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UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

businessinsider.com

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Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#11

Post by SilasX »

tossaway842 wrote: post #2

What matters is the aggregate amount over multiple trips. If you underpay on some trips and overpay on others and it is a net wash, then it doesn't really matter for the couriers if the payment algorithm is on the low side on some trips so long as it is on the high side on other trips. Under or overpaying on trips is more of an interest to those engineers trying to optimize marketplace efficiency. Meal delivery busin…

I strongly suspect that, to a driver, it makes a huge difference that you can't rely on the app to accurately tell you what your take will be, even if you can validate that after 1000 rides, it's all a wash. And even if you don't care about drivers, that introduces a marketplace inefficiency if they don't expect $1 promised compensation to result in $1 actual compensation.

Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#12

Post by tossaway842 »

SilasX wrote: post #11
tossaway842 wrote: post #2

What matters is the aggregate amount over multiple trips. If you underpay on some trips and overpay on others and it is a net wash, then it doesn't really matter for the couriers if the payment algorithm is on the low side on some trips so long as it is on the high side on other trips. Under or overpaying on trips is more of an interest to those engineers trying to optimize marketplace efficiency. Meal delivery busin…

I strongly suspect that, to a driver, it makes a huge difference that you can't rely on the app to accurately tell you what your take will be, even if you can validate that after 1000 rides, it's all a wash. And even if you don't care about drivers, that introduces a marketplace inefficiency if they don't expect $1 promised compensation to result in $1 actual compensation.

Exactly. Besides making the marketplace inefficient, underpaying participants in the marketplace and leaving them disappointed also creates churn. You want, as much possible, for marketplace participants in the system to experience a strong link between effort and reward.

Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#15

Post by artoonie »

tempsy wrote: post #4

not sure why every driver isn't already using another mileage tracker app, at least for occasional trips to keep Uber accountable. theres dozens of those in the app store...

Because Uber doesn't pretend to pay based on miles traveled for UberEats - they pay on shortest distance. So a GPS tracker is insufficient.

Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#16

Post by nlosti »

Why do these articles always reach the front page? Does hackernews hate Uber that badly? Or perhaps its profitable for news articles to always rag on them? Why is it profitable? Does everyone want to see them fail?

They're no worse than your run of the mill tech company, so I suspect something odd is going on. I dislike corporations in general and want to see them play fair, but Uber changed the way I live life, and I'm constantly worried bureaucrats and angry business/tech nerds are going to regress us back to the taxi stone ages. We're just one law away from having to go back to hailing a cab with our thumbs and trusting their internal GPS.

Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#18

Post by dheera »

On a related note, I don't understand the point of tips on UberEats.

(a) I thought the whole point of these apps was to simplify things for the user. I just want to know how much I pay in total, upfront, as I'm selecting food. Include taxes and delivery fees in a big fat "this is what you will pay" display on the screen and I'll be a 10X happier user. Delivery apps were a great opportunity to axe the complexities of tipping culture and they screwed it up IMO.

(b) They ask you for tips before they even dispatch your food, which makes zero sense to me. Tips are supposed to be "extra" based on the quality of service, so how are you supposed to blindly give 10% or 15% without even having received service? (I always put 0% when ordering and up it to 10-15% on delivery OR give cash tips, which is how things have always worked before the age of apps, but it's cumbersome to do that.)

Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#19

Post by artoonie »

bagacrap wrote: post #3

Hard to know what to make of this without seeing the full data. On 21% of trips, Uber undercounts the miles. What about the other 79%? Spot on, or is there over counting?

Most spot on (within 0.5 mi), some overpayments.

Overpayments are much less frequent than underpayments, and regardless: when someone accepts a trip, who knows if they did it because they thought "that amount sounds fair" or thought "that amount given the distance shown sounds fair." The only fair thing for Uber to do here is to rectify all underpayments, and let the overpayments stand.

Further: just because Uber couldn't find a route as efficiently as the extension could doesn't mean it was an overpayment. The extension uses Google Maps. If the driver used Uber Navigation to navigate, and Uber navigation was twice as long as Google's - is that really an overpayment?

Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#20

Post by fireattack »

nlosti wrote: post #16

Why do these articles always reach the front page? Does hackernews hate Uber that badly? Or perhaps its profitable for news articles to always rag on them? Why is it profitable? Does everyone want to see them fail? They're no worse than your run of the mill tech company, so I suspect something odd is going on. I dislike corporations in general and want to see them play fair, but Uber changed the way I live life, and…

If frontpage is the indicator (which isn't nearly close to perfect), what I gathered all these years is that HN hates most of big tech companies, of not all.
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