![]() ![]() Drivers who say their earnings have been slashed since the feature was introduced have guessed that the upfront pay model is actually designed as an auction, where Lyft or Uber show a ride at the lowest possible fare and see which driver will take the ride. ![]() ![]() While the companies have marketed upfront pay to drivers as a transparency tool, some drivers say it’s just a disguised pay cut. The feature lets drivers see ride information and what they’ll earn before accepting a ride. Lyft introduced upfront pay last October, a few months after Uber launched a similar feature in July. Kim did not confirm whether Lyft would retroactively pay riders for wait time fees incurred over the past two months. Regions where this is active include New York City, Washington state, Portland, Toronto and Vancouver.) Every other market is considered an “upfront pay” region, and drivers in those regions will be seeing wait time pay in their wallets “within the coming weeks,” Lyft spokesperson Katie Kim told TechCrunch. (Upfront ride information means drivers can see where the trip is going before accepting a ride. Lyft told TechCrunch that in markets with “upfront ride information,” drivers do receive wait time pay now. They said it’s “pennies,” and that Uber actually just increased the grace period for tardy riders from five minutes to seven minutes, but it’s something. Uber gives its wait time fees to drivers, according to a few drivers who spoke to TechCrunch. pay for each ride and pocketed the money.ĭrivers who spoke to TechCrunch said the wait time fees should go to them, not to Lyft, because they lose precious money-making minutes every time a passenger is late.ĭrivers also said they expected the two rival ride-hailing companies to follow similar playbooks. However, when Lyft was struggling to deal with rising costs of driver insurance in October, the company increased the service fees that riders in the U.S. In that case, all of that money went to the drivers, who were grappling with higher gas prices. But that hasn’t always meant the extra fees have been passed on to drivers.īack in March 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused gas prices to skyrocket, both Lyft and Uber added temporary surcharges to rides to help cover the cost of fuel. That hasn’t assuaged drivers who are angry about getting “Gryfted,” a term some are using on a Reddit forum to describe their views on losing out on the extra money.ĭrivers argue increased rider fees have become the norm in the industry in reaction to macroeconomic trends. Lyft never formally announced the new wait times the company just quietly implemented them and updated their website and never promised that the money would go to drivers. The rest should see them show up in the coming weeks, according to Lyft. Lyft told TechCrunch the delay isn’t intentional and that drivers in certain markets were in fact receiving those fees. markets who have posted on Reddit and who have talked to TechCrunch say they’ve yet to see those charges end up in their accounts. The fees are charged on a per-minute basis.ĭrivers in several U.S. Lyft’s wait time fees, or the charges that passengers incur if a driver has to wait for them upon pickup, kick in two minutes after on-time arrival for standard fares and five minutes after Black and Black XL. Lyft finally started charging riders wait time fees in December, but drivers are complaining those fees aren’t making it into their wallets.
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