Assuming you mean, other than the ethical concerns?
A) Who's insuring the ride? If it's not insured and the driver is at fault in a collision, there could be no one to pay for injuries to you -- Lyft/Uber certainly wouldn't owe anything for stuff booked outside their platform.
Usually when they drive for a TNC, the TNC provides the insurance for the driver in the course of using the app. It's really unlikely for the driver to have a policy that covers them for non-TNC freelance rides -- especially since the big insurers haven't caught up to the realities of this use case and seriously overprice them.
(AIUI, they just have policies that assume you drive full time commercially, nothing that works on a per mile basis -- and even if they do have such policies, that would defeat most of the purpose of cutting out middlemen, as there would now be a written record of the transaction that can't be hidden on taxes.)
B) In order to get enough information to re-book out-of-band you'd have to accept it and then cancel. Do that a lot and it will be grounds for being kicked off the platform.
(The same applies to the people in the anecdotes in the sibling comments.)
Out of curiosity, what are the ethical concerns? The arrangement is not being made by the middleman company. I don't see how it is unethical to not pay them for something they did not do.
Point (B) doesn't make sense to me. Why do you have to accept and then cancel? You just get the driver's phone number and talk to them directly.
In fact, if this is not common already, I think it undermines the contention of these companies that they are merely a service being provided to independent contractors. If drivers are independent contractors, of course they should be trying to build their own brand and dedicated clientele.
Point (A) is a good one, though. Sounds like there should be independent insurance providers that these independent contractors can use.
If you're instead saying that drivers are employees of these companies, then maybe you're right about all the rest of it. But you can't have it both ways!
>Out of curiosity, what are the ethical concerns? The arrangement is not being made by the middleman company. I don't see how it is unethical to not pay them for something they did not do.
Their service was connecting drivers and riders -- allowing them to find each other for the transaction. They connected you. That was their service. (They provide other related intermediary services, but the "finding" function is the big one.)
Same issue as when a recruiter finds leads and the employer makes an offer to the employee directly and cuts out the recruiter, which is why they set up a bunch of contractual barriers to stop it.
EDIT: Sorry, I misunderstood the use case -- that wouldn't apply to future bookings after the first one's been completed and they've exchanged information. But the "moat" there is the difficulty of iterating through your network of past uber drivers for each future ride.
>Point (B) doesn't make sense to me. Why do you have to accept and then cancel? You just get the driver's phone number and talk to them directly.
AFAIK, they don't give you any way to contacting each other until the ride is accepted. Am I mistaken here?
>If you're instead saying that drivers are employees of these companies, then maybe you're right about all the rest of it. But you can't have it both ways!
No. You can have a legitimate claim to compensation for connecting two people without the seller thereby being your employee -- see the recruiting example (though it's a bit confusing in that there is another employment relationship in the picture but I'm sure you see the mapping -- a recruiter can legitimately claim that they're owed a cut while not saying that their the employer of the, er, hiring manage or the candidate).
EDIT: As above, that wouldn't apply to future rides or job offers after that contract.
There is no moral or ethical obligation to compensate Lyft or Uber for future rides not on their platform.
Also, it seems anyone could replicate this feature by using Stripe Connect. It's cool, but expect rapid commoditization of preplanned ride coordination.
> AFAIK, they don't give you any way to contacting each other until the ride is accepted. Am I mistaken here?
You're not mistaken, but the implication from the parent was that the rider had ridden with the drive before...
> I know many people around where I live who use local Uber drivers whom they trust to schedule early-morning rides to the airport and things like that.
That's what I would do with my driver. She'd arrive, and I would look up an Uber cost estimate, and then pay her cash for the average amount I was quoted. I also could ask her to run errands for me, using this same system.
The benefit is that you can deal with a trusted driver rather than someone that takes 3 wrong turns on the way there then misses the exit for the airport.
You are missing the details here. OP is suggesting that they get an Uber/Lyft driver then instead of paying through the app, pay with cash. Same driver, just no insurance.
What a world we live in. Most of the country (and planet) is so broke they are just scraping by, while programmers have "drivers" and personal shoppers. Wouldn't want to distract those people who have to get to work every day to figure out how to sell the poor people ads!
With Homejoy, you could build a relationship with a single housekeeper, and arrange for them to come once a month. If you're using Uber to commute, it's absolutely the same and very worth cutting out the middle man.
The rest of the time, if you need a ride at a time/place that isn't regular, the driver you know might be far away, might not be driving at that time and might be driving someone else, so it will generally be worth it to pay a premium.
The difference with Homejoy was that many people on their site already had existing cleaning companies. They were using Homejoy for customer acquisition. Once that customer was acquired, there was no need for Homejoy. Once Homejoy was out of the picture, the cleaners regular liability insurance would still be in play. Obviously there were some cleaners that did not have a business.
The difference with Uber/Lyft is that these drivers don't have a business outside of the app. Therefore, once you eliminate the app, you eliminate their commercial insurance and it becomes a really interesting situation if there were ever an accident.
I've had at least a dozen Uber drivers suggest something similar when I road with them more than once. Almost all of them wanted to setup something so I'd pay less and they'd make more.
I hadn't done it as I usually don't need Uber / Lyft much but most of the people I know who have used Uber / Lyft have also gotten similar offers so it must be pretty common I would think.
That works until there is any sort of an accident and the driver's insurance doesn't cover them operating their vehicle as a business. Part of the commission that gets paid goes to providing insurance.
I imagine that when reporting it to the police/insurance agency, many (most?) drivers would omit the fact that they were driving for business purposes when the accident occurred.
Not saying this is legal/ethical, just that it would come to mind in that situation.
If that friend got into an accident while driving to Home Depot for you, would you pay their insurance deductible? If they got hurt would you pay their medical bills? Would you do the same for your off the books taxi driver?
If you get hurt while helping a friend, would you really ask them to compensate you? I wouldn't unless they were somehow responsible. Accidents happen.
It sounds like a good incentive for UbLyft/Lyftber to make things so seamless that it's more hassle to set up an arrangement like that. Until then, that sounds like a good idea.
In Thailand I used GrabTaxi and once I found a driver whom I got along with, I got their personal number and would do this very thing. It worked well for them and me! But then Grab missed out :/
