# This is why I stopped using Uber in-app navigation



## ShinyAndChrome (Aug 18, 2017)

Having in-app navigation is nice. I hate that lyft forces us to kick out of the app. However, this weekend I finally gave up on uber's in-app navigation and moved to waze.

Prior to this weekend I've had various mistakes such as the fact uber's nav still doesn't know how to get to this city's airport. When going west on the main route to my city's airport uber always says to take 15A, which requires an illegal left turn, instead of the proper 15B.

Anyway, this is the second time uber's app tried to get me to pick somebody up on an on/off-ramp. The first time 1-2 weeks ago cost me 10 minutes and 4-5 miles to get back to the spot. This time, a rider pinned their location, it identified their address properly, but the nav was tragically off, which is a prime address for one of the area's local colleges and this is how Uber thought I should pick them up. This is an off-ramp. Thankfully I knew this location and was able to ignore the nav.










So the passengers get in the car, and off to a local golf course we go. As we pull into a weird street on the way to the course I note that I've never gone this way. We soon figure out why: once again Uber used the street closest to the pin as the nav location. That street was the back of the golf course property and not an access point. I switched to google, apologized for the nav, and we got there properly. The passenger even said I was the second person to take their call for this trip because the first one had been driving around in circles (no doubt on uber nav app) and they had to cancel.

I can't afford to be burned again by uber's in-app navigation. I advise nobody to use it until they get with a proper mapping company.


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## Uberyouber (Jan 16, 2017)

yea what the deal with that. what happened? the UBer Nav sucks !!!


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## ShinyAndChrome (Aug 18, 2017)

Uberyouber said:


> yea what the deal with that. what happened? the UBer Nav sucks !!!


Long and short of it is Uber will, irrespective of the address it gleans from the pin drop, send you to the street closest to the pin drop. Also irrespective of whether the road it's sending you to is an off ramp or on ramp!


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## Pythonphile (Sep 23, 2017)

Every time there is a driver poll, I always criticize the navigation. After only three months of it, I have more than enough horror stories.
Last Saturday, I was bring two girls to Portillos. There I was, at a traffic light ready to turn left into the Portillo's parking lot, the uber Nav still insisted that I should turn right and round the block to the strip mall's main entrance, WTF?
Then there was the time that It told me to get off the Kennedy (Chicago), at three different exits, only to have me circle the block, in rush-hour construction traffic, and get RIGHT BACK ON! My passenger complained that it added an extra half hour to his trip. Luckily, he didn't fault me, he put the blame where it belonged.


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## tryingforthat5star (Mar 12, 2017)

I had the app the other night put me on the toll highway when the guys house is next to it.Now not being used to the area he was located in I went with it only to go by the guys house but can't get off the road to pick him up since the road he lives on is above the highway. 5 miles to the next ramp the rider cancels and Uber states no cancel fee since the ETA to pick up would have been over 5 min later! Original pickup was the road he lives on when it ended with the cancel it stated PA 76 Turnpike. I'm thinking as I approach the guy is broke down.


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## Trafficat (Dec 19, 2016)

I wish Uber would go back to the way it was without navigation. You could see the outlines of buildings easier... you could tell exactly where the pin was instead of just the street.

The Uber nav is useless. I hate how it doesn't keep NORTH up. I can't usually tell which way the pax even is anymore when I'm in a parking lot and my GPS is spinning. When I pick a pax up, I prefer to stay out of NAV to get out of the parking lot for the same reason. The map LITERALLY SPINS AROUND IN CIRCLES SUPER FAST, and I have no idea whether the pax is heading north or south when I start the trip, and I have no idea whether to take a left or a right out of the parking lot. Even pressing the "north up" button doesn't help. The map keeps not showing the directions because it keeps "refreshing" the directions because it thinks my car is spinning in circles and switching from road to road surrounding the lot. JUST SHOW ME WHERE THE DESTINATION IS ON THE MAP PLEASE! When it is refreshing, it won't even tell me the NAME OF THE STREET for the destination? WTF!

Many pax get upset when I ask them which way to exit the parking lot and it is because I have no idea which direction I'm going because the map is spinning around dizzily. Google maps is no better because it is in NAV mode too so I have no idea where the destination is and depending on which direction the GPS spins it tells me to go different ways. I just want the map laid out with north up, the map NOT moving, zoomed out to see the PAX destination on the map and my current location. As it is I usually don't know whether the pax destination is 15 miles southwest or 15 miles northeast until I exit the parking lot. And by that time, half the time I took the wrong turn or wrong exit out of the parking lot adding half a mile to the trip and waiting through an extra 2 stop-lights.

I LIKE that Lyft doesn't have a nav on the main screen.

I use NAV to get me close, then once I'm close I switch back to the Lyft screen and look for the pushpin. That's what I used to do with Uber too. Greatly prefer it. Usually I know my way around the streets well enough I don't need the Nav, I'd rather see where I am on the map in the broader sense than specific directions.

I don't need a navigation telling me to go forward 300 feet. I need to know exactly which building the pax is in.

The NAV will also put you on the wrong side of the street. When picking up pax I'd rather just see the map and make the decision for myself how to get there to get to the right side of the street.

For casino valet entrances the NAV that Uber has or EVEN google maps often sends me to one-way streets that would require me to make a huge loop because the nav has no idea where the entry to the valet is... which is often on the street on the opposite side of the building.


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## Fauxknight (Aug 12, 2014)

Google has errors as well, plenty of wrong way down one way streets or stopping on a nearby road come up. The trick is to watch where you are going and to learn the instructions and outs of your city. Rely on the address and intuition rather than always using maps. Trial and error in learning will of course result in the occasional error, the trick is to minimize those errors.


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## Uberyouber (Jan 16, 2017)

Yea it sucks..


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## Tihstae (Jan 31, 2017)

Trafficat said:


> I wish Uber would go back to the way it was without navigation. You could see the outlines of buildings easier... you could tell exactly where the pin was instead of just the street.


I miss this so much. It was so much easier to see the pin in the outline of a house to know which house to pull up to. Now it puts it in the middle of the road so most times you don't even know which side of the street when the street is dark and you can see addresses.


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## Fargle (May 28, 2017)

I complained about this map spinning stupidity and tech support had no idea what I was talking about.


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## Trafficat (Dec 19, 2016)

Fargle said:


> I complained about this map spinning stupidity and tech support had no idea what I was talking about.


Thanks for reaching out to us about this Fargle,

We know technical errors can be frustrating. We reviewed the trip and we have confirmed that the fare was calculated correctly.

*







*
Pradeep - 1 hour ago


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## ShinyAndChrome (Aug 18, 2017)

It's too bad when not in uber app that the back to back ride gives you no details at all until you complete current ride then you've already accepted the second  Still, since using waze things are a lot better now.


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## RangerWinslow (Mar 8, 2017)

Heck, a fourty year old paper street map beats Uber's nav in Portland Oregon 99% of the time! Now picture driverless cars guided by THIS kind of nav! HELL NO!!!



Trafficat said:


> Thanks for reaching out to us about this Fargle,
> 
> We know technical errors can be frustrating. We reviewed the trip and we have confirmed that the fare was calculated correctly.
> 
> ...


Sounds like exactly the same kind of ANTI-help I've been getting for over two weeks on a brand new tablet crashing the app before you can do ANYTHING. "Logout of your app" - DOH! How when it won't stay open long enough?!?

I strongly believe they are cooking the books by pasting bogus boilerplate stock answers for anything and marking cases closed to either make themselves or their bosses look good. Call centers see this crap all the time when no quality assurance is going on!


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## JBinPenfield (Sep 14, 2017)

ShinyAndChrome said:


> Having in-app navigation is nice. I hate that lyft forces us to kick out of the app. However, this weekend I finally gave up on uber's in-app navigation and moved to waze.
> 
> Prior to this weekend I've had various mistakes such as the fact uber's nav still doesn't know how to get to this city's airport. When going west on the main route to my city's airport uber always says to take 15A, which requires an illegal left turn, instead of the proper 15B.
> 
> ...


Exact same thing happened to me at the same damn location on Friday night. Was at St. John Fisher college and the app showed that long looping route to the exit ramp, but since I was near the back of the campus it looked like it was directing me in a loop to a point directly behind me. So I just turned around and asked which building had the five number address it gave, but of course nobody knew what the addresses of the buildings were, just the names (another pet peeve of mine - Uber should add a feature that strongly encourages the passenger to input the NAME OF THE BUILDING/BUSINESS/STORE not just the street address, which is often not on said building/business/store) . Then the map zoomed in and showed me a person and end point on the ramp, so I went there, figuring maybe they had a breakdown. Nobody there. By the time I got off the highway the passenger had cancelled.

The ultimate all time winner (of my 25 trips so far) happened last night when the app directed me onto a difficult to find, narrow, one lane, winding PRIVATE DIRT ROAD along the shore of Irondequoit bay that ended in a dead end at cluster of houses on the shore and tried to get me to make a right turn onto a street that did not exist. Furthermore the end point turned out to be on a street that had a totally different name than the street given in the address. If I was a woman I would probably be afraid I was being lead into a trap by a serial killer and got the hell out of there, but I'm of the stubborn male persuasion. Trying to text the passenger was useless because the app kept asking me to input the phone number on record but did not pop up a keypad to let me type in a number. Amazingly the passenger had still not cancelled the trip (maybe he was too busy laughing his ass off at my gyrations through the boonies of Irondequoit). I finally cancelled the trip myself.


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## ShinyAndChrome (Aug 18, 2017)

JBinPenfield said:


> Exact same thing happened to me at the same damn location on Friday night. Was at St. John Fisher college and the app showed that long looping route to the exit ramp, but since I was near the back of the campus it looked like it was directing me in a loop to a point directly behind me. So I just turned around and asked which building had the five number address it gave, but of course nobody knew what the addresses of the buildings were, just the names (another pet peeve of mine - Uber should add a feature that strongly encourages the passenger to input the NAME OF THE BUILDING/BUSINESS/STORE not just the street address, which is often not on said building/business/store) . Then the map zoomed in and showed me a person and end point on the ramp, so I went there, figuring maybe they had a breakdown. Nobody there. By the time I got off the highway the passenger had cancelled.
> 
> The ultimate all time winner (of my 25 trips so far) happened last night when the app directed me onto a difficult to find, narrow, one lane, winding PRIVATE DIRT ROAD along the shore of Irondequoit bay that ended in a dead end at cluster of houses on the shore and tried to get me to make a right turn onto a street that did not exist. Furthermore the end point turned out to be on a street that had a totally different name than the street given in the address. If I was a woman I would probably be afraid I was being lead into a trap by a serial killer and got the hell out of there, but I'm of the stubborn male persuasion. Trying to text the passenger was useless because the app kept asking me to input the phone number on record but did not pop up a keypad to let me type in a number. Amazingly the passenger had still not cancelled the trip (maybe he was too busy laughing his ass off at my gyrations through the boonies of Irondequoit). I finally cancelled the trip myself.


I am sure uber knows who is using its app and that experienced people eventually have to turn it off. Maybe if we start sitting at these on-ramps and cancelling after five min uber will care.

I won't report any more map problems to them. As I said if they still can't even get the last exit to the airport fixed I am sure they are not in turn passing any of these to the map provider.


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## Wh4tev3r!!!! (Jul 21, 2017)

Ever since the IOS 11 update, I have to toggle between Google maps and the Uber navigation. I have noticed when I use just the Google maps, the Uber app doesn't track my mileage properly. Which means I get shorted miles driven. So I start the ride using Google maps to get that loaded and then switch back to Uber navigation. When I get near a confusing area, I switch to google maps to get a clear picture of where I need to go. Once I get through that area, I switch back to Uber navigation. Also, on long trip, you cant see the turns because they display the entire trip so everything is squeezed into that small screen. I find this has helped get my mileage logged correctly. I could never rely on Uber navigation to get me to the pick up or drop off area alone.


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## Grahamcracker (Nov 2, 2016)

Yeah, Google maps makes mistakes simaler to this as well. H1 runs parallel over Nimitz Hwy. When I receive a request from The Best Western Hotel (which is on Nimitz Hwy below H1) Google Maps always takes me to H1. It's not a big deal to me now but the first time was a lot of fun.


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## JBinPenfield (Sep 14, 2017)

Unfortunately I found out the other night that Google maps itself is at least five months out of date on some things. Both it and whatever Uber uses are unaware of a large multi building, multi street apartment complex that opened near my city five months ago. The Uber app directs you to the next street off the main road, and shows the pax sitting in the middle of a big empty space.


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## KD_LA (Aug 16, 2017)

Aside from the tons of "difficult-to-impossible-to-illegal" left turns Uber's directions lead me to, I also get many pickup/dropoff locations that are just wrong-- even though the address is right.

My worst example: directions take me to a dark narrow alley that turns out to be the rear of actual pickup location, address was right and Google Maps also shows it right, but app keeps insisting to go to the back alley even after I pickup passenger from the front. So I contact Uber and report incorrect nav directions, and their response, in their infinite wisdom: "Log out of the Uber app and log back in" 

While Google Maps also gives me many headaches, I do have to agree that the concept of in-app navigation is much more convenient and less distracting while I drive.


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## NGOwner (Nov 15, 2016)

I found that if you tap the little compass in the Uber Navigation, the Uber Nav screen is locked in the north is up position.

But it doesn't remember the setting, you have to do it each time/ride.

Usually I'll use Google Maps for the navigation. But I use Uber's Nav, especially enroute to the rider, because too often all I get is the "Navigate to Point" in Google Maps. The address is always available in Uber Nav.

[NG]Owner


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## Pythonphile (Sep 23, 2017)

The other day, I had a pax who said he read an article about the uber nav and how they're making tweaks to it. Uber knows when you're using another nav app, and they pay attention to how you deviate from their directions, and using that info to update and make tweaks to the uber app.


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## goneubering (Aug 17, 2017)

ShinyAndChrome said:


> Having in-app navigation is nice. I hate that lyft forces us to kick out of the app. However, this weekend I finally gave up on uber's in-app navigation and moved to waze.
> 
> Prior to this weekend I've had various mistakes such as the fact uber's nav still doesn't know how to get to this city's airport. When going west on the main route to my city's airport uber always says to take 15A, which requires an illegal left turn, instead of the proper 15B.
> 
> ...


I use it but it's really bad. Fortunately I know my area quite well so I just ignore it when it's giving stupid directions.



Pythonphile said:


> The other day, I had a pax who said he read an article about the uber nav and how they're making tweaks to it. Uber knows when you're using another nav app, and they pay attention to how you deviate from their directions, and using that info to update and make tweaks to the uber app.


I haven't noticed any positive tweaks.


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## Fargle (May 28, 2017)

Pythonphile said:


> The other day, I had a pax who said he read an article about the uber nav and how they're making tweaks to it. Uber knows when you're using another nav app, and they pay attention to how you deviate from their directions, and using that info to update and make tweaks to the uber app.


The only "tweaks" I see in the app's navigation remind me of methamphetamines.


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