Ridesharing giant Uber is implementing new charges in the US aimed to benefit both drivers and riders. If your pickup location is a little more out of the way than usual, you’d be charged a little extra to entice drivers to go the extra distance.
Sure, that doesn’t necessarily sound as good for riders than it does for drivers, but if you live in a place where it’s a little harder to get an Uber than others, this driver incentive could make it a lot faster.
Kicking in today, US drivers will earn standard time and distance rates if the pickup exceeds a certain time or distance. Uber can’t say for sure what that time is exactly, as it’s dependent on the market and distance, but on average, they reckon it’ll kick in after 11 minutes.
“So if it’s a 40-minute pickup, which hopefully never happens and is extremely rare, it would be some segment of 40 minutes,” Uber’s head of driver product, Aaron Schildkrout, told The Verge. Like Uber’s current fare estimates, this new fee will be included in the projected cost if the algorithm deems it applicable.
We reached out to Uber Australia who told us there’s no plans for this system to be introduced over here just yet, but we’ll keep you in the loop if that changes.
They’ve also changed the cancellation fees to better suit the situation. If riders match with a driver who doesn’t move, they’ll pay less for cancelling, while drivers who travels a greater distance to get to a rider who cancels will earn more.
Furthermore, riders who make drivers wait for long periods of time before getting in the car will cop an extra fee as well. Uber provided an example which assigned $US0.86 to a wait time of 3 minutes and 45 seconds.
It’s not huge by any means, but should give a sense of urgency to folks who order an Uber way before saying goodbye to a whole fucking party.
