# Phantom Prime Time



## yellow (Sep 7, 2014)

I drive primarily in the Orange County area. I also drive for Uber. On Saturday I logged on from 5 pm to about 3 am. My Daily Driver Summary shows I was online for 5 hrs and 33 minutes, which makes sense, since I gave about 15 Uber rides and took a break to eat.

My question is this: the entire night, my app showed a Prime Time. It was anywhere from 25%to 200%, most of the time it was expressed in ranges (25%-50%), sometimes it was an exact number (200%). I don't always have the lyft app screen on (I tend to read articles while waiting for a ping), but the entire time, I did not once look at the screen without it showing Prime Time.

I get the report today, it shows I gave 5 rides. NO PRIME TIME TIPS. On any ride. Three in particular I clearly remember seeing the Prime Time sign just before someone pinged (within a couple of minutes). Has this happened to anyone else? Could it be possible that the prime time always went away in the 1-3 minutes between the time I looked at the screen and the time the ping came in?

I have been driving for a while, but I don't drive much. Only have 61 lifetimes rides. I have roughly 200 on Uber. I only once remember getting a prime time tip, and it made a $5 trip 6 bucks. Yay.


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## buster11xx (Aug 13, 2014)

I had the same thing happen over the weekend. I noticed I did not get the usual text that I get after completing a prime time ride either.


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## LookyLou (Apr 28, 2014)

The following info is for the Seattle/Tacoma market and might not be the same for everyone yet. If you can no longer see the other drivers around you on the map when logged into driver mode, then you have the newer heat map version in your city too like we do.

Before they switched to this heat map crap the prime time would only show up on your screen if you were physically located in the prime time zone, so you knew you were in a good spot, even though you could still get a ping that was outside the PT zone and still not get it. The zones where much bigger, so you would usually get the PT if you where in the zone.

Now the zones are much smaller. When the PT shows on the app it no longer means that you are in a PT zone. It just means that there is PT somewhere in your city (market). You have to zoom in and out and move the map around to see where the light pink to dark pink PT zones are. If there is only one zone in PT it will show the single PT amount. If there are multiple zones in PT at different rates it will show the range. Light pink zones will be lower % PT up to dark pink almost red zones being the higher % PT areas. The pink zones do not show the PT %, so if you want to know what the rate is in a PT zone you have to log off of driver mode and move your pax pin to those areas to see what the rate is.

The PT is determined by the time and location of the pax requesting the ride. So you could be outside a PT zone and still get a request inside the zone and get the PT. That also goes the other way. If you are inside the PT zone you can get a request outside the zone and not get any PT.


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## Doodle (Jul 17, 2014)

With the new heat map version, is there any indication during the ride what PT level it is at? I'm thinking along the lines of hitting the Info button on Uber to see the surge multiplier.

I am guessing no, but doesn't hurt to ask.


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## LookyLou (Apr 28, 2014)

Doodle said:


> With the new heat map version, is there any indication during the ride what PT level it is at? I'm thinking along the lines of hitting the Info button on Uber to see the surge multiplier.
> 
> I am guessing no, but doesn't hurt to ask.


Not that I know of or have heard of. The only way you find out is by getting the text after the ride ends (doesn't seem to be always working lately) or on your daily summary the next day.


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## Doodle (Jul 17, 2014)

Thanks. Just wishful thinking.


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## RustleWimson (Aug 7, 2014)

I'm not a big fan of these heat maps, by the time you get to the prime time zone it usually disappears. It's pretty funny though to see the cars converging toward the heat zone while in rider mode. It's like flies homing in on a fresh turd.


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## LUXYRIDE (Jul 5, 2014)

I haven't seen a PT in Rhode Island in months, yet Uber goes to 4x often. Odd!!!


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## yellow (Sep 7, 2014)

This seems more like an UBER-esque scam.

I logged on again today. I was in orange county, near fullerton. App showed primetime the whole time. I moved the map around, saw NO heat zones. Zoomed out to the entire county, NO heat zones. Zoomed even further, to cover most of southern California, still NO heat zones. I then zoomed IN a little, to where I was seeing Orange and Los Angeles counties, and saw two little tiny heat zones in Westwood, which is in a different county/market than me and roughly 45 miles away from my current location.

I think Lyft is purposely misguiding the drivers to THINK primetime is in effect, when in reality, it covers a little square mile area an hour from their current location.

At least Uber only shows surges in my county....



LookyLou said:


> The following info is for the Seattle/Tacoma market and might not be the same for everyone yet. If you can no longer see the other drivers around you on the map when logged into driver mode, then you have the newer heat map version in your city too like we do.
> 
> Before they switched to this heat map crap the prime time would only show up on your screen if you were physically located in the prime time zone, so you knew you were in a good spot, even though you could still get a ping that was outside the PT zone and still not get it. The zones where much bigger, so you would usually get the PT if you where in the zone.
> 
> ...


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## Emmes (Aug 27, 2014)

Received my invoice and after looking it over for the past week's trips, I noticed I was underpaid on several accounts. FIRST, the $25 for 10 rides was not added on, neither was the guaranteed rates for both nights. I asked about it and was told those number WERE figured in, but I asked them to look again, as I did not see (as I had on past invoices) where it CLEARLY indicated the guarantee. Waiting to hear back.


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