Today, we’re excited to announce some new changes designed to make Uber better for you. It’s the latest in a series of improvements we’ve made for drivers like you so far this year.
We’ve created another package of features and improvements, all in direct response to feedback from drivers across the UK, to create better experiences on and off the road.
Here’s a taste of what’s new.
Tipping
We regularly hear of drivers delivering great service so now, if your rider thinks you deserve more than just “Thanks for the ride!”, they will have the option to leave you a tip through the app.
Once the trip has finished, your rider will see the option to leave a tip when they rate you. We’ll take care of the rest, debiting it from their preferred payment method and adding it to your payments. 100% of the tip goes to you.
You can keep track of any tips by going to the earnings tab in your app.
'No Thanks' button
You’re totally free to choose which trips you want to take. At the moment, you can either confirm you can take a trip request or wait for the request to time-out. Now, the ‘no thanks’ button lets you decline the trip right away (if it’s safe to do so) – it’s good news for riders too as the request gets passed on to another driver sooner meaning shorter waiting times.
If you don’t confirm three requests in a row, we’ll assume you’re not available and we’ll log you off – but if that’s not the case you can log back in immediately and carry on driving.
Don’t forget, if you’re in the airport queue and get logged off after saying no thanks three times, you’ll lose your place in the queue. This is to be fair to other drivers waiting in the queue.
2-minute cancellation fee
Time is a precious thing, especially when you’re on the road. From 22nd August, if a rider cancels a ride two minutes after you’ve confirmed the trip, your city’s cancellation fee will apply. If your ETA has jumped up by more than 5 minutes, this charge won’t apply.
We made this change following your feedback that 5 minutes was too long– as you’d already invested time and fuel getting to the pick up point. If it’s you who initiates the cancellation, the charge will only apply 5 minutes after you arrive at the pick up point.
Paid waiting time
With arrival times now just a few minutes, riders need only request a ride when it’s time to leave. We know that often you’re happy to wait – but we believe riders should pay for your time. So, from 22 August 2017, a 20p per minute waiting charge (or your per minute fare amount if that’s greater) will kick in 2 minutes after you arrive at the pick up point until you start the trip. It only applies if the trip goes ahead and it will be shown on the receipt with any dynamic pricing applied here too.
We don’t recommend that you wait at the pick up point too long– you’re best off getting another trip rather than waiting around. After 5 minutes, it’s worth giving your rider a call to let them know you’re there - if they’re on their way, by all means carry on waiting, but if you can’t get through or they’re not going to be ready for a while, it’s better to cancel the trip (which will have no impact on your partnership with Uber), receive a cancellation fee and move on.
Sometimes riders might give their trip a low rating for reasons beyond your control– such as an issue with the app.
Previously, these ratings would have counted towards your overall rating, even if they weren’t a reflection of your service. Now, these ratings won’t count towards your score. Uber will still get the feedback to help us improve but it won’t impact your overall rating.
Our in-app feature lets you set a destination and receive trips heading that way – it’s a popular feature but you told us you want to be able to use it more frequently, rather than be limited to twice per day.
It was good feedback, so we’ve tripled the number of times you can set a destination to 6 times per day – and added the option for you to also set a time you’d like to arrive there by. That means no more missing appointments or being late for school pick ups– and even more control over your schedule.
More control over your requests
UberEXEC and UberXL drivers currently receive UberX and UberPOOL requests as well. But we know sometimes you’d really rather only receive UberEXEC or UberXL trips. So we’ve introduced an option that means you can decide, whenever you want, what kind of requests that you receive.
Go to the Settings of your partner app and click the new “Preferences” option to filter which trips you want to receive. You can change this as often as you want, giving you more flexibility to choose your working style and even more control over the trips you want to take.
And this is not the end by any means. We’re still listening to you, taking on your feedback and thinking about how we can make things even better.
If you have questions about any of these new features or you want to give us some feedback, you can do so at t.uber.com/ukpodcasts. We’ll be answering questions and responding to feedback in our podcasts over the coming weeks.
And we’ll be keeping you updated as we continue to make these improvements.
Posted by Jo Bertram
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