I am a DC uberX driver since 2013 and have SEEN IT ALL...so please, AMA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here, back again to spill more beans!

For starters, uber has gone mad lately. Since Easter, in an attempt to encourage drivers to come out and work more consistently, uber has been guaranteeing promotions and incentives as high as $36/hr net. Full time drivers are netting $1,600-$2,000 weekly with just 50-60 hours of driving, which is do-able if you can catch most early mornings, weekday evenings and any time on the weekend. Uber is subsidizing all of these drivers' pay in order to keep wait times at a minimum for riders. And they are paying dearly for it...full-on hemhorragong money in an attempt to finally squeeze out taxicabs?, crush out lyft?, who knows? These incentives are the only reason your driver is giving you a 4-mile pool ride that takes a half-hour, costs only $4, and leaves you scratching your head thinking "how does this driver make any money?" A smart driver can generate around $600 in business for uber via passenger's payments in ~40 hours, but will collect $600-$900 more in additional guaranteed payouts. If the driver plays his/her cards right, they could maximize their pay by doing only the minimum required amount of rides (1 per hour). Some drivers were part of a "boost" incentive that was like a constant surge zone for all their rides given, which uber paid and not the rider. The best guarantees have vanished and all drivers are on "boost" starting Monday, August 1st.

August is the slowest month of the year in DC. Congress is out, no school, locals go on vacation, too hot for swarms of tourists, and the rideshare business is sloooow. So uber came up with this, https://newsroom.uber.com/us-dc/introducing-the-uberpool-monthly-ride-pass/:


If uber makes this worth it for the drivers, then it will succeed. But if not, good luck in getting picked up on a pool.

In other news, it's happening:
https://www.arlnow.com/2016/07/13/uber-and-lyft-are-killing-arlingtons-taxi-business/

How's the uberPool business going? Personally I wouldn't use it (because when I use uber it's more time- and less cost-driven) but I'm curious about it as a business model.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Apparently, some folks are curious about what it's like to be an uber driver. I am a founding driver on both Lyft and uberX and have been active since August 2013. I have a lifetime rating of 4.91 on uberX and 4.9 on Lyft and have given thousands of rides on each platform (with a few hundred on Sidecar too before they folded). UberX tells me that I am in the top 1% of highest-rated drivers in DC. I am male, on the younger end of middle-aged, white, and know DC, Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax County, Silver Spring, and Bethesda like the back of my hand. I drive a very plain Ford sedan, love to drive in general and I am an EXCELLENT driver...hate to be a bragger, but that one is straight truth. I also have a typical DC-type 9-5 salaried day job. I have always been a hustler, and trust me, driving uber is the ULTIMATE HUSTLE.

So, since I have seen it all, please AMA...

Thank you for your service. I appreciate the non-talkative drivers as a non-talkative person myself.

[Anonymous]

Washington Post here. Would love to interview you. You available to talk? [e-mail]

[Anonymous]

^^^ DO IT OP!!!!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^^ DO IT OP!!!!!!

+2 and have them take a pic!! You will be famous!

[Anonymous]

Do it op! [10000]

[Anonymous]

Bump.
Hey OP, what's new?
Still driving?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have you had sexual relations with any of your passengers?

I have not, and not even a set of digits. I have zero game and wouldn't be comfortable with it anyways. Don't wanna mess up my gold mine. There's been a kiss or two on the cheek from drunk coeds, and a girl that wished she could bring me in, but figured her boyfriend wouldn't have been happy with it, lol.

Also, I'm around a 4 on a good day.

OP, I am a 30-something woman of color found attractive by many, and I love, love, love your personality so far.

[Anonymous]

OP here, back again! I randomly thought of this thread today and saw that it'd just been bumped yesterday so I'll keep my streak going of answering everything.

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, what % of people tip now?

Anonymous wrote:OP, did you see the thread that was started a few days ago about tipping Uber drivers?

Tipping your uberX driver a dollar or two is always much appreciated, but don't feel like you have to do it. About 5% of riders tip, and it's almost always an older person (50+) who's doing it. I'm paid fairly enough, but this might not always be the case for other uberX drivers. I brought this up on the original go-round, but uber still has an army of drivers still out there that they've hooked on a lease deal which leaves them with no option but to drive an insane amount of hours every week (60-80) just to make the lease payment and have enough to live on. In all honesty, a couple cash dollars isn't going to make a single bit of difference for these drivers' situations anyways.

Uber is a great gig if you're good at it, but it makes for a terrible full-time job because there aren't enough high-profit hours available to drive in any given week. And those high-profit hours are always going to be early in the morning before traffic gets bad, late evenings during the week, or the weekend. Driving uberX definitely the anti-9to5 job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Washington Post here. Would love to interview you. You available to talk? [e-mail]

No chance, Justin. Your "journalism" is trash and WaPo is a rag compared to what it once was. My whole uberX story is right here and I really like Jeff's site, so I'll gladly keep reeling in the ad revenue for him. Looks like it's back to trolling for story ideas on r/washingtondc, r/nova, FfxU, and DCUM for you! Also, creating and editing your own wikipedia? Sad!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have you had sexual relations with any of your passengers?

I have not, and not even a set of digits. I have zero game and wouldn't be comfortable with it anyways. Don't wanna mess up my gold mine. There's been a kiss or two on the cheek from drunk coeds, and a girl that wished she could bring me in, but figured her boyfriend wouldn't have been happy with it, lol.

Also, I'm around a 4 on a good day.

OP, I am a 30-something woman of color found attractive by many, and I love, love, love your personality so far.

And women of color do love me too...if you could only see how things go on around my office at the day job, lol.

[Anonymous]

Who were better passengers this weekend... Inauguration or March attendees?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...

So, since I have seen it all, please AMA...

Thank you for your service. I appreciate the non-talkative drivers as a non-talkative person myself.

You're welcome! Drivers do need to feel out their passengers better for whether they're in a talkative mood or not, but like I said before there is no uberX driver manual or how-to. I'd say about 90% of rides are completely silent as the typical rider just buries their face into their iPhone for the ten minutes that we're together. On the rides that we do talk, my rider usually leaves the car saying "this is the best uber ride I've ever taken" mostly because I get the job done right, I can talk a little bit about everything, and after 5,000-ish rides, I've gotten really good at steering a conversation.

[Anonymous]

And while I'm at it, here's a bunch of comments from riders over the years:

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How's the uberPool business going? Personally I wouldn't use it (because when I use uber it's more time- and less cost-driven) but I'm curious about it as a business model.

uberPOOL sucks. After testing it out dozens of different ways, it is simply not profitable for a driver because picking up subsequent riders after the first one is a time-suck and money-loser. To make the most of it I pick up the first rider in a Pool and then use an option in the app to 'Stop New Requests' and then complete the trip as normal. When I drop off that single rider I then go back online to receive the next request. Doing it this way pays out the same as a normal uberX trip, whereas the subsequent rider(s) gets a discount so steep that I'm basically driving them around for free. uberPOOL is wonderful in theory because it is super-efficient, but this is still a business and not a charity. And it's much easier to just focus on a single rider rather than multiple rides strung together all over town. Until uber reduces the discount to something reasonable that it can still be profitable for a driver, I'll continue doing it this way. uberPOOL requests are about 25% of the pings, with a higher concentration of them coming from around GW, Howard, and AU.

The only time I would ever have multiple riders in the car on a Pool trip is if they happen to be standing right next to each other at the pick-up location or if the surge at the time is 2x+. These are the only ways doing uberPOOL rides is worth my time.

Lastly, if you're in a hurry, DO NOT USE UBERPOOL!