Uber Pay is Often Not Pay at All

A typical example of the "criminal" offers that Uber gives to its drivers (and this is a better paying one. Many are much, much worse, and few are better).

Much of the time, starving and homeless drivers just hyper-actively click accept as fast as they can! Who cares if the whole ride falls way below minimum wage and that Uber has become their unwitting charity?

Drivers often make less than nothing for one of America's most common dangerous jobs—that of a Taxi Driver.

The first time you do 100,000 miles per year and get T-boned or rear ended, which you can bank on will happen once per every three years of driving, the game changes and the job is simply way too dangerous for way too little money, but for some strange reason, that doesn't stop Uber and its duopoly partner Lyft, or the food delivery companies from putting lipstick on their pigs. They simply continue on their merry predatory way while considering "law breaking" as a cost of business.

The cost for me to provide this ride would have been as follows:

2.8 miles at .85 per mile = $2.38. Uber would pay $3.64. The profit was $1.26

Time based on Uber estimate = 13 minutes. I would have made 10 cents per minute. Times 60, would be $6 per hour, not $20 per hour.

I would have had only a few seconds to calculate whether I wanted the ride or not, all while negotiating traffic while finishing another passenger's ride. The proposed rider had only a 4.87 rating, to boot! We drivers give them 5.0 ratings whenever we can, so why was this rider rated comparatively lower??? If they don't tip, we can't lower the rating, the way the top secret algorithm is designed, so what happened???

At the supposed, but unconstitutional Proposition 22 guarantee, you'd get $20 per hour. But that's only for the .6 miles and 7 minutes. The big lie is right there in the fine print. As employees (as Lyft and Uber drivers are by law), they'd get paid for all of it so that the drivers hourly would be at least $15.50 per hour, or over twice as much as what Uber would've paid me for this ride.

Furthermore, the time and mileage as Uber estimates it is almost always less than your actual mileage and time. For example, your car is running and you are positioning or waiting for your next ride request. That's all on your own time and dime. Uber doesn't pay you for all of that either.

Worse, as car repair, insurance, and gas prices go through the roof, driver profits get constantly worse, with Uber & friends taking up to 80% of a riders payments, primarily to pay for legitimate lawsuit settlements against these illegitimate companies.

Meanwhile, Uber et al continuously manipulate drivers with lengthy tiny-print legalese contracts designed so that they are never actually read by drivers and passengers.

Uber also, distracts drivers all the time while they are driving passengers. They're "carrot and stick" algorithms incentivize sleepy and reckless driving (the only way that too many drivers are able to make their tiny bonuses).

Let's say you need just one more ride before the bonus period ends at 4 am. So the algorithm offers you a ride to Redding, three hours away. So there you go on that unprofitable ride just to get your bonus. More unprofitable if you can't get a ride back to your home. Let's say your pickup was 30 minutes away and they cancel. Well, now you won't get your bonus.

To make that situation worse, I think Uber changed the measurement that now states that your qualifying ride has to be completed prior to the bonus period ending. In other words you took the unprofitable ride that was cancelled anyway, and now its after 4am. Worse, if the passenger doesn't cancel, doing 3 hours to Redding starting at 3 am, gives you a great opportunity to fall asleep at the wheel, either on your way to pick up the passenger, or as you give the ride, or as you attempt to drive the three hours back home afterwards. It's all really "fouled up beyond all recognition (FUBAR)." It's insane!

As though that all wasn't bad enough, the carrot is often pulled off the stick at the last minute through Uber's "top secret" algorithms. The fact is that Uber et al have Boards of Directors that have no moral compass whatsoever. So what should responsible cities states and countries do?

THE SOLUTION: Kick Uber and Lyft out of their jurisdictions so that good companies that obey the laws can enter the marketplace. Otherwise, you might as well end all laws everywhere that bias one industry or part of an industry over another. Maybe we'll all settle down to reading our contracts when we do everything from downloading software to buying a car or a home, to driving for a predatory rideshare or delivery company. Think about it. Less dead people!

If I were king, I'd deport the whole boards of directors for all these predatory companies to the middle of the Pacific Ocean where they can swim with their fellow vampiric sharks. I have to asks the CEO's of Uber and Lyft if they also pulled the legs off of insects when they were children?In 68 years, I've never worked for such a vampiric company like Uber and Lyft. But, hey, somebody has to sound the alarm, right?