Uber (becoming a driver)

[ShotgunDMB]

Anybody else get notified they’re getting a random $100 from Uber by the end of the month + I’m being given the option of buying Uber stock at the IPO price? I have a lot of trips (over 4,000)

[ExistenceNow]

I'm intrigued by the IPO but unless they pivot, they're doomed to go down in flames. The ride-share model on its own is unsustainable. They hemorrhage money in the billions and are only worth anything because people are pouring investment money into the company. I'd sooner short it than invest in it.

[ExistenceNow]

^I didn't get the email. I haven't driven for that specific company in years and would never, ever, do it again. They are abhorrent.

[Climb2safety]

Originally Posted by ExistenceNow

I'm intrigued by the IPO but unless they pivot, they're doomed to go down in flames. The ride-share model on its own is unsustainable. They hemorrhage money in the billions and are only worth anything because people are pouring investment money into the company. I'd sooner short it than invest in it.

I guess I don’t understand the model. How are they losing so much money?

Where is it all going? They can’t be losing money on every ride....

[ExistenceNow]

Originally Posted by Climb2safety

I guess I don’t understand the model. How are they losing so much money?

Where is it all going? They can’t be losing money on every ride....

I'm a little buzzed, so I'll throw this article out there to explain it much better than I could:


https://news.crunchbase.com/news/und...r-loses-money/


Wall Street Journal and Forbes have some much more detailed articles on it, but that one is a nice brief summary.

[ShotgunDMB]

Originally Posted by ExistenceNow

^I didn't get the email. I haven't driven for that specific company in years and would never, ever, do it again. They are abhorrent.

Abhorrent? How so?

[ShotgunDMB]

Ride sharing is here to stay, IMO. People love it. Theu’ll need to increase pricing though

[ExistenceNow]

Originally Posted by ShotgunDMB

Abhorrent? How so?

How they treat the drivers. You don't have any options where you live, so maybe you don't know how bad they're screwing you. Do you have up front pricing? If so, that's a whole new level of screw job for you.

Originally Posted by ShotgunDMB

Ride sharing is here to stay, IMO. People love it. Theu’ll need to increase pricing though

It's absolutely here to stay. The way Uber is doing it though, isn't.

Once they collapse, I think what rises from the ashes will be more local/regional options with sustainable business models. We actually have a local non-profit option here (all they take from the drivers is $.99 a ride, even during surging). It was the only local company to stay alive after Uber and Lyft came back. I use it exclusively. I will literally walk home before I use Uber here.
The reason Uber was able to kill off all the local options here wasn't because they're better; it was because they were able to offer free rides indefinitely until they took all the business back from the locals. Fuck them.

[rconverse]

Originally Posted by ExistenceNow

How they treat the drivers. You don't have any options where you live, so maybe you don't know how bad they're screwing you. Do you have up front pricing? If so, that's a whole new level of screw job for you.

Curious why up-front pricing would "screw" you over. Seems counterintuitive.

[YouNeverKnow25]

Originally Posted by Climb2safety

I guess I don’t understand the model. How are they losing so much money?

Where is it all going? They can’t be losing money on every ride....

every single ride

[Climb2safety]

Originally Posted by ExistenceNow

I'm a little buzzed, so I'll throw this article out there to explain it much better than I could:


https://news.crunchbase.com/news/und...r-loses-money/


Wall Street Journal and Forbes have some much more detailed articles on it, but that one is a nice brief summary.

Thanks for the article. Here is the deal:


Now that we understand that Uber does lose money, we want to know how it manages the task.

To understand, we’ll start with fares and work our way through the company’s costs. So up first? Gross bookings, or the value of all rides on Uber’s platform. In the second quarter of 2018, Uber’s gross bookings totaled $12 billion. That’s a lot of money!

However, Uber doesn’t get to keep most of it. In fact, a lot of things need to come out of gross bookings before we can figure out Uber’s own revenue. The largest gross bookings cost is what Uber drivers make. In the second quarter, $8.2 billion of the $12 billion in bookings Uber pulled in went to drivers.

Uber also spent $142 million on promotions in the second quarter, paid drivers another $427 million in incentives, spent $27 million on refunds, and paid $411 million in taxes and the like. All told, according to the Wall Street Journal chart, Uber’s $12 billion of gross bookings included $9.2 billion in so-called “contra-revenue” expenses.

Now we can figure out Uber’s real second quarter revenue: $12 billion (gross bookings) minus $9.2 billion (contra-revenue expenses) equals $2.8 billion in net revenue for Uber. This is the money it takes in the door, from which we’ll deduct Uber’s cost of revenue (what it costs to deliver product), its operating costs (salaries, office space), and other expenses to determine where all the money went. (Recall that we are trying to understand why Uber loses money; there is no profit at the bottom of this well.)

So Uber has $2.8 billion in Q2 revenue to spend on itself. Its cost of revenue came to $1.3 billion, leaving $1.5 billion in gross profit for the company to use to pay for its operating costs (for more on income statements, check out this post).

Are Uber’s operating costs greater than its gross profit? Here are the ridesharing company’s costs from its business operations:

So does that chart of costs sum to more than its gross profit of $1.5 billion? Yes. Uber’s operating costs come to a total of $2.2 billion. And as Uber’s costs are $700 million greater than its available gross profit, it loses money.

[Climb2safety]

Originally Posted by YouNeverKnow25

every single ride

That article explained it differently.

They don’t have a negative marginal cost per ride where with every ride they lose a little more.

Seems like they just need more rides to the tune of 700MM net to break even.

[ExistenceNow]

Originally Posted by rconverse

Curious why up-front pricing would "screw" you over. Seems counterintuitive.

If the ride ends up being cheaper, the rider still gets charged the up front price they were quoted, but Uber, not you, pockets the difference.



If it ends up being longer/more expensive, the rider still gets charged the price they were quoted and you eat the overage.

[rconverse]

Originally Posted by ExistenceNow

If the ride ends up being cheaper, the rider still gets charged the up front price they were quoted, but Uber, not you, pockets the difference.

If it ends up being longer/more expensive, the rider still gets charged the price they were quoted and you eat the overage.

I can kind of understand the first part but not really the second part. That's bogus.

[rconverse]

The other day I was pulling up to complete a delivery and a girl hopped in my back seat thinking I was her Uber. That was a little weird, especially considering that recent story.

[ExistenceNow]

I got in the wrong rideshare back in December. I wasn't THAT drunk but Allison was and I was trying to wrangle her so I didn't pay close enough attention to the make/model of the car coming for us. A car pulls up, rolls down window and calls out "Ride for Matthew?"

So we got in. Once he confirmed our destination, I realized it was the wrong car and proceeded to wrangle Allison back out. At that point the correct Matthew is coming out of the bar for his ride.

[rconverse]

Man, I'm having a horrible day today. I fucked up a delivery and, of course, the two spots couldn't have been further apart from each other. Nothing like working 2 hours for free reversing wrong deliveries.

[Lee3691]

I don't do rideshare a lot (30 Lyft rides), but I requested my rating - 4.87. How does that rank?

[ExistenceNow]

Seems solid but the rating of a rider doesn't matter at all.

[mdel21]

5.0 on Uber

[Climb2safety]

Ive bee following this case closely.

https://www.9news.com/article/news/c...6-8aa525c8aa1e

Driver who killed passenger found not guilty.

[ExistenceNow]

Oof, idk about that one. I don’t have all the details, but from the summary in that article I don’t think he should walk away free.

[Climb2safety]

Originally Posted by ExistenceNow

Oof, idk about that one. I don’t have all the details, but from the summary in that article I don’t think he should walk away free.

He smoked a passenger

[rconverse]

I only have the info from the article but it can go either way, imo.

[ExistenceNow]

Originally Posted by Climb2safety

He smoked a passenger

I got that, but I believe the drunk dipshit was assaulting him. What I don’t know is how badly and how reasonable it was for him to shoot him. Seems over the top but maybe the dude had a good hold of him or something.

[Climb2safety]

Originally Posted by ExistenceNow

I got that, but I believe the drunk dipshit was assaulting him. What I don’t know is how badly and how reasonable it was for him to shoot him. Seems over the top but maybe the dude had a good hold of him or something.

There was obviously enough reasons in his favor he got off.

[Lee3691]

Do people really sit in the front seat of Ubers?

[BruceW]

Originally Posted by Lee3691

Do people really sit in the front seat of Ubers?

They sure do. All the time.

[ShotgunDMB]

Sooo I had a hillbilly pull a gun on me today while I was delivering packages for Amazon Flex. I calmly explained I was with Amazon and showed him the app. He kept being a dick anyway. What can ya do?

[Noles20]

Originally Posted by ShotgunDMB

Sooo I had a hillbilly pull a gun on me today while I was delivering packages for Amazon Flex. I calmly explained I was with Amazon and showed him the app. He kept being a dick anyway. What can ya do?

Were you delivering to his property?