However, to accept and then cancel affects your CANCELLATION rate, which is a metric that Uber also keeps track of.
Both are looked down upon by Uber, but accepting and canceling is worse than simply not accepting. The acceptance threshold is 80%, whereas canceling more than 10% of accepted requests will warrant a threat from uber, which makes sense since it significantly impacts the rider’s experience (remember waiting for a taxicab that only never shows up to your home?).
In any event, letting it expire is the lesser of two evils. In reality, as “independent contractors” we should have the right to decline as many pings as we want, but we all know the real reason for the IC status is so Uber doesn’t have to pay us an hourly wage when there’s no rides, and they don’t want to pay for health insurance, or vehicle expenses.
This is why luber wants a car on every corner. Every ride gets them money, and they dont care about the driver as long as every rider gets a quick response and arrival, and a cheap and safe ride.
Cabbies are well known for not going to an out of the way destination to pick up a booking and avoiding short fares. Uber drivers are doing the same thing now, so the answer is to have more cars
Riders with a very low rating make me feel unsafe and uncomfortable. I am continuing to refuse and cancel but I started taking screenshots of rides I am not accepting, just to have a reason in hands why I didn’t drive them.
I wouldn’t sweat it. Unless you get tons of these it isn’t gonna be a big deal.
They will always encourage you to accept every trip. It’s income for them.
If the rates were higher, and/or Uber gave us something extra for driving more than 5 miles to a client, I would take some of these farther out pings. I don’t want to drive 20 mins to get to a customer for a $5 fare. Even in my hybrid, that’s a losing proposition. I’m here because I have bills to pay, not lose money on minimum fare rides.
I just had to cancel a request from 30 minutes away, it was for a very short ride. I accepted the request out of curiosity as to why I am pinged from such a distance. It must make financial sense to take a trip that far. At least, I should be able to get a fix dollar value per accepted long distance trip provided I complete the request. I understand this is a service needed by many people, but we are not a publicly funded utility. We have to make money. That’s why we are doing this job.
I asked a similar question and got pretty much the exact response except the Uber Support person said accept but call the person to let them know how far you are. So call the person and say you are far, 9 times out of ten they agree to cancel. Let them cancel.
I’m no longer an Uber virgin. I went online for the first time today & accepted the first three pings but they were all cancelled within 3 minutes of their ping. It said rider canceled so do I get paid for those? I went offline, drove to a swanky area of town, went online & was immediately pinged.
Here is what you do. Accept the ride, but then call the passenger and say there was a computer error. The fact is you are 45 minutes away and cant possibly get there in time. Than let the passenger cancel it for you. That way the passenger isnt kept waiting and it wont effect your rate.
I got the ping & was enroute when it was cancelled by the rider within three minutes of accepting. Accepted the next ping, was enroute & THEY cancelled within a couple of minutes. Third ping’s a charm - same thing as the other two but at least it was in the direction of the ritzy section. Went off line & once I got to the $$$$ part of town I got my first real pax. Weird.
In my situation Rockville would probably only be 20-25 mins away if there was a bridge over the river here. The fact that I have to drive 15 - 20 miles to get to a point where I can cross the river is probably what’s screwing it up.
I won’t go to “ride to the pin” or “unnamed road” locations. There is never anything good that will come out of those. My rule of thumb, if it is more that 10 minutes away, I’ll let the ping expire because you know it is never “just” 10 minutes away…
Driving for the other guys and waiting on background check (3 weeks in process) from Uber. The longer I do this, the less likely to accept regulars with typical $5-6 fares and they’re non tippers. Grinds me they would not think of stiffing a kid who parked their car 200 ft away, but a guy driving a 30K car 3-4 miles to get them and 5 miles to destination is not worth a tip. In my experience The worst offenders are service people like restaurant people. I’ve taken to educating them about the parallels between driving and waiting on people. Once in a while, somebody gets it.
So, a customer repeatedly requested a car. I accepted on their 4 try. So, I get a 25% acceptance rate even though I drove this person?
We should be able to put in an acceptable radius/time to customer. I don’t want to drive 17 minutes to a customer, thank them for a 5 minute drive, then get back home. This ends up taking 45 minutes for a $5 fare.
Like I have said, Uber has the clients so ingrained that tips “are included” that it will take a monumental effort to change that thought process. I pick up pax from the best parts of town, people that would never, ever get out of a cab and not tip but I am left with hat in hand. They have been programmed and it will be tough to change.