Unless absolutely 100% of the amount I enter into the app is going into the driver's bank account they can fuck right off. I can and will tip drivers. It's a hard job with shit pay and a good one can be the difference between my day being a disaster and being actually alright. The sexual harassment factory known as Uber doesn't get to take a cut of that.
Uber wants your top tips to mend its rotten image
Uber is looking to mend fences with its drivers by adding the option for riders to tip. The embattled dial-a-ride broker said Tuesday it would begin trials of the feature in Minneapolis, Houston, and Seattle. The in-app option will allow users to give tips after both Uber car rides and UberEat food deliveries without deducting …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 21st June 2017 16:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
Unless absolutely 100% of the amount I enter into the app is going into the driver's bank account they can fuck right off.
So who codes, maintains, and hosts the app?
Who protects any IP that may exist?
Who makes all the decisions about policy, charging?
Who pays for marketing?
Who does (or in Uber's case should) validate driver background, licences, insurance, vehicle condition & maintenance records?
Fairies, apparently. I think (on public domain info) that Uber is a corrupt, busted entity. But the idea of every penny you paying going to the driver? Give that one some further thought, please.
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Friday 21st July 2017 01:09 GMT Boo Radley
Yes, if the driver gives good service, like helping me with packages, I will certainly tip, and I want all of the tip to go to the driver. Hell, maybe I'm unusual, but I normally tip at least 20% as long as he's ontime, clean car, and doesn't take the long route.
Maybe my small city is unusual, our two taxi companies are pretty honest, they wash and vacuum the car each shift, no driver smokes, and the wait time can be as little as ten minutes from when you call, up to 30 minutes if they're busy. The trick is to call earlier and make a reservation. Then you've got a 99 out of 100 chance that the car will be there when you need it, and probably earlier.
I looked up several of my regular taxi rides on Ubers find your fare page, they were consistently a dollar or two more than I pay for a regular taxi. The booking and other fees alone add up to my home to work taxi fare before the mileage is added, making Uber the high cost provider. I want to study the pricing a littlemore, probably on longer trips Uber will be cheaper. There's got to be a sweet spot, because they charge only half the per mile taxi rate.
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Wednesday 21st June 2017 10:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Top tips
Act lawfully* everywhere you trade.
I don't think that's going to work. I get the impression that Silicon Valley culture by now equates aggressively breaking the law with profit - the one doesn't exist without the other. Personally I blame Microsoft and Bill Gates for that one, the rest just copied the playbook.
It's the only reason I can come up with that explains why we always find the mega ones in court. Given that their own President is presently proving the validity of that approach, I don't expect that to change soon either, it is as persistent as police getting away with shooting black people without any consequences to speak of.
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Thursday 22nd June 2017 11:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Top tips
Except, of course, a dead black person. Some police apologists seem to forget that minor point.
A valid correction, and of sufficient insight to prompt a mea culpa from my side. I should have added ".. for the perpetrators" (I can't bring myself to call these people "police" - I know enough people in law enforcement that are *not* murderous thugs with an ego and panic problem).
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Wednesday 21st June 2017 03:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
As long as the drivers have to rate you before they see if you have left a tip (or not), we don't have a tipping culture in Australia, Uber fares I think are much higher than in the US and we are already getting stitched in multiple other ways because the taxi companies have their panties in a bunch that Uber is a better service than the BO smelling sweat pits they currently provide.
Saying that if the service is exceptional I would gladly tip!
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Wednesday 21st June 2017 11:05 GMT Little Mouse
I lived in Oz some twenty-odd years ago, and Christ on a bike, the taxis then were hideous. To the extent that every night-out required someone to stay mostly sober to deal with the inarticulate, innumerate, and cartographically-challenged excuse for a taxi driver and ensure we all got home safely.
It was a work-visa thing to get family members into the country. I mean, hey, anyone can drive, right?
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Wednesday 21st June 2017 04:07 GMT Brenda McViking
Add tipping - yes, absolutely, and keep your filthy paws off any money there.
Don't you dare reduce the time riders have to cancel drivers - half the time in India it takes a few minutes just to see if the driver is trying to take the piss (e.g. not move until I have called him, or if they're incompetant - if they don't follow the satnav, then a wrong turn could very well mean I'm waiting 20 minutes for the driver to rectify the situation, due to the horrendously badly engineered road layouts here. I've also had drivers demand to know where I'm going to cancel seconds later because it's not where they want to go. Uber charges the rider by default for this behaviour which is also wrong.)
I object to being fined for something that is the driver's fault. Uber also need to recognise that they aren't a monopoly, and that the consumer (the riders) are still king in this situation. You make it anything less than super-easy to use with predictable results, and I'll go elsewhere. At the moment, they really are the best of the bunch in India, but that can change overnight. Drivers will moan, but they're getting paid, and with Uber, they can quit any time they like if it's really getting that bad. If Uber need to patch it up with the drivers, then do so, but leave me, the paying customer, out of it.
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Wednesday 21st June 2017 08:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
I don't have any top tips for Uber; they're past that now.
I do have a Top tip for any Uber investors though -- take your money and get it as far away from that organisation as you can.
The way things are going, I don't expect Uber to survive in the long term. The Waymo case on its own has the potential to wipe them out. That thought alone should be enough to get the investors nervous. But even if they do think it can survive, the Uber brand is so toxic that anyone associated with it is going to find themselves tarnished by association. I wouldn't want my money associated with it. I wouldn't even use their services, let alone invest in them.
There is honestly no way of fixing this organisation now. If the investors had acted early, when the attitudes at the top were already clear, then they could have made it work, but they've left it to fester for so long now that anyone with a moral conscience will have left the company; I'd be surprised if there is a single good egg among their entire permanent work-force. You'd basically have to fire everyone and start again.
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Wednesday 21st June 2017 12:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
The ironic thing
Its obvious all this uber hate is from taxi drivers, who seemed to have finally worked out how to use the internet. If only they had worked out technology a decade earlier, they might have avoided their businesses going down the pan...
Every time I have used uber, it'd been a superb experience, better on every level to some smelly dirty black cab, with a daily mail reading racist driver who wants to rant at me in a south London accent.
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Wednesday 21st June 2017 15:02 GMT 2Nick3
Tips recorded for taxes
Don't know specifically for Uber (taxi) drivers, but don't service workers (waiters and waitresses, stylists, etc) get taxed on tips? It's been a long time since I worked in that sector, but I remember being taxed on the estimated tips I would have received. I was supposed to self-report anything higher than that, too. So with paying a tip on your bill the exact amount can be monitored, with Uber withholding the appropriate amount, and sending that to the IRS quarterly (again, could have changed). So they are making interest on the withheld taxes.
From their reputation I doubt this has as much to do with driver or customer satisfaction as the bottom line.