Why Drivers Should Never Start an Uber or Lyft Trip Early

It can be tempting to begin a trip as soon as you arrive at the passenger’s, but there are some major drawbacks to doing that. Today I want to share a really solid piece of advice from Dustin, a YouTuber over at Dustin is Driving. He covers some of the reasons why starting a trip early is a bad idea.

I also wanted to mention Stride Tax, because now is a good time to start tracking your mileage and expenses. Uber and Lyft don’t do a great job of tracking your miles, so use Stride to maximize your mileage deduction on your taxes.

What’s going on all my new, current, and future Rideshare drivers out there? Welcome back to the channel. I’m Rideshare driver Dustin. In today’s video I’m going to give everybody a perfect example of why you never ever start the trip until you’re ready to go.

My story – An XL trip gone wrong

Now I get an XL ping to this house. I’m sitting there, I’m waiting a couple minutes. Finally, two people come out, I confirm everything is correct. I got the right people. I guess it’s a family trying to go out to eat or something. I don’t know, but the father and the son sit in the van. We’re sitting there waiting. He’s like, “Yeah, my wife just needs like another five minutes.” I’m like, “Yeah, sure, no problem.” So I get out for a second and stretch because, hey, you got to take every moment you can to go ahead and stretch.

We don’t get paid (very much) for our wait time

I’m sitting outside for like maybe a couple of minutes. I get back in, I’m still looking at the clock. About 10 minutes has gone by. I’m like, “Excuse me sir. Is Everything going well? Are they coming because I’m going to go ahead and have to go here soon because it’s a great time out there. It’s starting to surge and I don’t want to go ahead and sit here. I can’t just sit here and wait. I’m not getting paid to sit here.” He’s like, “Oh yeah you are. You’re getting paid for time still aren’t you?” I’m like, “No, I have not started the trip. I don’t even know where you guys want to go or anything.” He’s like, “Oh.” He tells me where they’re going to go and I’m like, “Well that’s a good fair.” So I’m like, “All right, I’ll give it a couple more minutes.”

This passenger wanted me to take an unaccompanied minor!

I was like, “Can you least see what’s going on?” So he gets out, he goes in the house, he comes back out like another five minutes later. I’m like, “All right sir, I’m gonna go ahead and have to cancel this.” He’s like, “No, no, no. We’re going to go ahead and get ready to go.” He’s like, “Here, why don’t you go ahead and just take my kids over to the house,” because I guess they were going to someone else’s house to eat. “Why don’t you go and take my kids over there and then we’ll call another Uber to go there.” I’m like, “No sir, I can’t do that. That’s a negative ghost rider. I can’t take unaccompanied minors.” He’s like, “What are you talking about? We do this all the time. My children take it all the time.” I’m like, “How old are they? They’re like 16, 17.” I’m like, “That’s under 18, sir.”

If you begin the trip early, it’s harder to get the cancellation fee

I was like, “You have to at least be 18 to use Uber and Lyft.” He’s like, “No you don’t. No you don’t.” And I’m like, “Well, you know what, I’m just going to have to go ahead and move on because I can’t sit here and waste any more time because I’m not getting paid.” He’s like, “Oh, you’re just so rude. I’m gonna go ahead and report you to Uber so that way you’ll get in trouble and I’ll get a free ride.” He actually flat out said that to me. I was like, “Damn, you must’ve done this stuff before, huh?” I was like, “Well thankfully I didn’t start the trip yet, so good luck on that,” and I canceled the trip, had his kid get out.

He was sitting there the whole time on his phone. I don’t know what he was doing, but I went ahead and canceled, got my cancellation fee and I started driving away. Go down the corner and then I just go ahead and report to Uber myself on what happened and I tell them that this guy was trying to have me take his unaccompanied minor.

I can’t believe people nowadays man, you sit there and wait, you try to be nice and then what do they do? They want to go ahead and try to threaten you for not doing exactly what they want. That’s called being entitled. The rules are the rules and they’re there for a reason. They’re there to protect us and the riders, but people don’t want to see it that way. But I’d like to think what everybody else has to say on this. You think I did the right thing?

The best cancellation policy: “Wait Five and Drive”

Yes, I know I waited too long, I shouldn’t have, but it was an XL ride, they told me about where they were going, so I knew it was going to be decent. That was my fault. I should have just “waited five and drive,” like I tell everybody else. Every ride you have to take as an individual, but as always, everybody check the video description below for extra helpful information and tips. You keep doing your thing, you stay safe out there, like, share, comment, subscribe. Don’t take crap from anybody!