[imagesource: CNET]

You might be one of many people out there wondering if the reason your shorter Uber trips are being cancelled is because of you or the driver.

There has been an uptick in these sorts of complaints in South Africa in recent times, and the frequency with which shorter trips are getting cancelled is clearly increasing.

Often the driver accepts your ride request, but then as soon as they realise how far you need to go, they cancel the trip, leaving you with the seemingly impossible task of finding a new driver.

Ofentse Mokwena, strategic project lead at Uber in Sub-Saharan Africa, confirmed this.

Don’t worry, it is not you, via HyperText:

“When drivers in Johannesburg and Cape Town get a trip request, they will see the destination of the rider, the price point of that trip and the ETA of that trip. The driver can also see the rider’s name and other information specific to the trip such as instructions to wait at a complex gate or whether the rider has luggage,” Mokwena explains.

Those information points were all added to the app at the request of the Uber drivers:

Now, Mokwena tells us that while testing this feature Uber noticed that drivers were picking trips that were longer as this netted them more money. This is understandable as drivers need to make ends meet and a trip that is 30km seems more profitable than a 5km one.

Besides needing to make a profit on a trip, the driver also needs to make enough to cover all the costs of running their Uber hustle, including petrol, maintenance, and sometimes even the rental of the car:

Over the years we have heard from some drivers that they rent vehicles from third-parties. These parties aren’t approved by Uber and rental fees can exceed R2 800 per week.

While Uber is not necessarily happy with its drivers using rental cars, it’s not doing much to stop this.

The company says that at the end of the day, “the ownership of the vehicle is not really the core issue here. It’s the quality of the vehicle and whether it is appropriate for our traffic laws,” Mokwena explains:

“We understand that many ride-sharing drivers don’t own their vehicles and that’s not our problem here. Our problem is that there are folks taking advantage of Uber drivers and this bleeds down to affect riders.”

Apparently, Uber has introduced an incentive to encourage drivers to take shorter trips by allowing them to earn a larger percentage of the total fee of the trip.

That sounds good, but there is no data to suggest that this works:

When we pushed Mokwena about whether this incentive programme is working we were told it depends on the driver. This isn’t all that revealing, however, as some drivers do indeed take every trip they get, but we’d argue there are many more who are constantly trying to maximise their earnings.

Overall, it worked out that while the percentage of an Uber driver’s earnings might be more, the amount they earn at the end of the day still doesn’t shape up well against their expenses.

Folks in Johannesburg seem to be taking the brunt of this situation, where the sheer scope of the area means it makes more sense for drivers to accept longer trips over shorter ones, as opposed to Cape Town, which is slightly more condensed.

As e-hailing drivers (from Uber, Bolt, DiDi, and others) plan a nationwide strike from next week Tuesday, reports IOL, Uber’s minimum base fare is set to increase, but not by all that much:

Uber has increased its base fares from between R5 to R15 for all ride categories.

It’s something, but probably not enough to make up for the high cost of getting from A to B these days.

The fuel costs are rising so rapidly that drivers are finding it increasingly difficult to continue, and are thus asking e-hailing companies to reduce their commission.

[sources:hypertext&iol]