# Got snarked at by Lyft....my response



## kevink (Apr 18, 2016)

So I got one of those "it seems like you've been missing a few ride requests lately" e-mail (to quote Peter Gibbons - "well, I wouldn't say I've been MISSING it, Bob!"). The subject heading "Try to accept every ride request, please!" I thought was a little on the snarky side, so I penned a response, and pretty much told them to shove it without actually saying that...

Nothing will come of it I know, but sometimes a poison pen e-mail is good therapy, so without further ado...

To Whom It May Concern:

While I understand what you are trying to say below, a few points I will make because you obviously don't understand certain aspects of this job.

Firstly, as an independent contractor, responsible for all costs associated with performing this work, I have every right to accept or not accept "jobs" (ride requests) as I see fit. No contractor will take just any job as they want to be reasonably sure that it will be at least marginally profitable for them. It is no different for your drivers since we are contractors, not employees. If you want to set expectations for drivers, you need to make them employees so that you can hold them to those standards. Otherwise, you can't mandate that a contractor take a job where they feel they might lose money.

Secondly, along the lines of the above point, I will not drive 20+ minutes to pick up a passenger anymore. The last time I did that, I drove 20+ minutes out of my way only to have the rider not show up, not answer the phone, etc. Long story short, I had then to do a 60 minute deadhead ride home. Sorry, your cancellation fee does not provide enough margin to cover that, not to mention all the dead miles racked up on my car.

Thirdly, if your app didn't route ride requests to drivers who are nearly 30 minutes away, perhaps the passenger wouldn't have to wait as long? *It is incredibly frustrating to DRIVERS to routinely receive requests that are 20 or more minutes away. I do this to make money, so in an ideal world, I want to be able to accept every request, but I will not operate at a loss, nor will any other driver that I know of.*

Fourthly, as I've contacted you about before, customers in the Philadelphia suburbs (Bucks County) are without a doubt abusing Lyft Line. Limit Line's service radius like Uber does for Pool, and I will accept more trips - it's really that simple. Furthermore, one of the rides I declined last night was again, a Line request, and the rider was rated 3.7. I'm sorry, but I am not taking a risk picking up someone with that kind of rating - by far the worst I've seen from any Lyft passenger thus far.

If a driver had that rating, you'd deactivate them&#8230;

I will gladly accept *any and all* requests provided you do the following for me:

1.) Reimburse me for my monthly car note.

2.) Reimburse me for my insurance costs.

3.) Reimburse me for any and all vehicle related expenses including, but not limited to, consumables and required maintenance services as set forth in the owner's manual.

4.) Buy me a new vehicle upon my request, since miles will rack up quickly, especially considering how often you like to route requests that are 20+ minutes distance from wherever my location happens to be *- OR -*

5.) No more requests that are 20 or more minutes away from my location.

If you can come to the table on the above five very reasonable stipulations, I will be happy to discuss how we can come to a mutually satisfactory agreement. If you can't come to the table on those items, kindly don't send these e-mails to me again.

I will point out that my rating sits at a 4.88, well above average for my city, so I must be doing something right. When you get down to brass tacks, I really don't even have to turn on the app, do I? I'm thinking you can't really afford to lose drivers, considering that there are apparently very few out there. That may or may not be an accurate statement, but from the number of far away pick-up requests I receive, I think it's a fair conclusion to draw.

I will continue to operate my business in the way that I see fit, and I will not operate at a loss.

Thank you in advance for your understanding.


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## New2This (Dec 27, 2015)

Lyft will take 2-3 week to reply to it but you'll get a response that's connected to what you wrote.

If you sent the same email to Uber's 'Driver Support', the Bangalore Mafia would've sent you back something about restarting or reinstalling the app, that you're a valued partner and Uber has your back.


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## Jo3030 (Jan 2, 2016)

Lyft doesn't care.


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## BaitNSwitch (May 12, 2015)

I really don't think Lyft is as evil as Uber. They just had to be in order to compete with Darth Vader aka TK.


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## tohunt4me (Nov 23, 2015)

Jo3030 said:


> Lyft doesn't care.


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## UbOn (Jun 28, 2016)

What was their response?


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## kevink (Apr 18, 2016)

Actually got a response from them, replete with the "far away requests are good - it means there is high demand in your area" boilerplate BS.

Here's the e-mail chain as it has evolved...

Ryan,

While I appreciate the attempt to help, saying there's high demand which results in the far away requests is simply not accurate. There is **not** what I would consider high demand in the Philly suburbs. I get 5 or 6 Uber requests for every 1 Lyft request on a what I would consider a busy night for Lyft.

Keep in mind, I haven't been cancelling trips, I've simply not been accepting them for the reasons I stated earlier.

If you want to start investigating Line abuse, I would encourage you to do so. I will point you in the direction of one ride I accepted on July 15, 2016 at 9:31 PM. The person was travelling 2.4 miles from the grocery store to her home. It was a Line request. Now, what are the odds you get a second passenger to be picked up on a 2.4 mile trip? Pretty slim, I'd venture to say. For my time, mileage travelled, and helping her unload groceries, I got $3.56. Please don't tell me this is not abuse of the system.

Also check out a ride I accepted on June 11, 2016. A Line request on a 1.7 mile trip. Again the odds of getting that second passenger in under two miles is slim to none. The customer knows this and requests Line anyway.

Also shown on July 15th at 2:49 AM is the particular ride that I drove 20 minutes out of my way for, only to have them no show. Look at that trip in my trip history, and note how far I travelled to this pick up. Take a look as well at July 22, 2016 and note the distance I travelled for another no-show. Perhaps if you look at these two incidents you will see why I will not accept requests further than 20 minutes away. Perhaps you can tell me why it might make sense to continue accepting such long distance requests, but I can't figure it out.

I will continue to dig through my ride history if you want to find further examples, but I think that is a good start. I would be eager to hear of the progress of your investigation and furnish any further information I can to aid your efforts to weed out Line abuse.

Again, I will not lose money on this endeavor. If Lyft wants to throw incentive money at drivers in return for accepting longer pickups or a cancellation fee multiplier for driver distance travelled, that might be a place to start, if you truly want to help drivers create that awesome experience and ensure customers get reliable rides. Until you fix the far away requests though you will continue to force us to inconvenience passengers by not accepting requests. I am all for providing a great experience but I will not lose my shirt in so doing. The happiness of that customer that I drove 30 minutes to pick up does not pay my bills.

Show me the money.

Kevin

*From:* Lyft Support [mailto:[email protected]] 
*Sent:* Saturday, August 20, 2016 4:19 PM
*To:* Kevin Knobl <[email protected]>
*Subject:* [Lyft] Re: Follow-up from Lyft Support

##- Please type your reply above this line -##

Your request (18031269) has been updated. To add additional comments, reply to this email.










*Ryan* (Lyft)

Aug 20, 1:18 PM PDT

Hey Kevin,

Thanks for reaching out with your concerns. I understand your points about your cancellation rate. I'll be more than happy to shed some light on this.

We totally understand that drivers sometimes need to cancel a Lyft, and the system is set up to handle that occasionally. Drivers receive communications regarding high cancellations when they cancel 15% or more of their recent (up to 100) accepted rides. Drivers with a high cancellation rate are at risk of deactivation. Remember, cancellations create a negative experience for passengers and affect their view of the Lyft community as a whole. We want to make sure all our passengers have an awesome experience every time they request a ride with Lyft. From beginning to end.

The Lyft platform aims to match passengers with their nearest driver, and we try to keep travel time as low as possible. From time to time, far away requests happen. I completely understand your frustration with getting these far away request, especially if it turns out to be a no-show. Far away requests aren't always a bad thing, though - in the end, it means that there is passenger demand for rides throughout your city.

I'll definitely be sure to pass along your feedback about the Lyft Line radius. Keep in mind, we take abuse of Lyft Line very seriously and will do anything we can to help you out if you believe a passenger is misusing the system. We're here for you.

I know there are some frustrations that come along with being a driver. I want to commend you for all you do for the Lyft community. We truly, truly appreciate you. You have an awesome rating and I can tell your passengers love riding with you.

If there's anything else we can do, please don't hesitate to reach back out. We're happy to help.

All the best,

Ryan

Lyft Support Representative

Help Center - http://lyft.com/help
Driver Help Center - http://lyft.com/drive/help
Ask Lyft on Twitter! - http://twitter.com/asklyft-


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## kevink (Apr 18, 2016)

Jo3030 said:


> Lyft doesn't care.


I know, but the poison pen e-mails are therapuetic for me sometimes. Keeps me from taking out my annoyances on the customers.


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## CatchyMusicLover (Sep 18, 2015)

It sucks but the rabbit hole has been opened as it were. Had Lyft (and Uber that followed it) from the beginning made a system that forced people to pay when there were no cars within a certain distance or give them the option to wait it out (which often would create a shorter wait depending) then these issues wouldn't occur, or even better simply charge from when the driver got the ping (though I'll grant there could be logistical issues in that in drivers trying to milk it, or being stuck in traffic or being forced to go a long route etc). I'd even go so far to say that it's what should have happened instead of surge/prime time. 
But PAX are conditioned to the current system and it'd be very difficult to change that. Lyft would have to foot the bill to incentivize drivers.

Honestly I've thought about this a lot and one really simple solution is to give drivers a heat map -- why Lyft doesn't allow drivers to see other cars is beyond me but it'd be SO easy to just show where the 'holes in service' are and drivers would naturally spread apart, and travel time times would be down - a lot of drivers wouldn't realize the extra driving isn't helping but would serve to keep things a lot better for those that do on top of keeping PAX wait times down. Lyft's vague pink squares are the opposite of what they should do because they not only are delayed but they really don't convery much 90% of the time.


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## Greguzzi (Jan 9, 2016)

Lyft = LOL.


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## JimS (Aug 18, 2015)

CatchyMusicLover said:


> Honestly I've thought about this a lot and one really simple solution is to give drivers a heat map -- why Lyft doesn't allow drivers to see other cars is beyond me but it'd be SO easy to just show where the 'holes in service' are and drivers would naturally spread apart, and travel time times would be down.


I like switch to rider mode to see where the cars are. I'll try to ensure that I'm "inside" the line of sight of other cars, ie, try to place myself between downtown and that other car further away. It ain't perfect, as stuff changes when you go into driver mode, and that outside driver ignores that ping from far far away. But out lessens the chances a little.


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## BaitNSwitch (May 12, 2015)

The fact that we can't see drivers is to encourage those who would otherwise be turned off when they see all the ants and the slow demand to hop on regardless.

Also "We truly, truly appreciate you" from that letter. Lol, right. Using truly twice really makes it true. The upside is you got a personal communication from a real person, most of Uber's correspondences are just robots saying "Cheaper rides means more money!!"


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## kevink (Apr 18, 2016)

They actually followed up on this. Kinda surprised to see any kind of follow through, but for all to see, in black and white the status of ride acceptance requirements:









*Christine* (Lyft)

Aug 23, 4:39 PM PDT

Hey Kevin,

Thanks for following up, and for your patience with this.

You do not need to accept every ride request, and you're right - it's your choice to not accept certain ride requests. The email you were sent was a friendly reminder that accepting every request creates a great experience, but you're not required to do so. The Power Driver Bonus also provides an incentive to accept every ride, but again, you're not obligated.

The two passengers you mentioned who requested Line rides for short distances are actually not abusing the system. There isn't a distance requirement for Line rides, and it's certainly possible that the Line would get matched with another passenger. If, however, you have passengers that ask you to drive farther than their set destination on a Line ride, this is not allowed. In these cases you should definitely ask the passenger to request another ride if they need to go farther than they originally intended.

We appreciate your feedback on far away requests, and please know that feedback from our community is incredibly important to us. We are listening.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help.

Best,

Christine
Lyft Support Representative
Help Center - http://lyft.com/help
Ask Lyft on Twitter! - http://twitter.com/asklyft


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## JimS (Aug 18, 2015)

On point response. 

Christine is not an alias for Bangalore Bill.


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## MiddleClassedOut (Jun 11, 2015)

This is why I have a 2nd device with a passenger account...As Lyft drivers are fewer in number than Uber drivers, it's often very easy to stay busy by filling in the holes. Sometimes I can identify Prime Time zones before they happen as I see cars disappearing in an area.

Also I use it to make sure I'm offline during busy periods in the burbs - if you're the last car to the west of town, you are going to start getting those long distance requests. You always need to have a buffer car between you and distant areas requests might come from (unless you're interested in driving 10 miles to them of course.)


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