lot more, but at least he made his flight. These kind of games are more and more prevalent as the carrots and sticks of the incentive structure get ever more complex.
A Legal Hurdle Is Keeping Uber Drivers Out of San Francisco [Inc]
Sum and Substance: A requirement that drivers register for business licenses is resulting in some Uber and Lyft riders being stranded outside the city where the startups are headquartered.
Entrepreneur Carla Mays has been encountering a frustrating situation over the past couple of weeks when she orders an Uber. Drivers have refused to take her from Berkeley, California, to the city where she lives and where Uber is headquartered, San Francisco. The drivers tell her they have not met business registration requirements. In April the Office of the Treasurer and Tax Collector in San Francisco announced it had notified 37,000 people identified as drivers for transportation network companies, or TNCs, of a new effort to enforce the requirements. A grace period for drivers lacking the registration ended August 31.
“This is something Uber should be paying for if this is a part of them having drivers, because a lot of folks are doing this to make ends meet,” Mays says. Tweets from riders directed at @Uber_SF show Mays is not alone in struggling to get a ride. It’s unclear whether this issue is also impacting Lyft, but the San Francisco requirement applies to both companies and many drivers operate on both platforms. Uber and Lyft tell Inc. that drivers don’t see a rider’s destination until a ride has started, which comes after they accept the ride. The companies say they have notified drivers of the requirement, and Lyft outlined the details in a section on its website. “It’s something we tried hard to fight, but San Francisco drivers are required by the city to have a business license (called a Business Registration Certificate),” the section reads.
My Take: These days the authorities are coming at drivers from all kinds of angles. Did I want to add this to the growing list of stress factors for driving for Uber and Lyft? As the deadline approached on this, the Facebook groups were abuzz with all kinds of speculation on whether or not drivers actually needed to get one of these licenses, especially when they could claim an exemption on the “employee” basis. I couldn’t see how it could be easily enforced, and waited until the last minute, but finally registered and paid my fee. At first I felt duped by the City of San Francisco, but then reports surfaced that police were checking for business licenses at the airports, and suddenly I felt better that I had bought peace of mind for under a hundred dollars.
Why Uber Sometimes Charges Extra Without Paying Drivers More [Inc]
Sum and Substance: When a rider hails an Uber, the money they pay gets split up in a few ways. There’s a booking fee, a percentage commission Uber takes called the “service fee,” and a balance due the driver. Sometimes there’s also additional money that goes into Uber’s coffers, according to a popular blog about the ridesharing industry. And sometimes, according to Uber, what it charges the rider doesn’t cover all costs including the actual cost of paying the driver.
What’s going on here? Uber says there are occasionally discrepancies having to do with the company’s offer of “upfront fares” in some cities starting in June. The feature states the total fare a rider will pay based on start and end point of their trip, rather than telling drivers the fare after the trip is completed. It’s something Uber says it’s been doing with UberPOOL for some time.
“Upfront fares are calculated using the expected time and distance of the trip and local traffic, as well as how many riders and nearby drivers are using Uber at that moment. And when fares go up due to increased demand, instead of surge lightning bolts and pop-up screens, riders are given the actual fare before they request their ride,” states an Uber blog post about the practice.
My Take: This article has received lost of attention already, but it’s worth noting that business publications like Inc. are starting to take notice of some of Uber’s questionable practices. Kudos to Christian Perea for digging into this story and coming up with evidence to support his suspicions. Now drivers all over are paying attention to this. Anyone smell a lawsuit here?
Readers, what do you think of this week’s round up? Have you heard of ghost drivers before?
-John @ RSG
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