Why you should never change the way you drive for Uber during a Quest opportunity

Hello,

I started this post from commenting on an earlier post concerning the current stock price or Uber.

We pretty much have all figured out that Uber does use Bots to deter people from seeing how Uber really is. What their corporate strategy is.

There was a bot defending Uber with BS reasons how Uber isn’t really making money. Below is my response

Awesome! Thank you for explaining capitalism. Most of us learn about it as early as elementary school. But a refresher never hurts anyone.

You did give a fair but tunnel vision version of how the stock market works. Someone has spent a couple minutes watching the stock market news updates?

Now, young Jedi, I’ll expand your knowledge of how a higher stock value brings in more profits, more credit available with lenders who compete with other lenders for your business. That means lower APR on loans. I’m assuming you know what APR is an acronym for? If not ask me, I’m happy to explain.

If I only stick to a quick explanation of how higher stock evaluation of price per stock. And don’t mention all the other ways it affects the company’s realized profits. You should have a better understanding. But you should know that a current stock value is very important to the financial health of a company. Without it, a company is limited in ways to create profits. Which is the whole reason why companies want to go public, heck huge IPO will change the company in a huge way. ( again, I’m assuming you know what the acronyms mean)

If you have lenders offering lower interest rates. You refinance your debt. This one thing alone will create higher profile while lowering expenses. More profits less expenses. That means a healthier and safer investment.

You can in theory rinse and repeat this cycle. But the will eventually become a problem. Lenders can only go so low on APR they can offer to make profit high enough that is worth the risk.

The danger of doing this to often is that you put yourself into a bad position. If you start doing this often, in order to create more money and drive your stock value higher. You are creating a mirage. It will fade away once lenders see how you are increasing your value. They don’t compare anymore. They let you come to them, and they know you must do it. So APR is higher. Either the company says no to keep the current rate. Or yes. But on the next quarterly report it will show the higher expense and lower profit. Unless they had the other “current revenue earnings” make more money.

That last part is where it affects drivers and customers.

They must charge customers more and pay us less to compensate for the loss of revenue in the stock price.

That is the position Uber and Lyft are currently in. Poor management, shortsighted policies to make money, negligence, and plain old corporate greed has set the company on a path of the inevitable collapse and filling she bankruptcy.

This will go on as long as possible. The only thing that expedites this is less availability of the work force (work force is the product they are selling) when you have less product you have to get more. You either pay more, which they are past that part, or you make more off of available product.

The way they do that currently is higher fares for customer (supply and demand) this is normal. But will only last for so long.

That is now changing.

So they are down to one of the last options they have. That is creating more production while avoiding increased costs. Hence the offers of incentives to get more drivers.)More product)

But, they keep the expenses low by making it difficult to collect on the promise of incentives. This is done by wording the rules of the offers very carefully, make it extremely hard to achieve, or make it hard to collect.

This is done by deception( work for us will give you $2000 in after your first 30 days and 200 rides) but they trick us and sign us up fast. Many people don’t realize that they needed to be a code entered when signing up.
(They get to blame us) they don’t explain how it works and hide the ways you earn it. They recruit more people who will not understand or will not complain, and are too desperate and dependent on them to survival.

That’s why the drivers are overwhelmingly immigrants! They are predators and immigrants are their prey.

They gradually decrease their expenses (the amount they pay us) while increasing prices for rides, then maximizing the profit of each ride.

This will get worse. They are now locked into it. Prices will continue to rise, while drivers will continue to be paid less.

Now the question of how do we still motivate drivers to work, while continuing to lower costs, and maximizing profits.

Their answers were already available to them. The tools for the problem already exist. It has a successful track record, is well liked by drivers and has big great way to increase productivity and reputation of company by happier workers.

Say hello to Quests and surge opportunities.

However, both of these are increased expenses. Which is the reason they weren’t used until they are all that’s left to use.

I have to give them credit for the simplicity of this deception, while not technically breaking laws, creating an endless cycle for drivers to collect, putting the responsibility to hold them accountable for payments, while also not creating an easy way to prove this exist.

So, “how this works” you will ask?

You create excitement and the available amount of drivers for certain days, times and locations for them. This allows them to control where to maximize profits during the busiest days, and times in any area.

Weekend are usually the highest revenue times with the most available drivers.

So enter “Quest” challenges. These are carefully designed. The lower 2 levels are relatively easy to reach, but are not really financially worth it for a driver who is desperately try to make more money to get back to the level they were at before.

Human nature tells them that the majority or us will select one of the higher options.

Here is the real genius of the plan. As an example: The current top 2, Quests being offered in San Diego this weekend are

1. 60 fares = $45 but just 10 more = $30 more dollars for a total of $75. That amount is what drivers see.

2. 50 fares =$25, but 20 more = $50 for a total of $75 which is coincidental the same total amount as option 1.

Why have 2 options that have the same total payout for the same total rides?

It’s a manipulation of which selection people select, while still putting the company in the position of statistically being able to pay these out.

Then you have to factor the human element, the “random glitches” that occur on the app, the manipulation of the frequency of rides available, on top of the progressively manipulation of rides. The closer you get (especially if you’re really close and have very limited time left) the frequency of rides is less and the distances of the rides are greater. While the compensation of the rides is not profitable to justify accepting rides.

The manipulation of the rides starts with the amount of time. It’s a 72 hour challenge for 70 rides to reach the full reward. It starts Friday at 4am and ends on Monday morning at 4am. So mathematically about 62 minutes for each ride.

Just saying hey we give you 72 hours to complete just 70 rides and make $75 on top of the amount you already earned. Who doesn’t want free extra money for doing what you already do.

The extra drivers they are targeting are most likely people who already have a job and this is extra money. But still is hard for full time drivers.

The 72 hours is quickly subtracted down because of rules, policy and law.

There must be a six hour break after every 12 hour online. So adding 12+6 =18 72 divided by 18= 4 cycles of driving and 4 of rest during those 72 hours. So that means 6 time 4 equals 24. When you subtract 24 from 72 you get 48. The quest now is 2 days instead of 3.

Now the ratio is about 41 minutes roughly every 1.5 rides. Still mathematically reasonable.

Now let’s factor in the normal part time drivers. Their limitations, human requirements, their availability, X factors. Average humans need 8 hours of rest 8 time 3 equals 24. 24 subtracted from 48 equals 24.

Those 3 days are now just 1 day. So roughly 20 minutes per selected fare.

Now it is looking much more challenging. You are limited to short trips, and relying on quickly being assigned new fares.

They now can really control the quest from being achieved. Simply by increasing the distances and frequency of offered fares. They also can discourage you to accept fares by lowering the compensation.

Shorter trips and longer trips are both paid less. Which equals more profit.

This alone covers the quest of completed and made them more money. They have now achieved the intended goal.

Most corporations would quit while ahead and limit these manipulations.

But not Uber and Lyft. They know that they have a system in place that protects them and they own 99% of market share. So their pure greed and belief of safety from punishment. Decide to really maximize and collect every possible penny. Of course those extra pennies equal millions. But I’m the overall picture is a tiny percentage of profit.

Now with just 20 minutes of per ride. 24 total. Subtract 8 for a typical work shift on Friday it leaves 16 hours.

The time it starts on Friday is 4am. No one who does this for a second job is starting at 4am. Assuming the typical work times of 9-5, the lose 5 hours of available hours. But adding back the already included sleep time let say they get up at 7am they still lose 3 hours. Subtract 3 from 16 = 13 just over 16 minutes per ride.

There is time needed to eat, gas up, use the restroom. Let’s say 3 hours total is used 13-3= 10 hours available for 70 rides broken down to 8 minutes per ride. This just is impossible to achieve. Sure you can increase your availability, sick day, sleep less, etc.

They know the payout is most likely very low. If they paid 5% of the total amount of drivers who worked it would be a miracle.

Those 5% lose the money in gas expenses. So not really worth it.

End result company temporarily increases supply. Maximized profit off demand. Minimizing expenses.

The rich get richer!!!