Uber is making it harder and harder to get on board with the idea that it's not an employer. Leveling out people's pay over multiple trips or retroactively adjusting the reward per job sure sounds like an employer having very strong control over the work conditions and compensation. And this almost brings back echoes of Doordash (?) when it was caught taking drivers' tips so that their pay was reduced to the minimum hourly promised "wage".
It's like Uber are trying to shoot themselves in the foot with all the cost squeezing and profit seeking at the same time they're in a fundamental legal fight defining what they are.
You would think they would go in the opposite direction and pay people such good rates during this controversy, you could hold that up and say, "see? People are clearly much better under this system". But I guess not.
On a separate note, I will say that this is pretty expected in terms of how software errors go. Of course programmers at a company will be checking quite diligently that they're not overpaying through their algorithms. But underpaying? Only those who can't easily check your code are harmed by that one. It is a rare company that spends money and resources on verifying from their users' point of view that they're being delivered what was promised -- unless that company actively cares about the user.
> It's like Uber are trying to shoot themselves in the foot with all the cost squeezing and profit seeking at the same time they're in a fundamental fight defining what they are.
I don't think they have a choice. UberEats is fundamentally unprofitable. If it was run profitably, the high(er) prices would drive a large portion of their customers away and into the arms of other "startups" willing to run at a loss or towards picking up the food themselves. Plus Uber can't pretend to be an early-stage startup anymore and their constant quarterly losses are starting to add up.
I'm still not convinced this new food delivery industry is viable without constant cash injections.
Just 17% of Uber and Lyft drivers surveyed want to remain full-time employees [0].
How does this not stop this whole conversation in its tracks immediately? There's so much grandstanding about this, you and every other politician or upper middle class tech worker has their takes on how these poor drivers are being tricked into bad deals they can't understand and need the protection of full-time employment. But it's not a very good protection! There are a lot of downsides, and drivers simply don't want it, but for some reason a lot of people feel the need to force this change through anyway.
Our current labor system, and its default assumption that tying yourself to a full-time job with a large company is the only way you deserve to have stability, is just very clearly showing its flaws here. It's not compatible with gig economy work, why can't we look for solutions that drivers would actually want, and that would help every other independent contractor? Things like improving overall safety nets, so that everyone has health coverage and is covered in the case of things like disabilities even if they don't work for a large company.
Almost every take I read on the pro-AB5 side of this argument seems more focused on punishing
Uber the corporation for some perceived moral failing, than on actually helping the drivers. It's quite bizarre.
> It is a rare company that spends money and resources on verifying from their users' point of view that they're being delivered what was promised -- unless that company actively cares about the user.
I wouldn't say it's rare. Companies that do this are very open to lawsuits but also bad press, and that's the thing all companies hate - having to make public statements and ultimately fix the issue, isn't worth it to any business at scale. The DoorDash tipgate was hugely embarrassing for them, and Uber has also been very publicly ridiculed in the past that the the last thing Dara wants is anymore bad press.
> It is a rare company that spends money and resources on verifying from their users' point of view that they're being delivered what was promised -- unless that company actively cares about the user.
I have gotten a check from the CA Treasurer on a few occasions because I didn’t check some box and take a tax deduction that I was entitled to. Not a company, and certainly if I underpaid the state would come after me to be made whole. But some organizations do work both ways.
The biggest reason I would say that the drivers are not independent contractors is that they are not allowed to set their own rates.
Uber's argument that they are not employees is based on the concept that they only a platform facilitating a connection between drivers people who need rides or in this case deliveries. But if the contractors are truly separate entities, then Uber by controlling the cost of the ride/delivery, is fixing prices.
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 businesses have as much of an interest in not underpaying as doing so reduces supply availability and therefore reliability and they have also an interest in not overpaying as that reduces profitability. The ultimate goal is optimal pricing in a three sided market to maximize liquidity as the business model does best when you optimize for volume of transactions. Maximizing liquidity amortizes fixed costs over more transactions. This applies as much to the meal delivery companies as to the restaurants involved.
At the end of the day, distance driven is very imperfect as you have issues like poor GPS signal and in cities you have the dilemma of urban canyons and tunnels. Also, drivers don't always take the suggested route. At vehicle speeds, it's hard problem to solve due to time between GPS pings. Another issue besides GPS inaccuracy is clock inaccuracy, especially with round-trip times between server and client and client and server aren't always symmetrical, especially on cellular networks, and this messes up all sorts of clock synchronization strategies. The peanut gallery on HN is seriously underestimating the complexity of measuring distance using GPS. It's pretty darn good when conditions are ideal, but when they aren't, good luck.
Another question is the magnitude of the underpayment in the 21% of trips. Are we talking about 1-2%, 5-10%, some other deviation? If it was something like 1-2%, we should all be amazed. Gage repeatability and reproducibility matters.
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.
If they are running a business, especially something at scale, and they are properly funded - they should be 'paying the right amount', there's really no excuses.
If they can snare people into driving for them, there are material switching costs for workers, and 'underpaying' on some level is actually something they can get away with.
At the 'low end of labour' workers generally have zero power, much less during covid, so it's not a 'marketplace' in the more broad sense. If it was, we wouldn't even need minimum wage laws, or Medicare for employed people etc..
If the technical challenge is 'insurmountable' then they need to figure something out: minimum guarnatees etc. , even over the aggregate, as you say.
Click through businessinsider to the sourced salon article, where they directly interview the driver. His initial case was a 75% underpayment, when he was paid for 1 mile on a 4-mile trip.
The interview seems to indicate it's an aggregate underpayment across all trips. The tool is available for examination if you are truly skeptical.
edit: also, you seem to have made your account just to comment on this thread. what's up?
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.)
Just like in the restaurant industry, it's a way to offload costs onto the customer. Luckily in UberEats you don't have to confront someone if you don't tip them and aren't at risk of getting the side-eye which happens a lot, particularly in America.
(b) you can change your tip afterward if your service was not as expected.
Just like in a restaurant: maybe your default tip is 25%, but great service bumps that up, and bad service bumps it down. You go in expecting to pay 25%.
The salon source linked in the article has a bit more (and slightly different?) detailed information, including a link to the tool developed to track mileage
The salon article was posted with about 8 hours of data in Google Analytics. Business Insider has more up-to-date numbers, with about 4 days of data from the Chrome Extension.
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?
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?
Agreed, but keep in mind that the platforms have started making design changes to discourage this. Some of them now surface the tip to the driver which can lead to $0 in-app tips lowering the displayed value of your request so you end up being passed over for other people. If you don't tip in the app you risk waiting a lot longer for service.
Why would there be a buy in the Eats tracking but not in Rideshare? I'd imagine it's the same underlying GPS tracking/routing software used in both cases. Is it just that the rides are paid differently than Eats deliveries are so they're noticing it differently?
There are some anecdotes that it also happens on Rideshare, but I don't have a car so I can't verify until Uber allows me to pick up passengers on the handlebars of my bike
Middlemen are always going to try to increase their take on both sides. It is the only way they can grow the profitability of their business because they can't add more value, they can only subtract.
Agree with the part about profitability, but middlemen can definitely add value.
I’d say that Uber’s wide reach is valuable, the fact that they likely exist in the city you’re visiting, the fact that they likely have enough cars to pick you up in under 5 minutes. These are valuable things that don’t come from individual drivers or small taxi companies, but rather from big aggregators.
Middlemen’s value is usually in their ability to save time for the buyer.
Costco is valuable to me because it saves me time from having to research products and supply chains. I could go to aliexpress.com, but I don’t because I’d rather spend my time in other ways.
If I land in a foreign country, I could spend time researching taxi companies, or I can save time and pay Uber/Lyft a premium if I already trust them.
As a seller, a middleman (or broker) can save me time by discriminating against buyers I don’t want to waste time entertaining.
Not sure about UberEats but just two days ago a I took an Uber ride that was paying the driver about 5.50-6 euros instead of the usual 9-9.50 euros that the ride was usually worth, I felt bad about the driver and so I helped make up the difference in cash, directly to him. I know the sums and the difference itself don't seem that big in nominal terms but I live in Eastern Europe where the difference between 6 euros and 9 euros still counts for lots of people.
Anyway, interesting to see that that wasn't an isolated incident when it comes to Uber the company.
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...
The question I would ask is how accurate all those other mileage trackers are? If they are based on GPS, then they have all the same issues with fewer engineering resources trying to correct defects.
The only mileage tracker that matters is the vehicle odometer on a stock vehicle with stock diameter tires with most of its tread. You'd need a device connected to the vehicle via ODB2 where you can press a bunch at the start and end of each trip.
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.
They're a nightmarish zombie product of venture capital. They have never made a profit, and have lost more money in the past three months than most businesses will ever achieve ($5! BILLION!) with nothing to show for it, but they continue to exist as a testament to silicon valley hubris. They operate by ignoring laws, and pulling out once enforcement becomes effective. They have launched tracking programs specifically to lie to regulators. Their employees frequently do not make minimum wage, and there's no plan on even tracking this - attempts to force them to do so cause operational cessations.
In short, they are all of the evils of a short-sighted "tech" company in one package.
Uber has changed your life for the better, by taking advantage of thousands of other people. Worrying about going back to the taxi Stone Age is actually worry about making things fair for those people.
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.
[+] [-] supernova87a|5 years ago|reply
It's like Uber are trying to shoot themselves in the foot with all the cost squeezing and profit seeking at the same time they're in a fundamental legal fight defining what they are.
You would think they would go in the opposite direction and pay people such good rates during this controversy, you could hold that up and say, "see? People are clearly much better under this system". But I guess not.
On a separate note, I will say that this is pretty expected in terms of how software errors go. Of course programmers at a company will be checking quite diligently that they're not overpaying through their algorithms. But underpaying? Only those who can't easily check your code are harmed by that one. It is a rare company that spends money and resources on verifying from their users' point of view that they're being delivered what was promised -- unless that company actively cares about the user.
[+] [-] AlexandrB|5 years ago|reply
I don't think they have a choice. UberEats is fundamentally unprofitable. If it was run profitably, the high(er) prices would drive a large portion of their customers away and into the arms of other "startups" willing to run at a loss or towards picking up the food themselves. Plus Uber can't pretend to be an early-stage startup anymore and their constant quarterly losses are starting to add up.
I'm still not convinced this new food delivery industry is viable without constant cash injections.
[+] [-] cactus2093|5 years ago|reply
How does this not stop this whole conversation in its tracks immediately? There's so much grandstanding about this, you and every other politician or upper middle class tech worker has their takes on how these poor drivers are being tricked into bad deals they can't understand and need the protection of full-time employment. But it's not a very good protection! There are a lot of downsides, and drivers simply don't want it, but for some reason a lot of people feel the need to force this change through anyway.
Our current labor system, and its default assumption that tying yourself to a full-time job with a large company is the only way you deserve to have stability, is just very clearly showing its flaws here. It's not compatible with gig economy work, why can't we look for solutions that drivers would actually want, and that would help every other independent contractor? Things like improving overall safety nets, so that everyone has health coverage and is covered in the case of things like disabilities even if they don't work for a large company.
Almost every take I read on the pro-AB5 side of this argument seems more focused on punishing Uber the corporation for some perceived moral failing, than on actually helping the drivers. It's quite bizarre.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2020/08/19/wil...
[+] [-] wmab|5 years ago|reply
I wouldn't say it's rare. Companies that do this are very open to lawsuits but also bad press, and that's the thing all companies hate - having to make public statements and ultimately fix the issue, isn't worth it to any business at scale. The DoorDash tipgate was hugely embarrassing for them, and Uber has also been very publicly ridiculed in the past that the the last thing Dara wants is anymore bad press.
[+] [-] karthikb|5 years ago|reply
I have gotten a check from the CA Treasurer on a few occasions because I didn’t check some box and take a tax deduction that I was entitled to. Not a company, and certainly if I underpaid the state would come after me to be made whole. But some organizations do work both ways.
[+] [-] zadkey|5 years ago|reply
Uber's argument that they are not employees is based on the concept that they only a platform facilitating a connection between drivers people who need rides or in this case deliveries. But if the contractors are truly separate entities, then Uber by controlling the cost of the ride/delivery, is fixing prices.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/legal-problem-could-crash-ube...
I am not aware what the current status of legal rulings for or against Uber in this regard, but I believe my point still stands.
[+] [-] tossaway842|5 years ago|reply
Under or overpaying on trips is more of an interest to those engineers trying to optimize marketplace efficiency. Meal delivery businesses have as much of an interest in not underpaying as doing so reduces supply availability and therefore reliability and they have also an interest in not overpaying as that reduces profitability. The ultimate goal is optimal pricing in a three sided market to maximize liquidity as the business model does best when you optimize for volume of transactions. Maximizing liquidity amortizes fixed costs over more transactions. This applies as much to the meal delivery companies as to the restaurants involved.
At the end of the day, distance driven is very imperfect as you have issues like poor GPS signal and in cities you have the dilemma of urban canyons and tunnels. Also, drivers don't always take the suggested route. At vehicle speeds, it's hard problem to solve due to time between GPS pings. Another issue besides GPS inaccuracy is clock inaccuracy, especially with round-trip times between server and client and client and server aren't always symmetrical, especially on cellular networks, and this messes up all sorts of clock synchronization strategies. The peanut gallery on HN is seriously underestimating the complexity of measuring distance using GPS. It's pretty darn good when conditions are ideal, but when they aren't, good luck.
Another question is the magnitude of the underpayment in the 21% of trips. Are we talking about 1-2%, 5-10%, some other deviation? If it was something like 1-2%, we should all be amazed. Gage repeatability and reproducibility matters.
[+] [-] SilasX|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jariel|5 years ago|reply
If they can snare people into driving for them, there are material switching costs for workers, and 'underpaying' on some level is actually something they can get away with.
At the 'low end of labour' workers generally have zero power, much less during covid, so it's not a 'marketplace' in the more broad sense. If it was, we wouldn't even need minimum wage laws, or Medicare for employed people etc..
If the technical challenge is 'insurmountable' then they need to figure something out: minimum guarnatees etc. , even over the aggregate, as you say.
[+] [-] Razele|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ruined|5 years ago|reply
The interview seems to indicate it's an aggregate underpayment across all trips. The tool is available for examination if you are truly skeptical.
edit: also, you seem to have made your account just to comment on this thread. what's up?
[+] [-] dheera|5 years ago|reply
(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.)
[+] [-] nlosti|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artoonie|5 years ago|reply
Just like in a restaurant: maybe your default tip is 25%, but great service bumps that up, and bad service bumps it down. You go in expecting to pay 25%.
[+] [-] ruined|5 years ago|reply
https://www.salon.com/2020/08/20/programmers-say-uber-eats-i...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ubercheats/pkdblhe...
[+] [-] artoonie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ruined|5 years ago|reply
https://nitter.net/ArminSamii/status/1295857106080456706
[+] [-] bagacrap|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artoonie|5 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] kaonashi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevingadd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmab|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artoonie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jacquesm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danpalmer|5 years ago|reply
I’d say that Uber’s wide reach is valuable, the fact that they likely exist in the city you’re visiting, the fact that they likely have enough cars to pick you up in under 5 minutes. These are valuable things that don’t come from individual drivers or small taxi companies, but rather from big aggregators.
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|5 years ago|reply
Costco is valuable to me because it saves me time from having to research products and supply chains. I could go to aliexpress.com, but I don’t because I’d rather spend my time in other ways.
If I land in a foreign country, I could spend time researching taxi companies, or I can save time and pay Uber/Lyft a premium if I already trust them.
As a seller, a middleman (or broker) can save me time by discriminating against buyers I don’t want to waste time entertaining.
[+] [-] paganel|5 years ago|reply
Anyway, interesting to see that that wasn't an isolated incident when it comes to Uber the company.
[+] [-] _heimdall|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrweasel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tempsy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tossaway842|5 years ago|reply
The only mileage tracker that matters is the vehicle odometer on a stock vehicle with stock diameter tires with most of its tread. You'd need a device connected to the vehicle via ODB2 where you can press a bunch at the start and end of each trip.
[+] [-] artoonie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loraa|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Grustaf|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nlosti|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] freeone3000|5 years ago|reply
In short, they are all of the evils of a short-sighted "tech" company in one package.
[+] [-] prh8|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fireattack|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dannyr|5 years ago|reply
So media should stop reporting on possible bad actions by Uber?
Excess coverage or not, the media exposed discrimination and harassments at Uber that led to the company changing for the better.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]