# Uber's Newest Way To Screw Us Over: Incentive Bonuses



## DrivenToDistraction (Sep 3, 2015)

Hi all. Just when I think Uber can't find another way to violate me I discover they've come up with another one. The newest for me is grossly unequal incentive promotions. I drive in the Chicago area, and for some time now Uber has been offering two incentive promotions a week. The first runs from Monday through Thursday and is usually on the order of "Complete 25 rides and get a $25 bonus." The second one runs Thursday through Sunday and usually requires the completion of quite a few rides....on the order of 55, with the bonus running between $55 and $70. Since you really can't make money at Uber's standard rates, and surge pricing has practically vanished now that half the cars on the road are Uber cars, these incentive programs have proven very beneficial to my paycheck.

Quick background on me: I've been driving for Uber for 19 months now. I've taken thousands of rides and gotten great feedback, maintaining a 4.88 rating with comments on the order of "We need more drivers like him" and "He is amazing!"

I work another job with a guy I'll call Pete. He's been driving for Uber a few months less than me. We both drive in the exact same area: Chicago and its western suburbs. He doesn't drive quite as many hours as I do, and his rating is considerably lower.
Every Friday Pete and I work the same shift at this other job, and of course one of our first items of conversation is Uber. "Have you driven recently? What kind of money have you been making?" etc.

Pete can be a bit scatter-brained. He still doesn't know how to operate his smartphone, and he's often texting me to ask how to do something with the driver's app.

So I didn't put a lot of stock in it when he started claiming that the incentive offers he was getting were not only different than mine, but were also considerably more generous. But this past week the incentives he claimed he was getting were so grossly superior to mine I asked to see his phone.

Sure enough, while my Monday to Thursday program was "Drive 25 rides get $25" his was "Drive 20 rides, get $40." That's right, he could complete 20% fewer rides than me and get a bonus of two bucks a ride compared to my bonus of a buck a ride.
But it was the weekend incentive that really made me hit the roof. My "incentive" was "Drive 25 rides and get $15." That's right, fifteen ****ing dollars, or sixty cents a ride. I call that the "Incentive to stay home" incentive.
And Pete's weekend incentive? Drive 20 rides (again, 20% fewer rides that my requirement) and get $50. _Fifty ****ing dollars_, or $2.50 per ride compared to the _fifteen dollars_ or sixty ****ing cents they're paying me. If I want to make the sort of money they were offering Pete I'd have to complete 55 rides for $55, or a buck bonus per ride.

I contacted driver "support" via the app and the response I got was basically "Yeah, we don't offer everybody the same incentive. That's just the way it is." They said that they "rotate" the offers among the drivers in a given area, in order to "be fair to everybody." I told them that being fair would mean that every driver in the same market would have the exact same incentive offer and that there's nothing fair about in effect paying one drive f_our times_ as much as another driver.

Yesterday I went down to one of the Chicago driver centers and met with a rep. She claimed that the issue of who got what incentives was "a roll of the dice" and that it wasn't based on anything. She assured me that eventually I'd get some nice offers too. I pointed out that Pete has been given far superior offers for weeks now and I've yet to see the tide turn. I pointed out that I have a damned good rating...much better than Pete's....that I've been driving for Uber longer than Pete, and that we drive in the exact same areas during the same hours. In short, I could see no justification for the differential in pay.

I told her that I just didn't feel any motivation to continue to bend over and be violated by Uber. She seemed a bit taken aback by that. "Oh, you feel violated?" she asked. I asked her how she'd like it if when she came into work that day she'd been told "Well, we rolled the dice, and today we're going to make you work twice as long as the rep standing next to you, for half the pay."

I demanded to see a supervisor, and in the blink of an eye I was talking to an overly friendly guy who had overheard much of my conversation with the first rep. This guy said that there _are_ in fact criteria that determine who gets what incentive offer. Of course, this completely contradicts the first rep who swore it was entirely random. I asked the supervisor what those criteria are. Of course, he had no idea. He suggested that _perhaps_ it was because Pete didn't drive as often and they wanted to get him out on the road more, so they dangled a much more enticing offer in front of him. I said "Well, if that's the case, then I'm being punished for putting my ass out there so that your customers can get a ride quickly while Pete is being rewarded for staying home." He then suggested that perhaps Pete drove in a slightly different area than I tended to, or worked some hours that I didn't. I told him that there was almost 100% overlap between the two of us in that regard, but that if Uber did indeed wish that I was doing more driving in a particular area or during a particular time that the only way they were going to accomplish that is _to let me know_ what I should be doing to get those sweet incentive and bonus offers.

The supervisor volunteered that "You DO have a terrific rating." He lamented that, since it was a Saturday he couldn't "contact corporate" about this matter. He gave me his word that he would do so this coming Monday, and e-mail me with what he found, although "It may be exactly what I've told you here today." We'll see Monday is his promise to get back to me means anything or not.

Just to be clear here: I don't want Pete to get poorer incentive offers. I want every driver in the same market to get the same offers. And if Uber wants to vary those offers in order to reward and/or punish certain behaviors (low acceptance rates, high cancellation rates, etc.) then Uber needs to make the drivers aware of what they can do to get the better offers.


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## Strange Fruit (Aug 10, 2016)

Same in SF, except it's been for many months now, not new. And greenlight people lie, including when they say they'll call corporate and get back to you. (I've been waiting since September to be gotten back to. I even went in a couple times to see what's going on with my issue and they got mad at me for coming back and said "coming here won't speed things up, we're working on it".) They say: "perhaps it's this, perhaps it's random, perhaps it's that". And I've tried not driving when I get a lower offer, but it doesn't necessarily lead to higher offers. And even if I complete a lower offer I still get a higher offer later. But I get the range of $ amounts, though they recently raised our typical highest trip number. We were getting 65 rides M-Th and 55 F-Su. Before that it was 60 and 52. Now it's 75 and 65. Part time drivers get lower trip counts. I've yet to get the highest offer for the 75 M-Th that others are getting. They do seem to generally spread it around, maybe not completely fairly, but if you get the incentive to stay home one week, you might get the high one another week. But markets vary, so.... 

If you give up hope and accept that Uber policies are evil and disgusting, it might make it easier to cope as you'll never be disappointed.


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## entrep1776 (Nov 3, 2016)

DrivenToDistraction said:


> Hi all. Just when I think Uber can't find another way to violate me I discover they've come up with another one. The newest for me is grossly unequal incentive promotions. I drive in the Chicago area, and for some time now Uber has been offering two incentive promotions a week. The first runs from Monday through Thursday and is usually on the order of "Complete 25 rides and get a $25 bonus." The second one runs Thursday through Sunday and usually requires the completion of quite a few rides....on the order of 55, with the bonus running between $55 and $70. Since you really can't make money at Uber's standard rates, and surge pricing has practically vanished now that half the cars on the road are Uber cars, these incentive programs have proven very beneficial to my paycheck.
> 
> Quick background on me: I've been driving for Uber for 19 months now. I've taken thousands of rides and gotten great feedback, maintaining a 4.88 rating with comments on the order of "We need more drivers like him" and "He is amazing!"
> 
> ...


Whoever told you life is fair was lying!


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## Grahamcracker (Nov 2, 2016)

I know this issue very well. My wife and I live in Honolulu, HI and we both drive for Uber. So, there's really one place to commonly drive, Waikiki.

I drive 10 times more than she does, maintain much higher rating and she often gets much better promotions to drive than I do. My promotions would be $40 for 40 rides and her promotions would be $75 for 30 rides.

It's been this way for since the end of Summer, so I don't think there's any random roll of dice involved. I'm convinced that the people who drive less get better promotions to get them driving more.

I drove a little on Halloween, 2016. Again, wife had much higher promotion offer. I didn't again drive until early December when Uber offered a promotion 30 trips for $100 and this time the promotion was the same for both of us. So, that week I drove, got 30 trips and she did not drive. The next week's promotion for me was 40 trips for $100 and her's was 30 trips for $100. No big deal, I still drove and got 40 trips. The following week my promotion offer was $75 for 50 trips and again her's was $100 for 30 trips. Random my ass.


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## Rat (Mar 6, 2016)

DrivenToDistraction said:


> Hi all. Just when I think Uber can't find another way to violate me I discover they've come up with another one. The newest for me is grossly unequal incentive promotions. I drive in the Chicago area, and for some time now Uber has been offering two incentive promotions a week. The first runs from Monday through Thursday and is usually on the order of "Complete 25 rides and get a $25 bonus." The second one runs Thursday through Sunday and usually requires the completion of quite a few rides....on the order of 55, with the bonus running between $55 and $70. Since you really can't make money at Uber's standard rates, and surge pricing has practically vanished now that half the cars on the road are Uber cars, these incentive programs have proven very beneficial to my paycheck.
> 
> Quick background on me: I've been driving for Uber for 19 months now. I've taken thousands of rides and gotten great feedback, maintaining a 4.88 rating with comments on the order of "We need more drivers like him" and "He is amazing!"
> 
> ...


The incentives are to get you to drive more. You already drive more, so lower incentives


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## Fubernuber (Jan 15, 2017)

The algo works very simple. You have an allotted start incentive. Once you reached the max payout you go into the generic incentive. That start incentive also has an expiration date. Once it expires you go into general. Its also a weekly band incentive. They go down weekly but can also reset quarterly depending on what backend funds the local managers have. Nobody there sits and cherry picks drivers. I am not saying that uber is too honest to do that. On the contrary they are the biggest crooks in the world.


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## Mars Troll Number 4 (Oct 30, 2015)

The incentives are nowhere near fair. No one outside of a select few at corporate really know how they work either.

Who get's what incentive is a completely mystery. To be honest it's worse than working for a cab company with a horribly currupt dispatch team.

If i had to guess.. i would say there is some behind the scenes voodoo and they do ANY and all of the following.

1. give incentives with requirements that they expect the driver to fail.
2. give incentives to drivers who they think they can get on the road more/longer
3. drivers who are on the road a lot get less incentives.
4. Voodoo magic
5. complex algorithms.


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## JimS (Aug 18, 2015)

Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own shit. They blame everything in their life on somebody else. Good luck!


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## Grahamcracker (Nov 2, 2016)

JimS said:


> Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own shit. They blame everything in their life on somebody else. Good luck!


Didn't someone real famous recently say the same thing? I swear I heard that from somewhere


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## Jagent (Jan 29, 2017)

Why should Uber give you an incentive to drive more, when you already do it for free? Not saying it's right, just telling you how Uber thinks. They suck.


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## Buddywannaride (Aug 1, 2016)

Uber needs a new CEO


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## steveK2016 (Jul 31, 2016)

As others have mentioned, these are incentive bonuses to encourage more driving. You probably drive more than Pete, so they have to give Pete more incentive to drive more. The algo I'm sure has something to do with how you drive, when you drive and where you drive. The more they want you to drive, the more incentive they'll offer you.


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## cdm813 (Jan 9, 2017)

What's a "driver incentive"?


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## JimS (Aug 18, 2015)

Boost. They say they'll give you between 1.2 and 2.0x or something along those lines for all rides originating from inside an area, whether it's surging or not. If it is surging, higher rate prevails.


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## tootsie (Sep 12, 2015)

Promotions??? I have not seen any of those in so many months here in Houston. Some did get a promotion for picking up two trips from the Super Bowl.


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## u-Boat (Jan 4, 2016)

Here's the "partner incentive" I'm offering uBer: Reduce your cut to 10%, eliminate surge, and I set my own rates. Do that and I'll start driving again.


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## VolTZ (Mar 9, 2017)

I've notice you won't get incentive if you find trips toward a destination.


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## charmer37 (Nov 18, 2016)

I had good paying rides on surge using the destination filter going home, I never received any incentives because uber knows I really don't drive that much and when I drive it's surging or a decent boost.


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## PCH5150 (Jan 13, 2017)

Knoxville has very fair incentives. There are zero promotions ever. Every body gets nothing.


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## DrivenToDistraction (Sep 3, 2015)

JimS said:


> Boost. They say they'll give you between 1.2 and 2.0x or something along those lines for all rides originating from inside an area, whether it's surging or not. If it is surging, higher rate prevails.


No, I am not talking about Boost. Read my post.


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## djnsmith7 (Aug 10, 2014)

Damn, I'm almost inclined to consider bonuses in my area as fair, only by comparison, but I won't go there. Recently, I've seen "complete 35 trips, earn $1xx extra." Hard to believe what they offer drivers, especially outside the Bay Area.


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## canyon (Dec 22, 2015)

DrivenToDistraction said:


> Hi all. Just when I think Uber can't find another way to violate me I discover they've come up with another one. The newest for me is grossly unequal incentive promotions. I drive in the Chicago area, and for some time now Uber has been offering two incentive promotions a week. The first runs from Monday through Thursday and is usually on the order of "Complete 25 rides and get a $25 bonus." The second one runs Thursday through Sunday and usually requires the completion of quite a few rides....on the order of 55, with the bonus running between $55 and $70. Since you really can't make money at Uber's standard rates, and surge pricing has practically vanished now that half the cars on the road are Uber cars, these incentive programs have proven very beneficial to my paycheck.
> 
> Quick background on me: I've been driving for Uber for 19 months now. I've taken thousands of rides and gotten great feedback, maintaining a 4.88 rating with comments on the order of "We need more drivers like him" and "He is amazing!"
> 
> ...


 I'll tell you what's going to happen you're going to get a deactivation notice come Monday for being a pain in the ass.


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## Mark Ross (Feb 7, 2018)

u-Boat said:


> Here's the "partner incentive" I'm offering uBer: Reduce your cut to 10%, eliminate surge, and I set my own rates. Do that and I'll start driving again.


Uber has lost their market share in the US to LYFT for starters, and Internationally three companies are merging together to retake the international market if they have not already done so. I have even emailed the CEO of Uber to propose how to retake the market many times and still have not heard anything back. However, I did talk to the operations manager and the long and short of it is, they are losing money, losing their piece of the market share they once held atop of it, and are not going to dish out more money on top of it. Bottom line, if you drive for Uber and don't like their incentives, then don't drive and find another part/full time job. It's as simple as that.


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## BenDrivin (Sep 21, 2017)

The more you drive, the less you get. It's the Uber way.


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## Atom guy (Jul 27, 2016)

There are ZERO promotions in my market - ever.. At best we get some weak Boost - like 1.2x for 3 hours a day. Even that is not consistent.


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