Uber Drivers Are Mistakenly Charged 25% Commission
Before everyone goes into panic mode, it only appears that SOME drivers in the San Francisco, Bay area (down to San Jose) and Sacramento are being affected by this. Also, there are some drivers who changed cars or updated their car documents and this caused them to be charged the higher commission. I recommend all drivers check their statements to confirm that you are getting charged the correct commission, depending on your start date in your market. Just divide the Uber fee from the total trip amount and you will easily get the percentage they are charging you. I believe it is affecting a small subset of drivers, but this issue alone can increase your pay by a few hundred bucks a month if you were wrongly charged!
Back in August 2014, Uber increased the commission from 20% to 25% of new San Francisco drivers starting after September 1, 2014. They have implemented this in all of their markets, but the start date may vary in your market. Uber drivers have been getting new user agreements confirming that drivers who started after 9/1/14 (date different in other markets) are charged 25% commission and drivers who started before that are “grandfathered” into the 20% commission.
Two days ago, many drivers got this email and a Bay Area driver sent this in to me:
At first, many drivers took it to mean that they were activated after 9/1/14 and that they were getting charged 20% commission instead of 25%. For the most part, it has been true that some partners were charged a lower commission and no one really noticed until now (yes 11 months later). Uber won’t be coming after the difference in commission, but they will ensure they charge these partners the higher commission.
However, there are a few partners who started much earlier than August 2014 and they found that they were charged 25% commission. They only checked because they received the email and thought it was a mistake. They went into the Uber office and confirmed it was an error. The error doesn’t seem to be linked to Uber now charging the correct commission. I don’t think many partners check their commission levels since it is a hassle to calculate. Even I don’t check the commission level on a weekly basis and usually spot check it when I have the time. Also, there are many partners that are correctly charged 25% commission as they were onboarded after September 1st, 2014.
How Do You Fix This Problem?
The drivers that I spoke to went into the office to have someone look at it. If you cannot go to a local Uber office, then you will have to resort to chatting with them online (under help within your driver dashboard) or emailing [email protected] to have it fixed. The first person who responds to the message will not have the power to change anything so you will need to escalate this problem to a higher level support staff so they can change the commission. It takes a few messages, but they will fix the problem.
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