10 things I hate (or love) about you - Uber

First, this is not about the company culture or atrocious and criminal behavior of their employees and management. Some of that, it appears, will be dealt with in the recent changes announced to cleanup (policy changes and firing across all levels) and the US judicial system.

I am simply writing about my user experience with the Uber app and service in India.

Second - Yes, the title is inspired by the 1999 romantic comedy movie - 10 Things I Hate About You. Can't claim to have watched it, but always thought the name had a nice ring to it. 

I moved to India few years ago. I got "spoiled" living in a foreign land - driving in mostly orderly traffic in US for over 15 years. I took driving lessons to re-acclimatize but haven't yet got the courage to drive in the city traffic during rush hour. This means I use cabs and autos to get around. While I have gotten over the fear of "every other vehicle is plowing into me" - which was very real when I moved first, I cannot get over being a product manager for every product and service I use. Here is my perspective based on my experience and periodically wearing my product manager hat and design colored lenses.

1. No built in option for multi-stop trips

Take the most common use case of picking up your kid before going home, dropping off your kid at school/daycare before heading to work. How about picking up a friend before going out? There is no option in the app for this. Yes, there is an option to rent a car for 2 or 4 hours but that costs a lot more and the minimum is too high and roughly 3-4 times of a 20-30 minute ride. The alternative is for you to be at the mercy of the driver and request a change of destination or just change it and see how the driver reacts (but you have to do this just a little before the trip ends and hope that driver waits and does not end the trip and leave). Most drivers will refuse and make you start a fresh trip. Drivers seem to have an incentive at times to complete a greater number of trips. In contrast an auto rickshaw will let you do the same if you asked the driver before you started. Another extension of this is not having a round trip for similar use cases or simply running quick errands, picking up people or goods.

2. Hate- New idea of pickup points and the underlying algorithm   

In a recent update the concept of pickup points was added. Sometimes these are accurate and at other times the app suggests you walk through a building or fly over it. Whatever happened to point to point rides - which was the best part of using a service like this. This means that most of the times I have to keep telling the driver to come inside the apartment complex I live in. Sometimes I just walk to the nearest road to avoid the back and forth with the driver, but that is not an option if I am carrying a bag or two to the airport. I suspect that some "smart" product person came up with this to reduce the time for pickup - yes make the customer walk with bags, not really thinking of the user experience.

3. Hate- Sometimes it does not take your current location.

When you start the app it should automatically take your current location, but sometimes it stays it where you last loaded app. If you don't remember to hit centre location button or restart app, you could have the driver go to your last location and end up getting fined ?50 for no fault of your own because of a bug in the app. This seems ridiculous given that Uber app now uses your location even when you are not using the app. This was one of the major changes in an update few months ago and a major invasion of privacy, in case you didn't notice.

4. Hate- pool pricing and routing deterioration

In a typical rush hour in a metro the discount for riding a pool is barely 10%. Earlier the typical discount used to be 40-50% during rush hour as well as non-rush times. Now the advantage of riding a pool is limited to off peak hours. Sort of defeats the purpose of having the pool option. Usually the routing is poor in terms of actual distance off track, not always taking into account one ways, wait at intersections and such. Also the drivers can at times end up waiting a lot for the customer that does not show up rather then the so called suggested wait time of 2-3 minutes.

5. Love - Profiles 

The most basic use is for separating personal and business expenses but you cane create more for use with client projects and such as well. It's easy to create, set payment options, choose whenever you ride and even has integration with some popular expense apps. Recently I started using Expensify and find this integration useful. Having features like travel reports is also handy. It would be great to get a simple monthly summary of travel time, distance and money spent as a way of knowing usage and commuting pattern.

6. Love - Automatically recalling last visited or favorite locations

This is a really convenient feature. You don't even have to type anything but simply select from the list if Uber guesses it correctly. For a predictable pattern like commuting to work and back it is always right. It also seems to have built in smarts to guess possible locations depending on time of day and day of week. On weekends it suggests a trip to the mall which I often take with kids. Initially it was a stark reminder of how much Uber knows about my travel location and patterns, but over time that bothers me a little less. The classic privacy-convenience trade off playing out. If a user wants to have the convenience of not having to type in locations from scratch or searching each time, he or she has to give up their location and travel history.

7. Love - Auto discounts without entering coupon codes

Periodically there will be a regional promotion such as 50% off during afternoon times 1 pm - 5 pm during a holiday week or weekend. Earlier you would receive an SMS or email with a coupon code and have to enter that by opening the app. Sometimes it worked and other times it did not, possibly because of time of day you entered it etc. In any case these days it seems you don't have to enter the code and the discount is automatically applied. In contrast, I have never had a discount code sent by Ola get accepted in the past few months. Eventually I stopped trying and avoid using Ola, except when there is problem with Uber or I need to have two trips at the same time.

8. Love - fare reduction for poor routes

First time I got an email that I was given a discount because I was overcharged due to a poor route - I was very pleasantly surprised. After that I periodically go through the trouble of asking for this when I know that driver missed a turn or road closure etc. It works sometimes and at other times it claims the trip price was predetermined or within calculated limits. I suspect that these reductions are capped based on customer spend, number of times you ask for this, but it's always nice to get a little money back. In contrast if a regular taxi or auto takes a poor route you simply end up paying for the drivers mistake or wilful action to increase fare.

9. Hate-Fleet quality or "AC not working, Sir"

Admittedly fleet quality has improved over time but far too often the AC is not working in a Tata Indica that you will usually get for the cheapest UberGo option. Sometimes the driver will warn you when you are about to enter but more often than not the driver will reveal this only after you sit in and start moving. At times the driver will make some excuse that seems acceptable, at other times it seems like a ruse to save a bit on fuel costs at the expense of customer inconvenience. Initially I complained to Uber, but mostly received a template response on "regret the inconvenience", but no discount. In places like Mumbai and Lot of tier 2 metros you still have the non-AC yellow taxis that have a lower fare rate per km. Would love to see Uber drop the rate if customer reports AC not working. Even better would be ensuring fleet quality and discouraging drivers from playing this trick or requiring them to maintain the AC.

10. Love and hate - customer service

For most problems there is now an automated option to deal with the issue - poor routing, ... in fact the menu is now 2-3 levels deep. Almost like an annoying IVR. It's hard to simply reach out to customer service. Most of the times the responses are canned and don't do anything more then acknowledge a complaint. It's hard to know whether anybody is paying attention.

And still, periodically I am pleasantly surprised. Recently my kid left his wallet in the car with a few hundred rupees. I reported this and initially got a canned response that drivers are independent contractors and best option is to reach out to driver. The driver didn't pick up the calls. I figured - that was the end of it. Couple of days later I got a response from a human being that they had spoken to the driver. After this the driver picked up my call and confirmed that he has the wallet. Couple more days and couple more emails to customer service - lo and behold the wallet was returned (minus ?50), but no small feat all the same. I was thoroughly impressed! 

There are many other features that I like - nice to be able to use Yatra eCash for discounts, can be used in many other countries, you can easily call a cab for a family member even in a different city and more.

There are many other features/problems that I dislike - surge pricing, the reminder about charging up your account shows only when you are about to book a ride, many drivers cannot read the map and more.

All the same, the 10 listed above are the ones I feel strongly about and would be delighted to hear your thoughts on what you love/hate.

Disclaimer: All trademarks belong to respective companies and neither the company nor its competitors paid me to write this. I wrote this because I love to. ;-)

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Kaustubh Patekar leads Nitrous Oxide a venture design and consulting firm. He is a rocket scientist by training and studied at IIT Bombay and MIT. After working for over a decade in the US, he returned to India and is currently having fun helping startups succeed. To explore putting in rocket fuel for your venture, connect on LinkedIn or [email protected]