How to Screen Your Uber & Lyft Passengers!

Let’s talk about screening rides! In this video, Jay discusses ride screening: What it is, and how to do it. Stick around because at the end of the video I’m going to share with you two live examples of how to do ride screening with both Uber and Lyft.

What is ride screening?

This is Jay Crater with the Rideshare Guy and today we’re going to talk about a few different aspects of ride screening. Let’s jump right in. Number one, what is ride screening? Have you noticed that you don’t know where you’re going to be taking your passenger until you pick them up? Well, ride screening is finding a way so that you can see the destination before your passenger gets into your car so that you can decide, “Is this a ride I want to take or not?”

Now with Uber, it’s much more difficult because with Uber you need to actually get close to your pickup point, start the ride, see what the destination is, cancel the ride, give a reason for the cancellation, and then you can keep on driving.

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With Lyft, it’s much easier because Lyft gives you the option of where you have to let the passenger know you’ve arrived. Once you’ve gotten close, you hit you’ve arrived. I usually do it about a half a block before and I can then see the destination and if I don’t like it, I just cancel the ride and keep on driving. So that’s how you do it. Stick around, like I said, I’ll show you a couple of live examples.

Related: How to See Your Lyft Passenger’s Destination Ahead of Time

Why don’t Uber and Lyft let us see the passenger’s destination?

Topic number two is, why don’t Uber and Lyft just let us know where the destination is? Well, the reason they do it, this is what I think the reason they do it is they’re worried that certain passengers would never get picked up if the drivers knew the destination.

Say for example, it’s rush hour in the morning and you’ve got a passenger that wants to go into traffic and it’s an hour long ride. It should take about 10 minutes, but it’s going to take about 45 minutes because of all the traffic. They’re worried that no one’s going to pick up that passenger. There’s going to be a lot of cancellations. That passenger’s going to be unhappy and then they’re going to want to go to one of the competitors. So that’s the reason.

But I think it’s faulty logic. What happens is if the passenger has a ride like that, I may decline it because it’s not right for me. But the next driver may want to go to that area, right, and accept it. So you’re going to get a better match of drivers and passengers than the current system.

Is it ethical to screen rides?

Topic number three, the ethics of ride screening. So in the past I’ve shared a few videos showing people how to screen rides and overall it’s been positive response. But I got a vocal minority that said, “Wait a minute. That’s just not right. You should be accepting every ride that you get as a driver. It’s not right to strand passengers.” I felt this way for the first year. I didn’t cancel on anybody. I prided myself on the fact that I took everybody where they wanted to go, until a Sunday where I needed 12 rides for a bonus and I got like 10 long rides in a row and by the end of the day I did not get my bonus and that cost me money.

That’s where I said, “This has got to stop because I need to take care of myself. I need to make money.” I use my money to support my family and live a lifestyle. If I don’t pick up that passenger, right, if I screen the ride and I don’t pick up that passenger, the next driver probably will. So the passenger is really not stranded. They’re just going to have to wait a minute, two minutes more and and wait for another pickup. That’s how I think about it now. But there are definitely people that feel like this is not the right thing to be doing.

Related: Understanding Uber’s Driver Bonuses, and Understanding Lyft’s Driver Bonuses

Uber and Lyft are beginning to offer some screening features

Number four, Uber and Lyft are beginning to see the light. Uber came out with Uber Pro, which were a bunch of enhancements for drivers and Lyft came out with their 15 new features. In both of those, both companies are offering top drivers the ability on the ping to see the direction and the time that the ride’s going to take.

As you can see in this example with Lyft, I can see that this is going to be a 47 minute ride and it’s going into southern direction. If that’s what I want, great. If it’s not, I would cancel, not accept and then it would go to the next driver, the next closest driver and they would probably accept. It’s a nice long ride. Might be going in a direction I don’t want to go. But for the next driver, it’s going in the direction they do want to go. So again, it’s a better match between the drivers and the passengers. Great job, Uber and Lyft. They can’t wait for those features to show up here in San Francisco.

Live examples showing you how to screen rides

Here’s some live examples that I just shot today to show you how to screen rides with Lyft and then how to screen rides with Uber. All right, so I got a ping and I’m getting close to my prospect and I were screening this ride at about here.

I would say that I have arrived. So I click on exit to get out of the GPS mode. Tap to arrive, confirm arrival. So now I can press right here. I see he’s going to Jones Street. I’m not sure of the address. I can just squeeze down and see. Well, that’s a pretty long ride. Okay, so that’s one I don’t want. So then you click in the upper right hand corner and you would click on cancel ride, cancel ride. It’ll ask you why, I just say other reason and boom, we’re done.

This is now with Uber and I’m going to go ahead and start it. Start UberX. Then what I need to do now is cancel the ride, complete UberX. Then cancel this trip. Then you’re going to have to put a reason and I would put other. Yes, cancel. There you go. Now there’s a lot of concern that if you cancel on a passenger that they’re going to be able to rate you and give you a bad rating. What you’re going to see at the end of this video is that, in fact, it just defaults to finding another driver for that passenger.

I asked a friend of mine if I could look at their phone while they requested a ride and as I’m approaching here, I’m looking, I’m seeing, I don’t want the ride. I’m going to cancel and what you’re going to see is it just goes to finding another ride. No problem.

Related: Do Acceptance and Cancellation Rates Matter?

Thanks for watching the video. I hope you got some value out of it. You learned everything there is to know about ride screening. If ethically it feels like it’s not the right thing to do, then don’t do it. If you feel it’s cool, then go for it. I found for me, it’s made me a better driver and it’s also given me a lot more serenity because I know I can stay on track to reach my goals and have a little bit more control over my day.

I want to say thank you for watching. If you haven’t subscribed yet to this YouTube channel, by all means do. If you’re a driver, we put out two to three pieces a week of great content. You’ll learn a lot about being a driver and about the industry. This is Jay Cradeur with the Rideshare Guy wishing you a great day. Be safe out there.

 

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