# Lyft thinks I'm not accepting enough requests



## rkozy (Apr 5, 2019)

For the first time today, I received an admonition from Lyft that I'm missing too many ride requests, and that I really should accept every one they send me.

ROFLMAO.

Has anybody else received this notice? Does anybody else refuse to drive 10 miles (24 minutes) to pick up from a Dollar General, so they can transport a lazy welfare queen and her three kids -- all under five years of age -- eight blocks to their government-subsidized apartment?


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## The Gift of Fish (Mar 17, 2017)

if you don't accept all requests then you're letting Lyft down, you're letting the community down, and most of all you're letting yourself down.


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## U/L guy (May 28, 2019)

The Gift of Fish said:


> if you don't accept all requests then you're letting Lyft down, you're letting the community down, and most of all you're letting yourself down.


? you don't have any friends do you. Only lyft pings.


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## RabbleRouser (Apr 30, 2019)

Slow News Day


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## The Gift of Fish (Mar 17, 2017)

U/L guy said:


> ? you don't have any friends do you. Only lyft pings.


https://medium.com/@paulomalvar/sarcasm-detection-a-first-approach-45e337e935ad


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## rkozy (Apr 5, 2019)

The Gift of Fish said:


> if you don't accept all requests then you're letting Lyft down, you're letting the community down, and most of all you're letting yourself down.


I know I'm letting the gas station down. Every time I don't drive 13.8 miles to pick up someone from a payday loan office or a plasma donation center, is another $1.75 that Shell Oil Company loses.


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## The Gift of Fish (Mar 17, 2017)

rkozy said:


> I know I'm letting the gas station down. Every time I don't drive 13.8 miles to pick up someone from a payday loan office or a plasma donation center, is another $1.75 that Shell Oil Company loses.


I've suggested to Lyft that one way they can improve their request acceptance rates is to *surprise* offer money to drivers for long pickups. But do they listen?


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## Illini (Mar 14, 2019)

Look at it this way, if you decline a 24 minute pickup, a driver 26 minutes away will get that ping.
How guilty will you feel for doing that to a fellow driver and a pax in desperate need of a ride? You should be ashamed of yourself for letting them down.


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## rkozy (Apr 5, 2019)

I'm curious...what is the lowest acceptance rating anyone has registered with Lyft. Mine is 59% right now, which I don't think is terrible. I'm taking more than I'm rejecting.

How much lower can I go before they unleash the hounds of deactivation on me?


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## The Gift of Fish (Mar 17, 2017)

rkozy said:


> I'm curious...what is the lowest acceptance rating anyone has registered with Lyft. Mine is 59% right now, which I don't think is terrible. I'm taking more than I'm rejecting.
> 
> How much lower can I go before they unleash the hounds of deactivation on me?


Neither service deactivates any more for not accepting pings. My acceptance rate on both is around 20%


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## rkozy (Apr 5, 2019)

The Gift of Fish said:


> My acceptance rate on both is around 20%


That's awesome. Do they stop with the ping-shaming messages after awhile, or do you get those every week because your AR is so consistently low?


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## itendstonight (Feb 10, 2019)

rkozy said:


> I'm curious...what is the lowest acceptance rating anyone has registered with Lyft. Mine is 59% right now, which I don't think is terrible. I'm taking more than I'm rejecting.
> 
> How much lower can I go before they unleash the hounds of deactivation on me?


This was a few weeks back ...


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## The Gift of Fish (Mar 17, 2017)

rkozy said:


> That's awesome. Do they stop with the ping-shaming messages after awhile, or do you get those every week because your AR is so consistently low?


I guess I still get them - I set up a spam filter on my email to send messages that contain "acceptance rate" straight to the Trash folder.


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## nouberipo (Jul 24, 2018)

rkozy said:


> For the first time today, I received an admonition from Lyft that I'm missing too many ride requests, and that I really should accept every one they send me.
> 
> ROFLMAO.
> 
> ...





The Gift of Fish said:


> if you don't accept all requests then you're letting Lyft down, you're letting the community down, and most of all you're letting yourself down.


You are kidding when you wrote this right? Please put an emoticon at the end showing it is a joke when you write things like this otherwise some people may think you are off your rocker (or a Lyft troll)



Illini said:


> Look at it this way, if you decline a 24 minute pickup, a driver 26 minutes away will get that ping.
> How guilty will you feel for doing that to a fellow driver and a pax in desperate need of a ride? You should be ashamed of yourself for letting them down.


lmfao.....ok, you are a troll and that is too obvious. To drive 24 minutes it will cost the driver, according to IRS numbers .58 x 24 = 13.92. So it will cost you 13.92 (one-way with no guarantee of another ride or a ride back so you could double it to be 27.84) so that you can drive a desperate rider to the store. Ashamed? Lyft should be for not paying surge.....if the rider is desperate and there are no drivers then surge it.....Lyft charges surges to the riders anyways so pass it along to the drivers like before.....it would be too ethical eh. So if you drive your automobile and spend your time to pick someone up 24 minutes away, your stupidity is beyond words.



The Gift of Fish said:


> Neither service deactivates any more for not accepting pings. My acceptance rate on both is around 20%


exactly. They will not deactivate you for not accepting pings but will do it for cancelling too much. This goes back a couple years ago to court cases focused on what makes a person an employee versus independent contractor.


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## rkozy (Apr 5, 2019)

nouberipo said:


> exactly. They will not deactivate you for not accepting pings but will do it for cancelling too much.


It's interesting that they won't deactivate you for denying trip requests, but they will for cancellations. In both cases, you are refusing service to a would-be passenger.

I rarely cancel rides...and typically only when a passenger no-shows or has some child car seat or unaccompanied minor issue. Does anyone know what the cancellation percentage threshold is? Or, does U/L take that stuff on a case-by-case basis?


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## itendstonight (Feb 10, 2019)

rkozy said:


> It's interesting that they won't deactivate you for denying trip requests, but they will for cancellations. In both cases, you are refusing service to a would-be passenger.
> 
> I rarely cancel rides...and typically only when a passenger no-shows or has some child car seat or unaccompanied minor issue. Does anyone know what the cancellation percentage threshold is? Or, does U/L take that stuff on a case-by-case basis?


Independent contractors cannot be forced to work, with that be considered employee required work, so we get away with acceptance rates. Cancel, I've been a little bit more liberal about it.


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## U/L guy (May 28, 2019)

Illini said:


> Look at it this way, if you decline a 24 minute pickup, a driver 26 minutes away will get that ping.
> How guilty will you feel for doing that to a fellow driver and a pax in desperate need of a ride? You should be ashamed of yourself for letting them down.


I risk the guilt feeling.


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## pizzaladee (May 23, 2018)

rkozy said:


> I'm curious...what is the lowest acceptance rating anyone has registered with Lyft. Mine is 59% right now, which I don't think is terrible. I'm taking more than I'm rejecting.
> 
> How much lower can I go before they unleash the hounds of deactivation on me?


1% is my lowest and I'm quite sure they rounded up to get that. Currently I'm at 2%.


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## Fuzzyelvis (Dec 7, 2014)

rkozy said:


> That's awesome. Do they stop with the ping-shaming messages after awhile, or do you get those every week because your AR is so consistently low?


I get one every single trip I don't accept. Acceptance rate this week is 3%.


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## NoAlwaysNo (Jun 13, 2019)

rkozy said:


> For the first time today, I received an admonition from Lyft that I'm missing too many ride requests, and that I really should accept every one they send me.
> 
> ROFLMAO.
> 
> Has anybody else received this notice? Does anybody else refuse to drive 10 miles (24 minutes) to pick up from a Dollar General, so they can transport a lazy welfare queen and her three kids -- all under five years of age -- eight blocks to their government-subsidized apartment?


I get it multiple times a week. The first few times or so, I was concerned. Now, I ignore it like I'm ignoring the ride requests.


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## 25rides7daysaweek (Nov 20, 2017)

The Gift of Fish said:


> I've suggested to Lyft that one way they can improve their request acceptance rates is to *surprise* offer money to drivers for long pickups. But do they listen?


I dont take longer pickups but they are actually doing that now. If I've maxed out a ppz I'll head to greener pastures but that bonus is sticky so you Have to take the next ping. Its generally just $1 but rather nice to get the message. I think it says you got an extra $1 for taking the time to get xyz. So thanks for a suggestion well done !!


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## BobMarley (Feb 12, 2019)

Does anyone know how bad your cancellation rate (not acceptance) can be on Lyft before they deactivate you? I'm trying the dual app game, maybe I'll take that lousy Lyft ping, but keep Uber open and if something better comes up along the way, well so sorry Lyft.


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## Another Uber Driver (May 27, 2015)

The Gift of Fish said:


> My acceptance rate on both is around 20%


Unless you are doing a large amount of shuffling, you need to bring that down a bit.



BobMarley said:


> Does anyone know how bad your cancellation rate (not acceptance) can be on Lyft before they deactivate you?


I try to keep mine on both at ten per-cent or less. To read what others have posted, Gr*yft *tends to take a more dim view of cancelling after accepting than does F*ub*a*r*. Gr*yft* has yet to threaten me with de-activation, but, I do get the same nastygram from it about not accepting trips all the time. I chuckle as I delete it.

F*ub*a*r* did threaten me with de-activation in the last days of ACRO. While it was not showing up on my dashboard, my cancellation rate was about thirty per-cent, at the time. I signed up for Lyft, at that point, and it was UBER OFF for several days while I ran my Gr*yft* recruitment bonus. After that, I made it a point to cover the F*ub*a*r *pings that I accepted for a while. Once I got it below ten per-cent, the nastygrams from F*ub*a*r* stopped.


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## CTK (Feb 9, 2016)

rkozy said:


> I'm curious...what is the lowest acceptance rating anyone has registered with Lyft. Mine is 59% right now, which I don't think is terrible. I'm taking more than I'm rejecting.
> 
> How much lower can I go before they unleash the hounds of deactivation on me?


I consistently run between 1% - 6% on Lyft. They can't deactivate for low acceptance rate.


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## BobMarley (Feb 12, 2019)

Another Uber Driver said:


> Unless you are doing a large amount of shuffling, you need to bring that down a bit.


... every day I'm shufflin'


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## Trafficat (Dec 19, 2016)

U/L guy said:


> ? you don't have any friends do you. Only lyft pings.


Who needs friends when you have the Lyft community!?


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## Disgusted Driver (Jan 9, 2015)

Not accepting and cancelling are two very different things. Not accepting is well within your right as an IC. I run anywhere from 5 to 25% acceptance on Lyft (a lot of times because they will bombard you with the same 10 mile away ping over and over). I gt the nastygrams, I feel guilty about letting the community down for 20 nanoseconds or so and then I move on. Cancelling is a different matter because you essentially have agreed to do the job and then backed out. Once you agree to do the job offered you can be evaluated on your performance and the fact that you are inconveniencing their customers. Somewhere in the 15 to 20% area is where you are going to get your head chopped off, both services will warn you that your rate is high and then you need to dial it back a lot if you want to remain active. 

I try not to cancel very ften, usually it's because I take a Lyft and I'll leave Uber Select on. If I get the select ping, I'm taking it because it's twice the price. Late night if I accept a ping and then see that surge has gone up dramatically I may take the higher rate to the detriment of the lower priced ping.


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## rkozy (Apr 5, 2019)

CTK said:


> I consistently run between 1% - 6% on Lyft. They can't deactivate for low acceptance rate.


I just got a reminder from Uber today that I can check my stats in the app, and that it's paramount I understand why high acceptance ratings are very important.

There's only two stats I care about on Uber and Lyft: 1) The amount of money I'm putting into my car, and 2) The amount of money I'm getting for hauling U/L customers around town.

If data point #1 ever exceeds data point #2, there's no reason why they should expect me to keep logging into their apps.


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## welikecamping (Nov 27, 2018)

The community is sad.


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## Mista T (Aug 16, 2017)

rkozy said:


> How much lower can I go before they unleash the hounds of deactivation on me


By law, they cannot deactivate you for low acceptance rates.

But experienced drivers know they punish us by throttling back the rides we get, even tho they would never admit it.


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## rkozy (Apr 5, 2019)

Mista T said:


> But experienced drivers know they punish us by throttling back the rides we get, even tho they would never admit it.


In my market (which is pretty small) there are not many drivers available, except during the bar hours. Many pax I've talked to complain about how difficult it is finding Uber and Lyft drivers reliably for getting to work. There are numerous times throughout the weekday business hours where I might be the only driver on duty...or perhaps one of just two or three others accepting ride requests. U/L can throttle back the rides we get, but they're only cutting their own throats by doing so. The options are very limited for them in terms of available drivers where I drive.

Since I've started getting more aggressive in denying pings, I've not noticed my ride quality dropping. In fact, on Lyft (where I've really gone crazy with denials) my average per-ride has gone up noticeably. If gas drops back under $2/gallon like it was around Christmas, I may loosen up on the rejected pings. Until that day, U/L are forcing me to make some of their far-flung customers wait longer for a ride.


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