UberUnmasked

UberUnmasked

B Gabriel

Published by B Gabriel, 2023.

COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER AND NOTICES

Disclaimer

The information provided by UberUnmasked herein and on the website, www.uberunmasked.com is for general informational purposes only. All information is provided in good faith. We make no representation or warranty of any kind, express or implied, regarding the accuracy, adequacy, validity, reliability, availability, or completeness of any information.

While recommendations and suggestions herein for riders and drivers are predominantly Sydney-based, many cities fall within the contextual circumstances in terms of the platforms’ operations. However, advice and techniques discussed herein may not apply in your city due to app configuration, weather, roads, and traffic conditions. No responsibility is taken for inaccuracies, discrepancies, or expected outcomes of tips and advice if or when applied. Any information provided is general only and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation, or needs.

Under no circumstance shall we have any liability to you for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of the information herein. Your reliance on any information is solely at your own risk.

Notices

Personal information and the source material relating to certain comments has been suppressed for privacy reasons.

 Content and images are copy-protected by Australian and International intellectual copyright laws. Any use, in part or full, must be directed to and approved in writing by the author. Send a request by email to: [email protected]

Copyright © 2023 by B Gabriel

978-0-9944677-3-7 (eBook)

978-0-9944677-4-4 (paperback)

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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I’ve always lived in Sydney. I love everything about its vibrancy, its hustle and bustle. Even though it’s sometimes chaotic, it’s organised chaos. This hour, I’m in the Inner West, while the next, I’m in the North Shore. I love movement, and I’m passionate about transport and logistics. Out of my passion comes my profession. I meet all it demands, and I know the job as an independent rideshare driver like the back of my hand. I’ve always ensured I found joy and harmony in my work, but I also knew that things were not right.

Over time, I noticed enormous irregularities, then curiosity planted a seed that I should dig for facts. What followed was at first a gentle probe around the edges, followed by extensive investigation and monitoring.

Peeping through the hole in the fence wasn’t going to give me the view I needed, rather, I had to hop across the fence and involve myself deeply. The more I dug, the more I discovered what was buried in the dirt in the backyard. Year after year, I religiously compiled information about the ride-share phenomenon. With relentless devotion and effort, I uncovered so much that I had sensed, but that still shocked me. I was driven to search for truth in pursuit of what is fair and ethical. Ultimately, I can speak about so much more than I could publish.

Importantly, I learned that the pretty propaganda icing generally portrayed to the world covers up an ugly cake that tastes pretty bad.

Knowing the jaw-dropping facts, what works, what doesn’t, and above all, the truth, has never been so fulfilling and liberating.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Rider

1. Welcome to your ride

2. Reasons for being overcharged

3. How to earn a good rider rating

Driver

4. Rideshare roulette

5. Pro Tips

The mobile convenience store

Baggage handlers

Risky business

Health and safety

Drug peddlers

6. Diving into [Uber] Pool

7. Accept and Abandon

8. General driver advice FYI

Deceptive use of Ride Request

Sexual harassment

Keeping an eye on your payout

Driver ‘Set a destination’

Chasing the surge

9. Rookie errors

Driver strategic positioning

List of black spots

10. Driver rewards

Maximise your income

How to earn high ratings and boost your earnings

11. Bolt: From at-fault to a write-off

Conclusion

Bonus Tracks (BT)

Emails, text messages and images

INTRODUCTION

Buckle up! We’re taking a ride.

People like being taken for a ride. Drivers like taking passengers for a ride. Passenger pays, driver gets paid. It’s a perfectly straightforward arrangement. Everybody’s happy. Could it be better? Could a third-party go-between take this simple transaction and put it on steroids? Does the world need a better mouse trap?

A new third-party entity, seeing the demand and supply situation, enters the scene. It charges the passenger fairly, ethically pays the driver for the service rendered, and takes a fair share of the transaction for its idea. It sounds terrific and uncomplicated. Everyone wins. The new entity is a knight in shining armour, right?

As with most inventions, there existed a good intention for the idea. However, the middle person saw this as a concept that could be milked on a large scale, despite resolvable glitches – more on those later. Investors were invited to the table, and an appetite for expansion and dominance was borne. Little did they realise that the great concept was not an isolated or exceptionally unique invention because someone on the other side of the world had come up with the same idea. Copied or not, this competitor cuts down on overhead costs, charges less, and will still fulfil demand and supply, or needs. With competition necessary, and the individual interests of all players: the demand (riders), the supply (driver), the middle person (the platform), and the investors collectively, came the creation of a gigantic global mess that continues relentlessly.

In a perfect world, no-one is taken for a ride. But this is the new world, not a perfect world.

I mentioned resolvable glitches, so let’s look at a story about a glitch. Every hire-driver knows this story.

A person who requested a ride suddenly realised they didn’t need it after all because something came up. Meanwhile, the driver was already on the way, when they receive the message, Rider cancelled. The new entity facilitator (the platform) refused to pay the driver for their time and effort because the rider didn’t get charged either, as per the terms and conditions of cancellation. Fair enough! But then again, it wasn’t great for the driver, given their loss of time and investment. The only person who hasn’t lost anything is the rider, who’s calling the shots. This is a glitch. In the next chapter, you will see that a cancelled ride is not always the fault of the rider. And this glitch is only one of many.

Over the past few years, we have witnessed an unprecedented transformation – a global phenomenon – that revolutionised our journeys at the click of a button on our devices. It’s been a paradox with an immense impact that has ruffled the feathers of the age-old taxi industry, worldwide. Despite its self-contradiction that it is not a taxi company, and its false proposition masquerading as a tech company, the phenomenon has forced its way into the transport system, and insolently crashed the party. The approach is synonymous with the deliberate sin now, and ask for forgiveness later.

One might be tempted to say, ‘Listen, everybody loves it, let’s just enjoy it and move on,’ but the implications have created a domino effect. Commuters are nudged out of cabs and rental vehicles, travellers ditch buses and train services, all thanks to financially reckless discounts offered by the platform. The presence of rideshare has undoubtedly and forever changed how we travel. Suffice to say that the tech giant established in Australia and several cities around the world, defied the existing regulations, disparaged restraining orders, and went ahead with its operations anyway. But let’s rewind for a moment.

With an appetite for disruption, the tech giant didn’t bother about the law of the land. Instead, it trampled on both federal and states laws, bullied its way into existing services that were legitimately established, and the giant didn’t see any issues with its dystopia. It has now become cancerous, and I emphasise that word cancerous because it’s gradually draining or killing so many of us financially. The entity has rapidly infiltrated society, with the majority of people acquainted with its services, one way or another. But it has also operated illegally.

It subsequently called the authority to the table to strike an enticing and lucrative deal for a perpetual revenue-generating scheme. Is it a case of the authority succumbing to another powerful megacorp, or is it a case of perpetual revenue being too attractive to turn down? And since there are no enforced standardised regulations to counterbalance any component of an irrational system of operations, this entity seems to get away with successive actions and decisions, irrespective of how unfair or lacking in moral standards. The result of this romance is the endearing blessings of the authority, and the entity’s sins are forgiven. However, the most critical part of the operation has been left without a chaperone, hence the unchallenged exploiting nature of the business.

If this exploitation were perpetrated by an individual, the individual had better have deep pockets and a team of brilliant lawyers. They would have faced the full force of the law and possibly gaol time for the deliberate commission of a crime. Even with outstanding lawyers, at the very least, a suspended sentence is guaranteed. But in this case, it’s a corporation, a big one, with a team of good lawyers and of course, creativity at buying its way out. Here is a corporation unscrupulously masterful at lobbying, simply to achieve its desired objective to have its misconduct overturned, in exchange for working symbiotically, and generating a trackable government levy added to every trip. But a crime is still a crime.

The entity got a pat on the back for its innovation when it should have faced automatic disqualification and the full force of the law. How is that ethical? Wasn’t there an obvious red flag, an action that spoke louder than words? Should we be surprised or concerned? These are all self-answered questions. The tech giant carries a moral virus that allows it to break the law of the land wherever it sets its eyes. For a disrupter of its size to succeed, compromising morals is inevitable. But the world was too busy soaking up and embracing life-changing low fares to ask questions.

For cab drivers who have made the hard switch permanently, or who manage to combine both, it’s fair to say that rideshare’s presence is the reason behind whatever decisions they’ve made, significantly decimating decades of personal investment and income. Taxi plates are now worth next to nothing, and retirement plans are shattered or reduced to little or nothing. Sadly, some taxi drivers have been pushed to the wall. As their regular source of income and life-long investments had been smashed or severely jeopardised, some did the unthinkable by ending it all. I pause in my writing to reflect on that horror.

I have seen both sides of the situation – taxi and rideshare – which is how I’ve experienced both the first-hand exploitative part of ride-sharing that the majority don’t see, and the explosion of the investment that goes into owning a cab.

Of course, it’s normal for humans to judge, criticise, and even condemn without a thorough knowledge of what’s responsible for taxi’s allegedly expensive charges. The instinct of most riders is to go for the cheaper alternative and condemn the taxi for being too expensive. Many don’t consider the hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs, especially in the big cities, to secure taxi plates. On top of this, cabbies have to acquire a government-approved vehicle, fitted with a network-approved electrical gadget by an approved electronics specialist, and then, the through-the-roof Compulsory Third Party insurance. By the time a taxi is fully commissioned, it costs as much as an investment in property. Besides the cabbie’s decreased customer usage since the platforms opened for business, it is commercially unviable to match it with rideshare, where the driver uses their privately registered and insured car for commercial purposes. There’s already a premium discrepancy there, which is why the ride-hailing companies can promise affordable rides that put most of these cars under the wrong category of insurance policy anyway. A particular insurer flat-out refused me when I provided them with the Purpose of Use of a vehicle.

The commissioning authority picked up funds off taxi plates and then allowed a tech company, as it fraudulently calls itself – even though it has all the attributes of a taxi company – to get involved in the same nature of business for which it’s been paid. Who does that? It’s like playing double agent. What the authority has done is not that different from selling a franchise to two franchisees to operate within the same region, pricing one at an exorbitant cost, and the other dubiously procured at a much cheaper price. Not only is the one who obtained its business at a cheaper rate underselling its supposed counterpart, but it’s now become a perpetual revenue generator for the authority, which speaks volumes of the latter’s overlooked misconduct.

The taxi industry and plate investors had to fight tooth and nail for compensation to even be considered, as angst grew over their life-long investments. Should we call the compensation double-dipping, robbing Peter to pay Paul, or both, or just straight-out robbing Paul to rub it in his face? Watering it down to the feeble ‘it’s a big market where both can co-exist’ or ‘there’s enough to go around’ is a load of garbage coming from the office-in-charge, in favour of the gate-crasher who bumped into the room uninvited, only to knock those who are legitimately in the room off their seats, and downplay the consequences. This is the same as the authority’s condoning and trampling on the law, with a total disregard for the aftermath, if any, of its direct and deliberate violation of the applicable laws.

Returns for the taxi business have undoubtedly been crushed when compared to individuals’ investments, as they’ve been relegated to the back seat by personally owned vehicles used for Uber-ing. The transport governing body rubbed more salt into the wound at the stroke of a pen by formalising the invasion. No wonder the cabbies are so pissed-off. Let’s not pretend rivalry and animosity don’t exist. Cabbies and rideshare drivers know precisely how it goes out there on the roads. There should be no room for any compromise of safety and yet some cabbies say they want to run rideshare drivers off the road, or lock them out when an Uber has indicated to change lanes. That one small Uber sticker on a windscreen shoehorns a private driver into a legally established system that lacks fairness.

Riders around the world are embracing life-changing commuting. Tracking their ride is great, and the savings are even greater. The innovation and technology behind the service are undisputedly outstanding, but the pertinent question remains: Is the public unknowingly supporting exploitation? Can the deceptive conduct, the elaborate manipulation, and the abysmal exploitation that goes on behind the scenes be overlooked or justified? Do users know that their rideshare provider excessively and wrongfully charges riders, where getting a refund is like expecting tears from a statue, and any attempt to get justification could lead to an account deactivation, while reactivation is an almighty struggle. Due to the exorbitant commission charged, driver-partners or contractors are indirectly pushed to the limit and economically enslaved, earning next to nothing, certainly well below average wage, as has been confirmed by various studies and statistics. In Uber’s submission to the Australian Select Committee on Job Security, two commissioned studies found that the average hourly wage of its drivers was below the minimum wage for casual workers 21 and above.

Yes, the tech giant wants a reliable service at an affordable price, but it aggressively undercuts pre-existing services to acquire a larger share of the market to save itself from its own troubled financial dilemma. This brings the entire taxi industry to its knees in every city where ride-share operates, as there is quite literally no resilience to survive the adversity thrust upon it. The real question is, at what, and at whose expense?

On the other side of the spectrum, the affordable is gradually becoming unaffordable, depending on which city you live in and the time of day you want to ride. When the dreadful surge pricing kicks in, the ride-share cost is considerably greater than a taxi fare. Could this be a game-changer when ride-share wants to be globally known for offering low fares? For those whose lives have been shattered with incomes partly or permanently decimated, for the folks who will never recover from the financial ruin of the tech giant’s break-and-enter, it is known as the disruptor. Is it a wolf in sheep’s clothing or is it just simply business?

After I transitioned to full-time rideshare driving, it didn’t take long to figure out the flaws in the concept. More worry for drivers is delivered through the entity’s treachery, and in its sinister nature. My getting a full picture and having an in-depth understanding required time and patience – a lot of it.

As an experienced driver with well over a decade in the transport industry in the Sydney metro, I have thousands of trips under my belt: 17,000+ trips on the tech giant’s platform alone, and 3000+ on others. I have witnessed and experienced first-hand, all the consequences of this industry. I fully switched to Uber-ing over 6 years ago, primarily because of the decrease in taxi requests. Ride-share requests increased in the early stage, equating to more mileage, but I have to honestly admit it has finally put a hand brake on the runners.

The huge percentage of savings by riders is, without a doubt, at the expense of drivers, a fact many people still don’t realise. Moreover, the excessive service fee commission charged, the loss of a booking fee, and lack of penalty rate (equivalent to taxi Tariff 2, where the meter adds extra to the standard rate at a particular time of the day) all make a difference to the drivers’ hip pocket. Penalty rates on public holidays are not even in the picture. The earnings remain the same whether it's Christmas, Boxing Day, Easter, or other public holidays. I know, drivers are not employees, but I’ll come back to that later. As they say: When the consumer makes savings from the new, loyalty to the old goes out of the window. And since when did anyone complain about making savings?

Many driver-partners who have never driven a cab or only drive rideshare part-time, would probably not notice the difference in terms of trip request and pick-up manipulation in the constantly-changing system based on how drivers react to trip request acceptance. This is largely determined by Sydney’s never-before-seen infrastructure upgrade, causing unpredictable gridlock, detours, and road closures, forcing drivers to be picky on ride acceptance, and of course, the historical complex road network with a multitude of road signs presumptuously positioned. Ultimately, it costs the tech giant reduced pick-ups, which equals fewer returns, as some places have been blacklisted by drivers. Hence, the detailed pick-up address was replaced with a pin-drop, tricking drivers into committing to ride requests.

For instance, a rider standing next to a traffic signal could request using a pin-drop, and the driver would never know until they got there, risking a fine, or even worse, an accident. In the end, this is causing many riders to cancel when drivers drive a few metres away from their unsafe pick-ups. It’s a cleverly designed system with less room for cancellation by the driver, whereby a few could lead to an account being flagged with a warning and then deactivated, irrespective of prevailing conditions. For drivers, I’ll explain later how to get around the system and make it work in your favour.

On the other side of the coin are riders who only want to get from A to B. Having to cop the inconsistencies coming from the platform(s) and the drivers are something most of them never bargained for, or in some cases, they find inconceivable.

For part-time drivers, the side gig works to patch a few financial holes, but for some, it’s been just more bad news because they lacked thorough knowledge of how things work before they took the plunge. For the cabbies, a huge number had been left without much choice but to convert.

Whether you’re a permanent or part-time driver, there is one common goal: Income! It’s easy to say it’s a matter of choice, but remember, these people have given up their free time to make extra cash, or caved into pressure from