The platforms care little about individual customers (as opposed to drivers, which are fewer and have higher onboarding costs) so they are reluctant to set up the right incentives to force drivers to be reliable.
A simple solution (in most gig economy markets - not just ridesharing) is that any accepted task costs you a deposit which gets returned on completion. This instantly makes it unprofitable to offer sub-par service or cancel, and provides stability to both customers and the system in general as any accepted task is more likely to be delivered (and tasks which are unprofitable to accept will not get accepted, so the surge pricing mechanism can do its job and raise prices until acceptance rates go up).
The problem is that this will only happen if there is either a legally-enforceable service-level-agreement (such as compensating passengers for unreliability or missed arrival times) or strong competition, which is not currently the case. Most gig economy markets are dominated by a handful of equally-mediocre players who have no incentive to out-compete each other.
The platforms care little about individual customers (as opposed to drivers, which are fewer and have higher onboarding costs) so they are reluctant to set up the right incentives to force drivers to be reliable.
A simple solution (in most gig economy markets - not just ridesharing) is that any accepted task costs you a deposit which gets returned on completion. This instantly makes it unprofitable to offer sub-par service or cancel, and provides stability to both customers and the system in general as any accepted task is more likely to be delivered (and tasks which are unprofitable to accept will not get accepted, so the surge pricing mechanism can do its job and raise prices until acceptance rates go up).
The problem is that this will only happen if there is either a legally-enforceable service-level-agreement (such as compensating passengers for unreliability or missed arrival times) or strong competition, which is not currently the case. Most gig economy markets are dominated by a handful of equally-mediocre players who have no incentive to out-compete each other.