7 Reasons Why Rideshare Drivers Hate UberPOOL & Lyft Line

Today, Jon will let us know the seven reasons why UberPOOL and Lyft Line are absolutely terrible. Now, these reasons came out of a blog post on therideshareguy.com from some of my fellow contributors, so Jon will just go over some of them and elaborate a bit on each point.

Watch Jon’s video then read the transcript below!

UberPOOL And Lyft Line passengers are clueless

Reason number one. POOL passengers are clueless. Now, this isn’t always the case, but a lot of times when people request an UberPOOL, they don’t realize that they have to share the ride with another person. So they get in the car just expecting to go straight to their destination, and then they get all irritated when you have to make another stop and pick up another passenger. And often times they’ll ding your rating. They’ll give you a lower rating because they’re taking longer to get to their destination.

UberPOOL is more work for less money

More work for less money. Now, the POOL rates are often a lot lower than the regular rates, so if you don’t have a matched trip, you’re obviously gonna be making a lot less money because you’re only getting one far, and that one fare is a lot less than it normally would be. And it’s also more work because you have to make multiple pickups and drop-offs. You have to juggle parking situations in places where you have to wait for the passenger. It’s just not a good scene.

These rides usually result in lower ratings

Now, passengers don’t just rate you lower because their trip is taking longer. They’ll also rate you lower because you’re not interacting with them on the same level that you would if they were just in the car with you one-on-one. You have all these different passengers to juggle. You have the navigation to juggle, as it’s constantly changing and as passengers are added and dropped off. So it can be hard to maintain a level of rapport with your passengers that leads to higher ratings, so your ratings will suffer from that as well.

You become part of the traffic problem

UberPOOL and Lyft Line make traffic worse. You might not think this is true because of carpooling means fewer trips, right? But actually, the price of UberPOOL and Lyft Line is so cheap that it’s started to compete with public transportation. If it costs about the same amount to take an UberPOOL versus taking the bus, you can bet that a lot more people are just gonna pick up that Uber rather than waiting on the bus, so it actually makes traffic worse.

Your passengers might not get along

Sometimes the passengers don’t get along. Now, you might think that this doesn’t happen very often, right? After all, every Uber ride and Lyft ride is essentially two strangers getting into a car together. So what could go wrong if two passengers share a ride? The Uber driver or the Lyft driver has to be at least somewhat respectful to the passenger. Otherwise they’ll get fired, right?

The passengers don’t necessarily have that same standard that’s being applied to them, so they can get into arguments. Maybe one of them is hitting on another one that maybe doesn’t want to be hit on. Maybe one of them is playing music that the other one doesn’t like. There are all kinds of different situations where the passengers just aren’t getting along or are getting into an argument. It’ll lower your rating. It’s unpleasant to be in the car with. It’s unpleasant for everyone, really.

UberPOOL and Lyft Line are more dangerous

It’s dangerous. That’s right. Who would’ve thought that your phone buzzing with notification after notification, telling you to make a left turn in the middle of traffic when you’re in the far right lane, could be dangerous? Surprise, surprise, it is dangerous, and it happens a lot when you’re driving along and suddenly the destination changes as it’s adding another passenger and you have to do an illegal U-turn. Happens a lot. It’s not very safe, and we do it every day when we accept these POOL and Lyft Line requests.

UberPOOL and Lyft Line are more stressful

A typical Uber or Lyft ride doesn’t have to be stressful, right? It’s just you and one customer, and if you can figure out where that customer’s going, if you can get them safely to their destination, you’re good to go. It seems like a simple challenge. It isn’t always, but at least it’s contained. With POOL and Line, adding multiple customers, multiple destinations into the mix, it just multiplies your stress level, and it’s pretty hard to deal with on a daily basis.

What can we do as drivers?

Uber does seem to be working on the situation a little bit. They have changed the rating system now so that on UberPOOL, as the passenger’s rating their driver, they are asked to select from some different concerns about what went wrong exactly with the ride if they are deducting stars. So if they select something that isn’t the driver’s fault, in theory the driver won’t be penalized for that deduction. Lyft has yet to jump on this bandwagon. Hopefully they do very soon.

But again, this is just a small improvement to the overall picture. There’s the low pay. There’s the stress. There’s the unsafe driving conditions. So this definitely doesn’t solve the whole problem. Don’t accept UberPOOL and Lyft Line requests. Obviously you can’t always do this. Sometimes you just need the money. Sometimes you’re working for that power driver bonus, or sometimes you’re working for a guarantee and you have to keep your acceptance rating up. The good news is that if you’re not doing a guarantee, at least on Uber, you can decline POOL requests. Just let them go by, and you won’t be penalized for having a low acceptance rating.

Some drivers have even reported that they’ve, after many emails with Uber back and forth, that they’ve been able to opt out of UberPOOL requests. Now, take this with a grain of salt, because a lot of people who have had success with this report that they still end up getting POOL rides. So it’s not clear whether Uber even has a system to opt people out of UberPOOl. But it might be worth a shot. Again, it will take about a dozen emails back and forth between Uber support in order to get one of these emails where they say you’ve been opted out. And even then, it’s not clear whether you actually will be opted out. So try it at your own risk. Send those emails on your own time, and don’t hold your breath for actually getting out of UberPOOL for good.

That’s about all I got on UberPOOL and Lyft Line. Hopefully the powers that be will reconsider these programs, up the fares, and stop multiple passengers in the car at the same time. That would be really great. It’s probably a pipe dreams, but hope springs eternal, right? Hang in there, guys. Drive safe. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next time.