How to Use The Uber Driver App Profile, and Reporting Problems

Have you filled out your driver profile in the Uber driver app? The driver app has a lot of features that most drivers ignore, and the extra information you can add to your profile is something I don’t see most drivers taking advantage of.

I want to share a video from Mark over at UberHints that’s all about using the Uber driver profile features, and how you can use the driver app to manage problems you might run into.

Hey everybody. Mark, here with UberHints.com. If you’re watching this video, it could be because you’re thinking of driving for Uber, and you know, I always say there’s no time to drive like when you’re a new driver because you get the bonuses, the guarantees, other incentives. You can go to UberHints.com to sign up or click the link down below, and please use my referral code.

Now, let’s take a look at the driver app. Today, we’re going to look at how to change your profile information and also how to report problems that you may have.

Features of the Uber driver profile

Let’s take a look at your profile. In the app, I’m starting with the app as it looks on your landing page. I’ll show little screen shots of this as we go along, and the first thing we want to do in order to open up the profile is click that lower right where it says Account. And it takes you to your account page, and you see a couple of things there.

Number one, you’ll see your picture and your name. The rider will see this information when they request you, and you respond to their request. They’ll see your name.tThey’ll see that picture, and then they will see that vehicle information. Here it says I am in a Toyota Venza. It shows my license plate, and you can change those things as need be if you get a new vehicle, or you just don’t like the way your mug looks on that picture. So that’s the information that they see.

A lot of the things that we talk about here in the driver profile, the rider will be able to see if they want to. Now, I have been a rider, and I can tell you, I’ve never had a lot of reason to go and slide through that, but we’ll talk about that as we go.

So if you click on the driver profile, you will see it gives you information. It says how many trips do you have. What is your current rating. Mine’s dropping a little bit, at a 4.87, but I don’t care. You watch my video about ratings. I don’t care as long as I’m not getting complaints and saying that I’m doing things poorly! Who could rate me poorly? I mean, me. Look at this face. And it says I’ve been on the job driving for a year.

And then you can change some of this information or amend it. What languages do you speak. That’s about the only one here that I can see that would make any sense at all.

It’s good to know, particularly if they’re foreign visitors, that you speak their language. You know if I was here visiting from France or maybe parts of Canada where they’re French-speaking, and I didn’t speak English, it would be nice to know if my driver spoke French. Or, if I was here from Mexico or Spain, and I want to know if my driver spoke Spanish.

Other profile features you might not fill out. Is this a dating app?

The rest of these, I have no idea why anyone would need to put this information in. Where did you grow up. I guess if you’re a local, they might ask more questions of you. What can you recommend in the city, I figure if people want to know that, they’ll ask me, and if I want to share it, I’ll tell them. I don’t know why it has to be in the app. How would you describe yourself? You know, this is not a dating app. I don’t think people need to know this, but it’s crazy how today, if they’re asked a question on an app or on an online survey, they just feel compelled to answer. You don’t have to answer any of this information, but it’s here. What’s a fun fact about you? What’s your favorite Uber story to tell?

I don’t fill any of this out. For one thing, I’m not proficient in a foreign language, but if I was, that might be the only thing I would answer on here. So that’s our profile. The rider does see it. I really wouldn’t put a whole lot of other information in there. The information on that landing screen, that’s important because that’s what they’re going to look at. They’re going to want to know your name, your vehicle, your license plate.

How drivers can get help using the Uber driver app

Now, what if you need help? What if there is something that goes wrong on a ride? What if you have questions? What if you have issues? Concerns? This is an important one. I’m not going to look at everything. If we go down one path, I think you’ll figure out how to go down all of the other paths, but let’s click on Help and you see you get a lot of information here.

Now, if I were to click on that top Support Messages what you would see are all of the archived support messages that I have put in in my time as a driver. A lot of those are not very nice. Some of you may remember that I put in a problem, an issue, once where I didn’t get my referral. By the way, I never did get that referral.

So let’s look at Trip Issues and Refunds. It’s right at the top. It’s one of those common ones. I had a problem with a ride, and here’s what the problem was. So we click on Trip Issues and Refunds, and that’s going to bring up a history of our most recent rides, and you can scroll, and it will go through lots and lots and lots of rides.

I did a video about a week ago about Uber Eats, and I said I was on the job for about an hour and a half, and I made about $35. I was only driving for 66 minutes according to this, and in that time, I made $36.00, so I made about $35 per hour in that one-hour driving for Eats. I think maybe that’s the real story here. $35.00 an hour, driving for Uber Eats. If you add up these miles, I don’t think I put on 27 miles that day, made 36 bucks, so maybe $2.50 gas. You can make money with Uber Eats, but I digress.

Getting detailed information and help with a specific trip

Let’s click that top one January 21 at 6:51, $8.61. I click on that, and it shows where the ride originated, where I ended up. It shows that I got tipped. My earnings were $8.61. I was on that ride for a little over seven minutes and 2.5 miles. So you can get all that information.

But, if you had an issue, scroll to the bottom, and again, click Help. So, you see, there is a little bit of path here that you have to follow. And when I click that Help, it says, I was in an accident, issues with the fare, issues with the rider, issues getting trip request, and issues with Uber Navigation. We’re going to talk about Uber Navigation in a future video. It is wackadoodle.

All right, so we’re going to say we had an issue with my rider. I’m not going to submit this by the way. So let’s see, I took the wrong rider, they were rude, they made me feel unsafe, they made a mess, changing rider ratings, rider damaged my vehicle. We are going to say that the rider made a mess. So, the rider made a mess in my vehicle, and if I scroll down to the bottom of that, rider damaged my vehicle, take a photo. Here’s what you do.

This is important, so I’m going to slow down a little bit ’cause people sometimes ask, “What if they burn a hole in my upholstery with a cigarette?” Vomiting and getting sick is a real big one, right? So they want you to take pictures of what happened. Share the details. Confirm the name and the trip because you’ve gotten there through the specific trip, but they want to double check, double confirmation, and submit it. And that’s how you go about submitting a problem.

Now, the problem doesn’t have to be they made a mess. You saw there were a lot of other paths, but those will all follow the same technique if you just look at what the question is, and it’ll guide you right through it.

Practice looking through the help features so you know what to do when problems arise

The thing is, if you don’t do it a time or two, you might not know how to get there because right out of the gate, if I just start, I’m backing out, and I have to back out about seven or eight screens. If I’m just on my home screen, it doesn’t say on there anywhere, “Someone made a mess in my car.” And I could go through here just wading through this information forever until you stumble across it, so I hope that this video will help you out with reporting issues and being able to change that driver profile.

If you have other questions, particularly if you are a newer driver and you have questions about how the app works, let me know. I plan on doing a series of these, beginner videos on how the drive app works, and I’m happy to tackle your question as well. You can leave a comment on the video page or you can email me at the email at the end of the video. As always, I love it when you leave comments, when you give me the thumbs up, particularly when you share the videos and subscribe. I’m Mark with UberHints.com.