RIDEGURU
Uber tends to place the pin at the rear entrance of most addresses. Savvy riders place the pin advantageously. Autofill by GPS pins the nearest roadway (not necessarily an entrance or exit). Personally I think the pin should be assigned to a person and not a place. The person and the device are the pin. Track the device by GPS. That way if you go to the pin, you go to the rider. Every time. Thanks for your upvote.
All you clever drivers, any ideas on how to make the connection/pickup process smoother or more foolproof?
Posted 5 years, 8 months ago
Posted In
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Posted By
Frank Pressly (fpressly)
4088
Rider
Driver
Ride Apprentice from Greenville, SC
Video te ego audiam vos ego sentio tibi. - Cat herder - Uber/Lyft 3000 rides
I have been a ride share driver for almost three years. While I like the ride share concept, I truly hate it's implementation and the way Uber and Lyft have so little regard for their work force. I am for the little guy. I seek to right injustice and speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. It's usually the ones you find hardest to love that need it the most. Please enjoy my opinion and if you like (or even if you just welcome the effort), an upvote is a digital pat on the back and is most appreciated. I invite you to read my other comments and upvote them as well. Thanks
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Comments
I like the current method of pinning to an address. If the phone location were tracked it would cause problems when the person crossed the street to for some reason and went back to await pickup.
Often in Philadelphia a person will be in the back of the house when they make the request and that causes the driver to come down a back alley instead of to the front of the house.
When that happens I tell them to make sure they are in the front of the house when they make the request.
Two amusing stories:
I had a strange pickup in NJ. The rider was walking from a mall and got tired and requested a ride.
I drove to the pickup address and she wasn't there. I called and she said she was at a diner.
Apparently she requested the ride while she was walking past the address. I rode to the diner and she wasn't there either. I called again and she said she would be out as soon as she paid her bill.
Another rider decided she would request a ride and save some time while she was on the Pa…
Read more...
I like the current method of pinning to an address. If the phone location were tracked it would cause problems when the person crossed the street to for some reason and went back to await pickup.
Often in Philadelphia a person will be in the back of the house when they make the request and that causes the driver to come down a back alley instead of to the front of the house.
When that happens I tell them to make sure they are in the front of the house when they make the request.
Two amusing stories:
I had a strange pickup in NJ. The rider was walking from a mall and got tired and requested a ride.
I drove to the pickup address and she wasn't there. I called and she said she was at a diner.
Apparently she requested the ride while she was walking past the address. I rode to the diner and she wasn't there either. I called again and she said she would be out as soon as she paid her bill.
Another rider decided she would request a ride and save some time while she was on the Patco speed line. I showed up under the Ben Franklin bridge. When I called her she was several miles away at a station waiting. I cancelled that one.
In these two cases, tracking a phone would have multiple addresses. Not sure the GPS could handle that.
Read less...
See, this used to work differently in the past. The GPS would still kick in to identify the location, but it would snap to a closest address. Then the official address would be sent to the drivers.
It seems to work, but this ended up creating problems too where it would snap to a different location than where the user was. This happened a lot in big buildings, apartment complexes, campuses, etc.
Uber for privacy reasons cannot track passenger's locations unless the app is open. (In other words, they cannot if the app is in the background.) So, perhaps it'd cause more confusion if we all became used to that or started to rely on it to do pickups.
Uber is able to drop the pin on the user's GPS location and communicate that to the driver. In fact, I think that's what they are doing, right? The rider lets the Uber app grab his or her location, and then the rquest is sent out. The problem is that that exact location is being geocoded to an address that driver's GPS can resolve and navigate to.
Due to the fact that the driver needs to be given an address for the sake of the navigation, at some point, the passenger location needs to be translated to an address. That's probably where the rub occurs.
I haven't driven recently in a long time, so I cannot rememeber what pin location the drivers see. Is it address or the user's original location? I am thinking it was the prior.
Wait, I thought the pins are placed on the person's GPS location, not the address. Of course, unless the passenger-to-be enters the address manually. No?
Uber became shy about using people's GPS locations. If the drivers could track the riders' movements in real-time, this would solve all kinds of problems.
Do you know how many riders would request a ride AND THEN move to another? Come on, people!!!
(Well, now I am starting to think. Is it because riders think we can see their GPS locations as they move?)
If drivers could see the passengers real time location, unscrupulous drivers could concievable circle the riders location to avoid pickup and to collect no shows.