Terrible Connectivity – Lyft Driver Review

The app, overall, is not a bad design. I do think Lyft should amp up their development team, however, to more aggressively update the app and intuitively meet drivers’ needs. BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT SUGGESTIONS Lower Promotion Requirements • Let’s be real: Lyft does not have the clientele that other businesses like Uber does. Until you do, I would suggest lower requirements for promotions. For example: At the time I am writing this review, there is promotion for 15 rides for $20. First of all, $20 is hardly an incentive, and doing 15 rides in a week is almost impossible in my city and on my daytime schedule—and I drive a LOT of hours each week. Last week, the promotion was 7 rides for $10. Even THAT, I hardly made—and that was with an unusually-busy day for Lyft. To Lyft’s credit, they did respond by ditching promotions that required being online for 50 minutes per hour. That would be HOURS of sitting, waiting, and twiddling of thumbs. Also, please stop requiring such high acceptance rates! Your app glitches even screw this rate up (see below), costing us money! Address Cancellations • I don’t know what it is, but Lyft riders cancel annoying frequently. Please increase the incentive not to (fees) and compensate drivers more for cancellations. APP FIXES NEEDED Fix Connectivity • This app’s connectivity is horrific. If the app is not on screen, the app constantly drops connectivity and signs me out of driver mode. This is not an issue with my cell service either. This is in the middle of high-population cites. Also, I drive for Uber too and have it online at the same time and it NEVER has this issue except once in a blue moon. This is especially ludicrous when waiting in an airport queue. I have sat in a queue for HOURS only to wake up from a snooze while waiting to see that the Lyft app lost connection and signed me out, making me start the queue all over again. Good thing I have Uber, though, or I would have been screwed. Uber keeps me in the queue and I get rides with them. For this reason, I rarely get a Lyft ride out of the airport. Fix Phantom Trip Requests • Sometimes the app does something odd where, out of the blue, it says that “so and so canceled the Lyft request” when I accepted no trip and the app is in standard online mode, not trip mode! Fix Notifications Many times, I have returned to the app to find a “missed-trip-request” notification, but no sound or vibration notification came from the app. This costs me money and ruins my acceptance rate. In fact, I lost my St. Patrick’s Day promotions because of this when I gave Lyft a chance that day. Who know how much money that costed me! Fix Scheduled Trips • I received a trip scheduled for 25 minutes away (I didn’t want to decline so as not to ruin my acceptance rate and lose my measly $10 promotion). I drove 25 minutes, picked up the riders, and drove them about 20-25 more minutes. I only got about $15. The trip was also to the airport, and the queue was full. So I drove another half hour back. I drove about 1.5 hours for $15! Please do not send trip requests that do not pay off! (P.S. I contacted support to see if they could add some compensation, and they pathetically did not.) APP FEATURE SUGGESTIONS Remove Destination Limit or Change It • Lyft used to have no limit on setting driver destinations, but they followed the lame way of the Uber and added a limit of 6. Why limit? Is it really the end of the world for drivers to drive where they want and where it works for their lives? But if you have a limit, PLEASE change it so a destination is used only when and ACTUAL TRIP IS COMPLETED. Remove Time Limit on Destinations • This app barely tries to find destinations before it says, “Sorry! We couldn't find you a match along your route, so we've signed you out of driver mode.” Please remove this annoying limit, or at least make it an hour or something. The app constantly signing out require constant resetting of it which means more distraction and annoyance. Add Destination Arrival Times • Please add destination arrival times so the app leads drivers to destinations at the time they need to be there. Add Driving Regions It would be great if we could make ourselves available to drive only in certain regions. Sometimes we may want to go do just a few runs in our area for a limited time and not be taken clear across town. Another example: I pick someone up from work each day that I drive and when it gets closer to that time, I need to stick in the area and not be taken far away or drawn into areas of town that are traffic traps. Thanks fo reading and considering!
Review by Franz Schneider on Lyft Driver.