My Beef With Lyft Driving
Today will mark my last day as an Elite tier level driver, possibly ever, it is just no longer worth the time and effort in my city. I love the freedom and altruistic opportunity Lyft affords me but it is not financially rewarding in any manner. Here are some of the things I detest about driving for Lyft:
When a passenger no shows you are either forced to wait indefinitely or you have to cancel for a tiny fee and canceling effects your acceptance rate despite the rider being at fault.
Short drives with stops can amount to you making virtually no money. For example, I often pick up riders who are so close the total fee amounts to barely over five dollars, they often take the full five minutes to pickup and the full five minutes at a stop, Lyft claims I'm paid extra to wait but if so it is not substantial. If I'm getting say eight dollars and the ride takes say 25 minutes after all the waiting I've virtually made nothing. And then the worst case scenario is the rider will leave important shit like their children or strollers or luggage bags so even when they take say ten minutes at a stop I'm basically forced to wait.
Lyft claims we're getting a larger share of the profits after May, but since then I've noticed an influx of rides where the hourly breakdown amounts to far less than $20/HR which even in Cincy is hard to live on.
On the single occasion where I felt I was threatened by a gang of gun toting fake street toughs I couldn't even rate them poorly or flag their account until the next day because Lyft gives you such a small immediate window to rate riders often while they're still in the midst of exiting the car.
I've had to cancel rides after driving to the destination because riders were in places where I legally wasn't allowed to stop and they failed to show any effort walk even a few hundred feet if I park nearby but this also effects my cancel rate and I'm penalized for their laziness. For example I had a rider literally waiting on the side of a freeway. I had a rider waiting in a downtown street car lane and I immediately got pulled over and handed a ticket after picking them up.
Out of around 950 rides I've been tipped out on slightly less than ten percent of them despite having hundreds of compliments. I drive in the most urban and poor neighborhoods because that's what makes up most of inner city Cincy and so people just don't have the extra funds to tip otherwise they'd probably save up for cars.