Detailed Analysis of Uber, Lyft and Sidecar Guarantee and Driving Bonuses
So in the past few weeks, there were some crazy hourly promotions here in Boston and in other select cities (Chicago, Dallas to name a few). There were as high as $60/hr on Uber and Lyft on different weekends. I managed to cash in on Uber’s Guarantee for most of the time, but I skipped Lyft’s guarantee because I was mainly burnt out from driving so much earlier this month and also that they had a 2 Lyft/hr minimum. The guarantees can be different in every city, in terms of both amount of money and qualifications. I heard the same weekend Lyft was offering $60/hr in Boston, it was a similar rate down in DC but it was only 1 Lyft per hour there.
So here’s a detailed analysis of Uber, Lyft and Sidecar Guarantee and driving bonuses:
Lyft:
Lyft’s hourly promotion had a rocky start when they first did it back in Halloween. They have done it in the past as part of the new city bonus but it had been over six months since they done something like that. Lyft definitely worked on it during Q4 2014 and luckily now the hourly promotion payout is now automated so drivers should see this in place this week. In previous months, the guarantee payout was delayed by a week or more and drivers didn’t really know if it was accurate until they did the calculations themselves. Usually it was under what they expected.
Lyft is experimenting with a few different promotions, like guaranteed PT, and also significant bonuses for completing a certain number of trips by existing drivers. I definitely cashed in on $1000 after 50 trips. I made $1750 in just three days with that promotion.
- Coverage Area: the coverage area for Lyft seems to be fairly generous at times. Here are the situations I’ve seen:
- No restrictions: It doesn’t mention any coverage area so it can be anywhere in your cities coverage area
- Restrictions: Sometimes it is restricted to the downtown area and a few surrounding neighborhoods.
- Acceptance rate: Generally it is at 90%. If you only drive a few hours, you’ll need to accept every trip. You can miss 1 out of every 10 requests and I usually average 2.5 Lyfts an hour so I can only miss one request every 4 hours. That 90% doesn’t sound so generous does it?
- Driver Cancellations: there are no formal rules around it but I would avoid this if possible. They do look at this so make sure you have a good reason for cancelling. Usually high ETAs is a good reason for cancelling but you need to speak with the passenger before cancelling. Just accepting the request and cancelling right after will look suspicious.
- Time in Driver Mode: They copied Uber on this one and put a requirement of 50 minutes in driver mode of every qualifying hour. Say you were online for only 45 minutes of the hour, then you won’t qualify for that hour. Lyft’s guarantees work in whole hours.
- Trip requirement: in most cities it is 2 Lyft’s an hour but sometimes I’ve seen it at 1 Lyft an hour.
Driving Bonuses:
- Guaranteed PT: if you drive during certain peak hours and stay within a limited coverage area, they will guarantee Prime Time. Here is an example of one of these promotions:
- Bonus for a number of Lyfts: Over the past month, they had a few different bonuses for a number of completed Lyfts. In Boston, they had it as high as $1000 for 50 trips, but the most common among other states was $500 for 20-30 Lyfts within a week, and as low as $250 for 20 Lyfts. These are totally worth doing. It equates to a bonus of $20 per Lyft you give out. These bonuses were offered to drivers who have not driven in a while so full time drivers didn’t qualify for this promotion.
- Bonus for every Lyft: For a few months, Lyft was giving out an extra $1 for every completed Lyft when they lowered the rates by 10%. My average fare was $10 so I knew the extra dollar was about 10% boost in my earnings.
Uber:
They generally have the highest dollar per hour promotions and the lowest trips per hour requirement but it can come with a restrictive coverage map. Even during some of these crazy promotions this year, Uber has stayed sufficiently busy as now they are having a harder time attracting new drivers. At $60/hr, I was still averaging just slightly under 3 trips an hour, which was even higher than Lyft during a normal weekend. When they had these promotions last year, my number of trips was lower, but still easily qualified for the promotion.
They have also been known to experiment with some odd bonuses, such as minimum fares or bonus for every trip taken.
Hourly Guarantee:
- Coverage Area: the coverage area for Uber changes a little for some promotions so make sure to pay attention to them! I got disqualified for an hour as I had a long trip that took me about 10 minutes outside the coverage area. I should have just turned off the app and drove back into downtown but I ended up getting a trip that started outside the coverage and took me back in. I thought it counted but it didn’t. So lesson learned: study the coverage map and make sure to drive all the way back in before turning on driver mode.
- Acceptance rate: Generally it is at 90% but I’ve seen it as low as 80%. If you only drive a few hours, you’ll need to accept every trip. You can miss 1 out of every 10 requests and I usually average 2.5 trips an hour so I can only miss one request every 4 hours. That 90% doesn’t sound so generous does it? (80% would be a request every 2 hours)
- Driver Cancellations: there are no formal rules around it but I would avoid this if possible. They do look at this so make sure you have a good reason for cancelling. Usually high ETAs is a good reason for cancelling but you need to speak with the passenger before cancelling. Just accepting the request and cancelling right after will look suspicious.
- Time in Driver Mode: Its 50 minutes of every hour but Uber also prorates fraction of an hour, possibly due to trips that happen outside of the coverage area.
- Trip requirement: It is usually just one trip an hour, which is quite generous, but they combine it with a more restrictive coverage area. It has been 2 in the past with a more generous coverage area.
- Driver Rating: “You do not maintain a rating of 4.6 or above during the guarantee period.” I have seen this for some hourly guarantees during non-peak times for cities that got the price drop. I haven’t seen it in any of my guarantees in Boston mostly because they are all peak time guarantees, so there may be an understanding that your rating will dip a little due to surge pricing or longer ETAs due to demand.
Driving Bonus:
- Minimum fare: Sometimes they set a minimum fare for every trip. These are uncommon but they do happen. The last time I saw it, it was minimum $10 a trip. The strategy with this is to get as many short trips as possible. I know a guy who was making close to $40 an hour doing that but you need to know your city pretty well to go after short trips (college campuses, small, isolated neighborhoods close to downtown for example)
- Bonus for every trip: Last year, they gave out an extra $5 for every completed trip during certain time during the week (it was a weekday promotion). I managed to net about $30/hr with this promotion.
Sidecar:
This is something generally overlooked by many rideshare drivers but it can provide a nice source of income if Lyft and Uber doesn’t have a guarantee of their own. They also have been targeting weekday morning and nights in addition to Friday and Saturday nights so it can provide a small boost to your income if you see and take part in these promotions from Sidecar. Some of their promotions are the entire weekend (Friday 5pm-Sunday 11:59pm) so make sure to compare the promotions with Sidecar to the ones from Lyft and Uber.
Hourly Guarantees:
- To sign-up, you need to log into WhenIWork and register for blocks of time for the guarantees, usually in blocks of 3 hours so I think at a minimum, you need to drive all three hours to qualify for the promotion. Sometimes many people sign up for them so there is no availability (as claimed by Sidecar) but in Boston I haven’t seen that yet.
- Be online during the time you signed up for (we will still takeover your driver settings during this time).
- Complete at least one ride per hour. This is pretty generous but expected as Sidecar is not as busy as Lyft or Uber.
- Maintain a Response Rate of 90% or higher during the shift hours.
- Keep your driver cancellations below 10%.
- Drive within the swarm areas: They usually provide a map, which is very similar to the one Lyft used to use for their New City Bonus Hourly guarantees:
Driving Bonuses
- Free or $3 Shared Rides Promotions
- You will get reimbursed directly from Sidecar on the total cost of the trip if the shared ride is free, or the difference between the shared ride amount and the actual trip cost. I’ve usually done well with these. Payments get noted in your account within an hour and clears within a few days.
- 1.5x Matched Payments
- The amount varies by promotion but they will give you a 50% bonus on top of your total during peak hours. Usually this and a free rides promotion can put me above $30 an hour, so I usually wouldn’t need the guarantee. I’ve seen it as low as just a 10% bonus but have seen 50% for a few weeks in Boston.
- No Commission
- During peak hours Friday-Sunday, they will not take commissions in select cities, which is an automatic 20% boost in earnings. Considering that Sidecar fares are a bit higher, you can do pretty well with a combination of this promotion, the matched payments promo and sometimes a shared rides promotion.
Things to Consider When Driving During These Promotions:
You should sign up if you intend to drive during that time. It never hurts to sign up even if you think you can exceed it. Its a nice safety cushion in case you get a lot of rides without surge or PT.
Here are the various things to consider when signing up for these promotions:
- Hourly Guarantee:
- For Lyft, watch out for the Lyft’s per hour. I got burned once from that back in Halloween and many struggled to get 2 Lyfts per hour even on Friday and Saturday night. Remember that the request needs to be within the hour so you can average 2 an hour over the night but only get guarantees for only a few of the hours. That happened to me during Halloween. Its not that the demand isn’t there but the number of drivers out there for a specific guarantee. Last weekend was $60/hr so figure how many drivers were out there trying to get two Lyfts per hour. PT was very low last weekend so many drivers would need the guarantee, but I heard from many drivers who were able to get 2 Lyfts per hour with only a few not qualifying for a few hours last weekend, which was much better than back in Halloween.
- For Uber, watch out for both the number of trips per hour and coverage area. Usually they set the number of trips per hour low but also a restrictive coverage area also. 1 trip per hour even during a saturated market is totally possible, but just try not to leave the coverage area.
- Driving Bonuses:
- Make sure that you qualify for the bonus. If its emailed or texted to you, you should be fine. Just be cautious if you hear about it from other drivers but you didn’t get notified about it. Many of Uber’s promotion are targeted so not everyone qualifies. Lyft’s bonuses were also targeted to certain drivers also so make sure to read up on what the qualifications are.
- Driving bonuses (not hourly guarantees) are often much easier to achieve with fewer requirements. With the promotions I’ve seen, you can ignore requests, drive fractions of an hour, and drive outside of the coverage area, so it provides the driver with much more flexibility while qualifying for the promotion. They can also be very lucrative depending on the promotion. Prime example is the $1000 for 50 Lyfts.
- New Uber Drivers will get up to a $800 bonus after signing up: Sign up for Uber.
- New Lyft Drivers will get up to $800 if you sign up here using this link.
