9 Reasons Why I Like Uber More than Lyft

Lyft likes to market itself as a company that treats drivers better, but when the rubber meets the road, there’s a lot of ways that Uber actually treats their drivers way better than Lyft. I’m Christian of The Rideshare Guy, and today I’m going to give you nine reasons, and then a couple more bonus reasons that Uber’s actually treating their drivers better than Lyft.

Take a look at Christian’s video, and scroll to the video transcript below if you’d like to read all of the points he covers.

Lyft didn’t have an easy way to decline rides for a long time

Lyft changed almost in the same week that I published this article, but for the longest time, Uber has had the no thanks button. This no thanks button, you just hit no thanks, and you decline the ride. You’re not being forced to except rides that you don’t want to take, especially ridiculous 24 minute Lyft line or Uber pools. Now, Lyft has ruled out this feature too. When you do get a request, you reach into the top left hand side, there’s a little X, and you just click it to reject the ride. It will still affect your acceptance rate, which leads me to my next point.

Uber promos have lower acceptance rates

Right now in San Francisco Uber doesn’t have an acceptance rate at all to get a Quest bonus, or Boost, or any of the promos that are happening. Lyft on the other hand has an acceptance rate of 90%, which means drivers were just forced to pick up, for their sloppy dispatch system, when it gives us a 24 minute Lyft line ride, or when we pull up and someone wants to put six people in our call. 90% is just really high. It kind of assumes that their dispatch system is working almost perfectly. Trust me, even today, it’s not.

I made a little meme here. I’ve had this happen a lot. Your acceptance rate is 89%. Maybe you’re boarding on a Friday or Saturday night, and you go out, and you have someone who tries to bring five or six people in the car, or something happens. You’re passenger’s too drunk. You can’t contact them. You have to cancel the ride, so your acceptance rate goes down. Uber doesn’t have that. You do the rides, and you get the bonus, and that’s that. It’s easy. It’s less frustrating.

Another way Uber is treating drivers better is the don’t have peak rides. Lyft, when you’re trying to go for their bonuses, you have to drive during peak hours and give rides during those peak times. Let’s say peak hours are from 08:00 AM to 09:00 AM, and you get a ride request at 07:56, and that takes the whole hour, now you don’t have any rides for that peak time. It just seems like Lyft has all these little silly things, these little ‘gotcha’ moments, that disqualify you from these bonuses. It’s just a dumb reason, and there’s so many people I’ve know that have just been completely screwed over by peak rides, or acceptance rates. It blows their whole bonus, and next week they’re driving for Uber, forever because they hate Lyft after that.

Uber’s surge maps are better than Lyft’s

Uber has surge maps that actually work, and they have always worked better than Lyft’s. There’s been no point in time that Lyft has had a better surge map than Uber. I know Lyft calls it primetime, but I’m just going to call it surge, because that’s what we know it as. Uber’s maps have always shown us, how much surge, although the new app may not do that. They’ve had the hexagons, and when your ride request comes in, you see that it’s on surge, and how much it’s on surge. Lyft just recently started showing you how much primetime on the request was incoming, because they had mixed feelings or whatever about drivers trying to game the system.

Uber’s communication is clearer and more direct

Another big thing with how Uber treats drivers better, is they have clearer communication. Lyft always sends these passive aggressive, thinly veiled, cult kind of threats. “It looks like you’ve had a few passenger cancellations lately, especially after you don’t drive directly to them after accepting the ride. As a friendly reminder, you should drive directly to the pickup location. It’s frustrating for passengers.” I feel like my mom is yelling at me or something, or what are you implying? Just say, if you have cancellations, you might get deactivated, and that’s it. Or, tell me what the rule is and tell me what the consequence is. Uber said, hey someone complained about you. We just want to let you know, and we’re not taking any action, but if we keep getting threats, or keep getting complaints of this nature, you might get deactivated. Thanks. Done.

Uber won’t deactivate you for carrying a legal weapon

Another way Uber treats drives better than Lyft is that Uber won’t deactivate you for having a stun gun. Now, a lot of people have opinions on weapons, and that’s great. We’re not going to talk about that, but what we are going to talk about is that driving is seedy. We’re not driving people to church every day. Maybe if we’re lucky, once a week. You get my point. We drive at night. These people are drunk. In my experience, I’ve had several passengers where I didn’t feel safe. I was legitimately like, there could be a fight. This person could damage my car right now. I’ve had people slam my doors. I’ve had people threaten to break beer bottles on my windows and stuff, at Bay to Breakers, two years ago. Just really crappy passengers.

Most drivers I know have at least a stungun, or some pepper spray, just in case. We’re not wielding it. We’re not showing it to everyone. But Lyft will actually deactivate you if they find out that you have a stungun or pepper spray. If you’re driving at night and your passenger reaches over to grab your wheel, you’re just going to have to call trust and safety.

Uber’s rating system is better and driver support is easier to access

Now, Uber’s rating system, I found, is a lot more squishy. It’s there, but it almost means nothing, in a sense. I just honestly haven’t heard of a new one getting deactivated from Uber from bad ratings in the last couple of years. You used to be able to, but drivers are expensive. Uber’s losing 74% of them, or whatever, every six months. Unless you’re just really bad, you’re probably not going to get deactivated for bad ratings. Now, Lyft, they don’t really have ratings protection, and they really try to get the ratings thing going. I think ratings are dumb. You shouldn’t be able to rate me off of our 5 to 30 minute interaction because it makes you feel good. It’s just marketing.

Uber always has had more extensive driver’s support. Now, notice I say extensive. I didn’t say anything about the quality. The quality sucks most of the time. It’s getting better. Anyways, it’s everywhere. Uber’s had their Greenlight Hubs out for three years now, and they’re basically in every city. Most cities have two or three Greenlight Hubs, where if you get deactivated or if you’re trying to communicate by email, and it’s just back and forth, you can go to Greenlight Hub, and get your problems solved. You even used to be able to use IM Chat to get stuff resolved, which was great. Uber even has support at malls now.

Lyft has their hubs, and their hubs are good, but there’s like nine of them in the whole country. Maybe there’s more now, but nowhere near as many as Uber’s Greenlight centers. One good thing I’ve noticed with Lyft is that they do a really good job of hiring drivers to work at the hubs. When the hubs opened I had a couple of my friends who ended up going to work there. Now they got a job where they’re not in their car for 50 hours a week, so that’s worked out nice. Lyft has done a better job of that.

Uber’s bonuses can be better and more flexible

When it comes to signup bonuses for signing up other drivers, Uber has retroactive signup bonuses, because Uber realizes that convincing somebody to become a driver is actually pretty difficult. You gotta basically sell it to them. If they don’t do the right link at the right time, and this and that, then there’s a good chance that that referral doesn’t get attributed to you even though you did all the work. When I first started driving, I referred a couple drivers to Lyft, and I didn’t get any bonuses because they either clicked on the wrong link, or I couldn’t put it in afterwards, or it was too difficult for them to understand. Or, that person had started a Lyft application to drive four years ago, and never picked it up. But, we have seen that Lyft is trying to improve this to where they can do retroactive bonuses, but it’s nowhere near as formalized as Uber’s or Easy.

Uber’s insurance deductible is $1,000, Lyft’s is $2,500

To add some bonuses on how Uber is treating their drivers better than Lyft is, Uber’s deductible is only $1,000 if you get in an accident, whereas Lyft’s is $2,500. Now, if you’re driving for a living, a lot of drivers don’t have a $2,500 emergency fund. The big point that, Jay did the article about how Lyft treats drivers better. We wanted to do like a versus thing.

In the end, neither company treats drivers very well

My big point that I wanted to make when I wrote it is, none of these companies necessarily really treat drivers better, because at the end of the day, they both look at drivers as customers, as a customer acquisition cost on a spreadsheet, a lifetime value over time. Like I said, it’s redundant. Really just the difference between the companies nowadays is just bells and whistles in the app, and marketing and branding.

There’s a couple of minor differences, but at the end of the day, these companies basically treat drivers the same. The best thing you can do for yourself is not sitting around thinking, should I drive for Lyft only, or Uber only. You should drive for both, and you should have a backup plan. You should also be preparing for what you’re going to do if this doesn’t work out. That’s that. That’s nine and half, ten ways now that Uber is actually treating their drivers better that Lyft, even though many would have you think otherwise.

I’m Christian with The Rideshare Guy, and make sure that you like, comment, subscribe, turn on notifications, tell your mom, tell your grandma, share it with everyone you know.