I’m considering driving for Uber or Lyft to augment my income. Anyone have experience with this?
My cousin became an Uber driver about a month or two months ago. He likes it, but there seems to be a lot to learn as you go. There are lots of little things that can happen to make you lose points and once you lose enough points you’re kicked off the roster. Like if you set yourself as available then turn down a ride you lose points - I thought that kind of sucks for people who have had a bad experience picking up from a certain place or whatever.
He’s learned a lot about the system in the time he’s been doing it, so I guess it’s not that hard to figure out. You just gotta be perfect all the time to keep up your standing and know what to do when any situation arises (he lost points when he returned a phone to a passenger who had left it in his car, but failed to “close out the case” himself with Uber. Weird stuff like that.)
Well, shit. I just found out my car is too old. :smack:
Does anyone know the insurance ramifications?
There is much debate about this.
The taxi industry claims that if you have an accident while you are driving for Uber, the insurance companies will not pay because taxis have to have special commercial insurance to cover injuries to passangers if the car is being driven all day to carry passangers.
But it’s not exactly clear what will happen.
I was thinking of driving for Uber but decided against it because there is no way I could ever win a lawsuit against some big insurance company. And you can bet that insurance companies will try every trick in the book to avoid paying any claims for people who were using their cars to drive for Uber.
Your best bet may be to use Google and search for recent news stories about Uber or Lyft. There are a great many of them.
Might wanna go here:
This is from a couple years ago but may be informative: Ask the Uber Driver - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board
I have no experience, but from what I’ve read don’t believe Uber’s hype about how much money you will be making.
Ask yourself the following question: If you owned an insurance company and you found out that an Uber driver was involved in an accident, would you be willing to pay the costs of their accidents?
There are good reasons why taxis pay a lot more for insurance than private drivers and IMO, there is no way an insurance company would be willing to cover the cost of accidents for Uber drivers if they did not pay the insurance rate for using their cars as commercial vehicles. Of course, they first need to learn the car was being used as an Uber car. But even if they did pay and they found out later (even several months or years later), IMO, the odds are high they would sue to recover their money.
Also, if you are thinking of trying their service as a passenger, don’t believe their hype about how much less their service costs. I’ve tried it a few times and it has always costs me between 80% and 90% of what a taxi would. Of course, I’m just estimating that and I’m biased. So my estimates could be a little high. But consider that if you are injured while you are an Uber passenger, there is always a risk the insurance company will refuse your claim.
However, if I owned an insurance company, I would consider this as an opportunity. I would offer Uber drivers a rate somewhere in between what a taxi pays and what a private citizen pays. After all, I would guess a private citizen would only use their car as an Uber car for maybe 8 hours a day while a taxi is often used almost 24 hours a day. There are offsetting factors. But I still think there is an opportunity here for insurance companies.
Seconded. I’ve looked into Uber a few times while traveling and each time I would have saved maybe a dollar over a regular taxi. The taxi stand is just easier.
Not just the taxi stand. I can step out into the street and hail a taxi, and have it pull over now–or I can use Uber, and have a cab in a while.
Which may be more expensive than a regular taxi; see here:
An $1100 charge for an Uber ride? No, thanks
My insurance company is fine with me driving for Uber here in SF, In Cali Uber is required to carry and insure the drivers when the app is on, when there are passengers, and when dropping off.
Oh and to answer the OP, you can make decent money, Not amazing but its kinda fun to do. Considering a few factors,
do you have a car that meets the requirements?
do you as a driver meet the requirements?
if yes, then its probably the easiest job you have ever applied for that will not involve an interview (you will meet with an actual human but its just to get you into the system) no supervisor, no schedule, just you your car, and a bunch of people who need rides.
One data point about costs of uber v taxi: In my area (the valley), an uber ride from my usual bar to home is like $7 (non surge). A cab is like almost $20 with tip. Plus an uber takes no more than like 5ish min to arrive and you can track them on the phone. Cab takes like 20, if they even show up at all. Can often hail one quicker than conjuring one.
For me, it’s not the price (I’d actually pay more for Uber than taxis), but their consistency and trackability via their app. For street hails or anywhere there’s a taxi stand, sure, I’ll use that. Picking up from my house to go to the airport? Uber has proven more dependable and predictable than cabs, at least around my house. I’ve had a few times a cab dispatcher dispatch a cab to my house, only for it to show up 45 minutes later, with me having no idea whether they’ve forgotten my order or where the cab might be, if I should just call another company, etc., but with Uber it’s five to ten minutes and I know exactly where cars are and if I need to consider other transportation options (and, so far, I haven’t as there have been plenty of cars all times of day.)
As for insurance, there are insurance options out there in somstates for Uber and driving a personal car. See here.
Uber has its own insurance policy: https://newsroom.uber.com/insurance-for-uberx-with-ridesharing/
When you have the app switched on, it covers you like a basic liability policy. Once you’ve actually accepted a fare, it’s a $1 million dollar liability, collision, and comprehensive policy.
The only real grey area with your personal insurance would be if you got in an at-fault accident while the app was on but you hadn’t accepted a fare. Uber’s policy would pay a third-party claim, but you’d be relying on your own insurance to fix your car.
Wow! I never knew that. I may think this over again.
Thanks very much for that info!
Agreed, I like Uber for the customer service, and would pay extra for it. It used to be DC cabs wouldn’t even come to my neighborhood, you’d call and they’d never show up. They also will insist you pay cash, even though accepting the credit card is the law. Uber works, I call and it shows up when it’s supposed to show up and does what it’s supposed to do.
Yeah, this. In areas where taxis are plentiful, Uber might not be the better option, but where I live, decades of mismanagement of the taxi licensing system by the city has completely distorted the market, resulting in far fewer taxis than the city actually needs. No one in the industry wants to fix this, though, because they all have huge capital investments in the system as it’s currently set up, and so Uber is the only organization that’s actually doing anything proactive to improve service in this area.
If I may continue my DC cab rant: and the cabbies in DC, rather than ask themselves what Uber is doing that they aren’t; stages a bunch of childish protests about Uber, including intentionally creating traffic jams during rush hour. And they wonder why they’re losing business.