How & When To Cancel An Accepted Lyft or Uber Ride Request

We’ve all had it happen before, where you’ve accepted a ride on accident, or you’ve accepted a ride and the pickup location is just too far away. What are the best practices for canceling, and how do you cancel a ride? Joe with The Rideshare Guy will talk about how and when to cancel an accepted ride.

Take a look at Joe’s video, and check out the transcript below if you prefer to read

When should you cancel an accepted ride request?

There are typically two scenarios for me personally where I will cancel an accepted request. One is if I accept the request and the pickup is jut too far away. I prefer not to make that trip to make that pickup, so sometimes I will just let that request go through and I won’t accept it. Other times I’ll accept it on accident, and then I’ll want to cancel that as soon as possible.

Other times I’l accept the request, and if I don’t want to effect my acceptance rating I’ll accept that request, and I’ll call the passenger, and say hey I’m just too far away. If you wait just a little bit longer, if you wait maybe even a few more seconds you can request a ride and chances are a driver will be closer. So in the chance that you do accept the request on accident, you want to try and cancel that request as soon as possible. You want to have the cancellation process memorized so that you can do it right away.

Cancel when you can rightfully collect the cancellation fee

My other typical scenario is when I arrive at a passenger’s location, I personally expect them to be ready. When I arrive and if I don’t see them I will send them a text message saying, hey it’s Joe your driver, I’m just out front. Now if I don’t hear anything back from them, I personally will not call. Usually the only time I will call is if I really need the request. Say it’s during peak times, I want the request, I’ll be a little bit more lenient, but most of the time in between the peak times if I get there and the passenger makes me wait the full five minutes and that expires, I will just cancel the ride and collect the cancellation fee.

I personally feel that five minutes is plenty of time. The passenger should know they should be ready within that amount of time. For me personally that justifies canceling without calling. I do send that text, so I have made contact, but I don’t feel the call is necessary.

One strategy: Cancel longer rides if you need several quick rides

There’s one more scenario where I personally won’t do this technique, but this can be applied in bigger markets. It was suggested by Jay, another Rideshare Guy contributor, and he only does this during peak times where you want as many requests, or you want to do as many rides as possible. What he’ll do is when he’s approaching the pickup location, he will try and see the destination. With Uber you actually have to start the ride in order to see the destination, but he’ll try and see where those destinations are, and if they’re just too far away he’ll go ahead and cancel the ride right there.

Chances are in those bigger markets that rider will get a driver that’s going to be there right away. It won’t be that much longer of a wait time. Not a great experience for passengers, but as drivers during those peak times you want to maximize rides. That’s a strategy that he uses.

Demonstrating how to cancel rides in the Uber and Lyft apps

We’ll jump into the Uber and Lyft driver apps, and we’ll show you those three scenarios, and we’ll show you how to cancel in each scenario. We’ll do the Uber demo first. This is scenario one, this is a basic cancellation where you either have an accidental acceptance or you’ve accepted an unwanted ride. You decide that the pickup location is just too far away and you’d like to cancel. Again, when you have these accidental acceptances or unwanted rides you want to cancel those as soon as possible, so that the passenger doesn’t have a bad experience.

You’ve accepted the ride on accident, or you’ve determined that the pickup location is just too far away. You’ll select the top right clipboard icon, and then you’ll just select cancel. Then you select do not charge rider.

How to cancel and get a cancellation fee

Here’s scenario two where the passenger exceeds the five minute wait time. You have arrived at the passenger’s pickup location. This clock on the bottom right will start ticking down from two minutes, and then it will start ticking up an additional three minutes, for a total of five minute wait time. Once that five minutes is exceeding then you can cancel the ride, and you will get that cancellation fee.

You’ll go ahead and select this bottom right button to officially cancel the ride, and then select rider no show. Then you can navigate to the earnings screen. You can look at your trip history, and you can see that you’ve received a cancellation fee of $4. Scroll down and select the fare details. You’ll see you received $4, the rider paid a $5 cancellation, and Uber receives $1 of that cancellation fee.

Here’s scenario three. This is Jay’s trick where it’s during peak time only, where you want shorter rides, you want as many as possible, and the longer rides aren’t the greatest. So you’re about to arrive, and in order to see the destination you’ll have to actually start the trip. If you determine that it’s just too far away you’ll complete the trip, and then you’ll select do not charge rider. Again, this is only recommended in larger markets. This probably won’t work to great in smaller markers.

Next we’ll do the Lyft demo. So again, here’s scenario one where you have an accidental acceptance, or an unwanted ride. You’ll select the top right down arrow, and then just select cancel ride.

Here’s scenario two where your passenger exceeds the five minute wait time. This is a little different with Lyft, which they require you to actually make contact with the passenger. I will personally text a passenger right when I arrive. I will only call in certain circumstances. So the clock ticks down the five minutes, then you will bluff the call. You’ll select the call button, and then the call dialogue box will show up in the middle of the screen, and then you will select cancel. Which this tricks the Lyft app into thinking that actually made the call when you didn’t, but you have already sent that text message so you’ve reached out to the passenger.

Five minutes is plenty of time. If they haven’t shown up I don’t feel it’s bad practice to just cancel the ride. So now the five minutes have expired, and you can select passenger is a no show. You’ll confirm, and then you can navigate to your earnings, and you can see the $5 cancellation fee you received. You’ll see the description, we paid you a no show fee for this ride.

Here’s scenario three, where you’re about to arrive and it’s an unwanted ride, it’s not an ideal ride for you. Again, this is only recommended in larger markets. You have arrived at the passenger’s pickup location, so you’ll back it out. With Lyft when you arrive you can see the destination if it has been entered. If it’s not, if it’s too long of a trip, if it’s a non-desirable trip you can select the top right down arrow again, and select cancel ride.

There’s three scenarios. There’s the accidental, too far away requests. There are the ones where you arrive and you’ve waited the entire five minutes and you want to cancel. There’s also the one in the bigger markets that Jay uses, where it’s not an ideal trip and he wants to just cancel that ride in order to get a more ideal trip.

Thanks for watching. Drive safe!