# Uber should allow prescheduled rides



## nickd8775 (Jul 12, 2015)

People should be allowed to schedule rides in the future. For example, a 4am ride to the airport. Then allow drivers to claim a prescheduled ride by sending out a ping 15 minutes before the trip, or longer if there are no closer drivers. Add $20 to the fare for the ride, and give a total price to the customer upon scheduling the ride, like Uber Pool does. Give the driver the regular or surge fare from pickup to destination, plus pay them the fare x surge from where they accept it to the point of pickup (which comes from the $20 fee). Uber makes out on 20% of the fare, plus whatever part of the $20 pick up fee the driver did not get. 
This will help reliability at times and locations when most drivers are busy or sleeping. 5 minute waiting time or forfeit the entire fare if pax doesn't show or cancels within 1 hour of departure, giving the driver 50% of the prepaid fare times surge rate. And if a driver cancels or doesn't show, penalize them 50% of the fare, unless the passenger had an issue like 5 people or too much luggage, requiring a picture of the 5 people or extra luggage.


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## TwoFiddyMile (Mar 13, 2015)

Disaster!
"Hi I'm Bambi hehehe! Ever since UberSchedule, I order an UberX for 2:01 am for me and my 3 hoochie friends to go 5 blocks to my condo from Joe's bar. We're pukers and complainers, and the driver nets a whopping $2.40 before his operating expenses. 
'One more thing- since I have an electronic trail for this reservation, if Uber doesn't come through, I'll sue the sh! T out of them.
K, gotta pass out in the bathtub. .."


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## mandreyka (Sep 25, 2015)

it would begins for pax to pre set up rides to say an airport or a long distance. Sometimes rides aren't avail in the early hours or maybe driver says no it's too far. 

Like cochella for instance, I would go out there to work if I knew I didn't have to deadhead back and forth, how can I set up a ride to and from?


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## rtaatl (Jul 3, 2014)

Some cities have enacted regulations against TNCs for prebooking trips because it's out of the scope of on demand rides hare and interferes with limo operations.


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## nickd8775 (Jul 12, 2015)

mandreyka said:


> it would begins for pax to pre set up rides to say an airport or a long distance. Sometimes rides aren't avail in the early hours or maybe driver says no it's too far.
> 
> Like cochella for instance, I would go out there to work if I knew I didn't have to deadhead back and forth, how can I set up a ride to and from?


Rideshare section of Craigslist for long distance rides. Set up your own pool to and from. You might make less than Uber rates but it's better than dead miles


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## grams777 (Jun 13, 2014)

This could be a good idea. In the taxi world we called them time calls. In some companies, they would just automatically go into the dispatch system around 15-30 minutes ahead of the pickup time. Whatever driver was in the zone would get them. In less scrupulous operations, dispatchers held these close to their chest and manually assigned the good ones to favored drivers. Often they were decent rides like to the airport.

However, a problem was pax would often be pissed if you are late at all. You really should be there about 5 mins early. So the dispatch system leaves quite a bit of padded time for the driver which is wasted. The driver is not getting paid for about 20-30 minutes before the trip starts and can't take other calls.

Ideally, as OP mentioned, a surcharge should be implemented because the driver has to allocate more time to make sure of a prompt arrival. Once the ping is accepted the driver should also receive the surcharge and cancellation fee if the rider no shows or cancels.


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## TwoFiddyMile (Mar 13, 2015)

Not gonna happen.
All joking aside, I got sued by a time call that we couldn't service on time.
She was a lawyer.
I settled out of court.

Uber won't allow this because of this type of liability.


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## Another Uber Driver (May 27, 2015)

When My Taxi was in Washington (the only place it was in North America), they did allow this. They called them "pre-books". It was the only e-Hail of which I am aware that offered this. I tried it three times.

The first time, it was a mediocre trip with a fifteen cent tip. Considering that My Taxi charged ninety-nine cents per trip, I received less than my legal fare on that one. Strike One.

The second time, it was a mediocre trip with no tip. Again, after My Taxi's ninety-nine cents, I received less than my legal fare. Strike Two.

The third time, the passenger was not ready at the appointed time, argued about paying waiting time, so I left him. Strike Three.

After that, I accepted no more "pre-books". My fellow hacker who currently lives in North Carolina, but is originally from the same place that I am has a valid point about "Bambi". Most of these "time calls" are mediocre or garbage runs. You are wasting your time with them.

The cab company of which I was an official had a policy on time calls: bus, train or aeroplane, only. We would make an exception for a very good regular, someone who offered to tip well (although that usually was not enough, as more than once, the passenger failed to come across) or something really unusual. There was one rather prominent member of the Fourth Estate who would get a time call out of us to go downtown, but said member of the Fourth Estate was a long standing regular who directed much business our way. In addition, we did wind up with more than our share of people who would lie about the destination to get a time call. That was usually the last time that they got one. The next time that they called for a time call, they were told a story about how we were at capacity on time calls and that they should call when they were ready.

There was one guy who burned me on that as a driver. He rode frequently, but he had to have this time call, so he lied. He was a lousy tipper. He recognized me as a dispatcher, so he did wonder aloud if this was the last cab that he would get from us. I told him that as he did pay for the cab, thus, if I had a cab for him, it would be foolish of me not to send it to him. If he did not pay, that would be one thing, but he did pay for his cab. Why should I deprive a driver of a fare and him of a ride if I had one for him. Of course, the last part of it was lost on this Rocket Scientist. For some reason, this guy managed to get a new operator every time that he put in a time call, so his time calls were in the stack. If I had a cab for him, which I always did, I sent it to him. I never asked the driver what happened. Then, it did happen. It was a get away day, and everybody and his brother was heading to the airports. I saw his time call, but I sent drivers to other time calls. He called back several times and became more and more frantic. Finally, a cab did pop up there, I had not other airport calls, so I sent the cab to him. He barely made his flight. He called back and asked for me and made a statement about how I finally "got" him. I told him that I did no such thing. The reason that he almost missed his flight was that I did not have a cab for him at the time that he requested it. I reminded him of all of the cabs that he had received after his burning of me. I did tell him that I did not have much faith in his destination, as he had burned me once, but, still, there was no deliberate decision that he was going to miss a flight. He did offer to make it up to me, at that point. I told him that the way to do that would be 1) never burn another driver like that, again and 2) if he did pull a stunt like that again, he should tip better than that to which he was accustomed. He was amazed when I told him that most drivers considered a thirty cent tip lousy.



grams777 said:


> This could be a good idea. In the taxi world we called them time calls. In some companies, they would just automatically go into the dispatch system around 15-30 minutes ahead of the pickup time. Whatever driver was in the zone would get them. In less scrupulous operations, dispatchers held these close to their chest and manually assigned the good ones to favored drivers. Often they were decent rides like to the airport.
> 
> However, a problem was pax would often be pissed if you are late at all.


All of the above. I used a ten minute lead on airports, five on the train or the Dogs (under the Zone System, most trips to the Station or the Dogs were not profitable--in addition, all sorts of criminal types hung around the Doggies. I would increase the lead time on airports if I saw that I had to run drivers for them. Airport trips were worth running for, as a rule.

Before I became Acting Chief Dispatcher, the corruption that you cite was rampant and systematic. One of the more corrupt dispatchers even had various plans: you could pay by the trip, pay for half a shift or pay for a whole shift. Paying also shielded you from crummy trips, of which there were many under the Zone System.

The Board asked me to take the Chief Dispatcher job, as they were getting complaints from the drivers. I agreed to take it on an Acting basis only and only if the Officers and Board of Directors would not interfere with what I was going to do. They could protect no one and I would be firing some of their favoured people. They agreed. I went in there and fired two dispatchers, three operators, suspended another dispatcher and two more operators. I called in the fifteen worst payola drivers and put all of them off the air for periods varying from three days to thirty. I called in another fifteen and warned them that if I had any bad dreams that they were trying to pay dispatchers, they would be put off the air, as well.

It cleaned it up, for a while. The problem with that is that you must keep a foot in people's collective posterior at all times. As the Chief Dispatcher position had other responsibilities, and, given my abilities, the Board assigned me other tasks. Thus, I could not keep my hands on everything. It had to start to get bad again before I could put down some of my new tasks and deal with it.



TwoFiddyMile said:


> Not gonna happen.
> All joking aside, I got sued by a time call that we couldn't service on time.
> She was a lawyer.
> I settled out of court.
> ...


We had this problem over the years. I handled more than a few of the cases when I was Corporate Secretary. I kept the suits away, with two exceptions, by telling the complainants that no one had given any guarantee when they placed the order and that no one in Washington guaranteed cab service. The first suit lost, the judge agreed with us. The second one was some little girl (who was all of twenty three years old and could not handle her own problems) whose daddy was a lawyer in her native Montana. She wrote several nasty letters to us, all of which threatened us with her daddy the lawyer in Montana if we did not pay her thousands of dollars in damages. I replied to each one in a courteous, professional and businesslike manner that I was declining to pay anything. Finally, her daddy in Montana started to write nasty letters to us on his law offices letterhead. I replied to the first letter by declining to discuss the matter with a third party. He replied to me that he was a lawyer and that I would discuss it with him. I replied to him that if he were a lawyer, he would know that I needed a Letter of Representation from him before I even would consider discussing the matter with him. This went back and forth several times and even included two telephone calls, but still no Letter or Representation. Before I could conclude the matter, I sold my interest in the Company. A condition of that sale was my resignation as an Officer. My successor paid them money and never did get a Letter of Representation.


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