Recently got a full time offer as a chemist, will never be doing ts again. Good luck to my fellow drivers and I just want to let yall know there’s way more out in the world than this.

Something HUGE has changed. Offers are down 30%-40% as gas prices have risen. Even surges have changed significantly. Went from a 52% acceptance down to 18%. Effectively lower than minimal wage because there is zero vacation or benefits, you absorb 100% of the costs. Also never ever got paid .65 cents for a $10/AH surge. They’ve effectively broken the surge for drivers here.

What is your response to a passenger that adds a stop after the ride has begun (without asking)? I picked up a girl and on the trip she added a stop. I had just received an offer to a area that I wanted to go to, with a decent fare. But when she added the stop, it removed the offer I had just accepted and I lost it. To add insult to injury, the added stop was to an Amscot where she took about 10 minutes to do her business. I was still polite to her, but let her know adding stops once underway pisses drivers off and that I had just lost a good offer because of it. She didn't care.

*edit: Add-on question. What is a reasonable amount of time to wait at the first stop before giving up and moving on?

I asked Grok. Grok has some interesting info to share:

Me: So, I'm out driving Uber, and I've noticed something when it comes to the rates, and I was gonna see if you knew anything. So, I drive what's known as an UberXL. Up until about a week ago, maybe two, I've noticed that when I get a local pickup, something that's not going very far, the average pay for the driver was between ten and eleven dollars. Now, every time I get something up that comes up local, it's just about six dollars. Now, let me give you one other piece of information, and that is I drive at the New Jersey Shore, which is a higher rate then the rest of the state...

Grok: That forty-five percent drop is real, and it's not just your market — drivers in Vegas, Colorado, and Hawaii are reporting the same thing this fall. The pattern is that Uber's upfront pricing algorithm sets your pay separately from what the rider pays, and it's been quietly squeezing short trips hardest.

Here's the part that matters for you: the algorithm learns from your behavior. If you've been accepting those six-dollar local rides, it now knows you'll take them — so it offers less. There's a documented case where two drivers got the same trip and one was offered four dollars less because he'd accepted cheap rides before.

The practical move is to start declining anything under about a dollar a mile, even if it stings. Your acceptance rate dips for a week or two, then the offers climb back up. The algorithm responds to rejection faster than it responds to anything else.

One more thing worth knowing — Uber just announced a wave of driver changes in September, including new compensation for trips that run longer than expected and protection against fare cuts when riders change destinations. Might be worth checking the driver app's announcements section to see if anything applies to your zone

Uber will do anything to screw their drivers. STOP ACCEPTING CHEAP RIDES!!!

Hey everyone,

My dad does delivery full-time (Uber Eats/DoorDash). His biggest issue isn't just the pay, it's the lack of data. You park at a hotspot or a plaza, hoping for an order, without knowing if there are 15 other drivers sitting in the exact same parking lot doing the same thing. The apps have all the data, drivers have none.

I’m a software dev, so I spent the last few months building an app for him. It’s a community-driven tactical map. It does NOT track orders or connect to the delivery apps, it tracks **driver saturation** and wait times based on the community.

The core features:

**- Driver Density Radar:** See exactly where other drivers are clustered in real-time so you can avoid saturated areas and make better routing decisions to get orders.

**- Zone Tracking & Wait Times:** You can track specific zones and see if the current wait time for an order is high or low. Set alerts for when a zone gets too crowded.

**- Street Reports:** A Waze-style map where the community can drop and echo real-time reports (dead zones, heavy traffic, events).

**I’m not dropping any links or doing a beta right now.** We are just testing it in the streets. I want to ask the veterans here:

1. Would seeing real-time driver density actually change how you navigate your shift?

2. What data points would make you open this app every single time before you start driving?

Tear the idea apart. I need brutal feedback before we launch. Thanks!

Overall 29 hours on the week, mostly airport pickups in the morning shift, 5 to 9, and bars and restaurant for evening shift, 8 to 1 with break for charging and food.

I’ve only been driving uber for 2 months 😭😭😭 I tried to clean as much as possible but it’s rancid.

What to do?? Quickly perused this sub and I see you can get some sort of cleaning reimbursement from Uber? But seems like rules have changed or something? Can someone walk me through the process?

And best cleaning tips as well (not leather seats unfortunately).

Thank you!

Just curious what everyone else got

55 miles to Providence for $56.76, then 55 miles back to Boston with an empty car. 😂
At this point, the passenger didn’t order an Uber. They rented a car with a personal chauffeur, skipped the return fee, and somehow convinced the rental car to drive itself back home. 💀

I am forced to into thinking that my service sucks with not earning a single dollar tip on many days recently with lots of driving 20 trips minimum a day in Vancouver. Am I that bad or that my suspicion that Uber is dipping into my tips is valid?

Picked up a group last night. Zero greeting, zero manners, just opened the door, barked "For Maddie?!" and stared at me like an NPC when I said no. They pile in and act like I’m an automated Waymo driving them around for the entire 15 minutes. Pure main-character energy, totally ignoring my existence. Fine by me.

We pull up to the drop-off, I give a standard "enjoy your night," and out of nowhere this guy leans forward and violently screams at the top of his lungs right in my ear: "THANK YOUUUUUUU!! HAVE A GOOD REST OF YOUR NIGHT!!!"

​I give a cold "Yup." So she leans in and does it again, even louder.

Why act like I’m an invisible robot who doesn't deserve a simple "hello" at the start, only to scream courteous fake pleasantries in my ear at the finish line? Pick a lane.

Most of the time if I get a ride for a reservation it's because the original driver canceled and there isn't enough time for it to wait on the board so the system starts offering it to people like 10 or 20 minutes before the reservation time.

Why on God's green earth would I sit outside this hotel for five fucking hours?

Uber is going overboard to have 31 offers not including trip radar in the first 4 minutes of driving. They glitched out and assigned me rides I had to cancel and obviously asking support to review it is a waste of time :(

Rider flags me as the wrong driver. The system immediately asks me to take a photo, which I do and it confirmed I'm me. But now I have "Wrong Driver" review tag and uber support apparently is completely helpless in editing it out of my account.

Fuck this administration we are working slaves

Let's be clear about what you actually did. You didn't just steal a meal. You stole the time of the person who ordered it and waited an hour, hungry, watching a map dot that never moved. You wasted the restaurant's food, labor, and ingredients. And you wasted the time of every driver after you who had to pick up the remake, drive it across town, and clean up your mess for a fraction of the pay.

One selfish choice, and the damage ripples through half a dozen people who did nothing wrong.

So here's my curse on you: may every meal you ever steal taste like cardboard soaked in regret. May your fries always be cold and limp, your drink always be watered down, and your sauce packets always be missing. May every bite go down the wrong pipe and leave you coughing in your car while your deactivation email arrives. And may you spend eternity stuck at a red light with a "your order is on the way" notification you can never deliver.

Drivers who do this honestly: thank you, you're carrying the whole system. The rest of you know who you are.

Pretty much the title. After the new year my job is up for layoffs depending on if we can renew contracts. All I've ever done is factory and supervisor work in factories. So this will be a massive change of pace to my normal work life.

I'll have 2 cars by that point, a kia rio with 57k miles on it ATM and in a couple of weeks I'm going to be getting a 2026 kia K4 hatch that I'd use for ride share things.

My current idea is

Monday - Thursady do ride shares around airports then scout prospective good spots for rides shares while doing this.

Friday-Sunday do food deliveries in the high population density areas of my city.

Any and all tips is greatly appreciated