A few months ago, I bought a car that was eligible for Lyft Premier. I got a good deal on the car so I didn’t invest a lot of money to drive on Lyft Premier. I wouldn’t recommend any driver to go out to get a Lyft Premier car for the sole purpose to drive on Lyft Premier unless you get a used car that barely meets the requirements for a good price. I have been testing Lyft Premier for the last few months on and off and I have recently found a nice feature on Lyft Premier.
Lyft allows drivers to only accept Premier rides, or Premier and Lux, or just Lux rides so you can choose which rides you want to receive. The one great feature about only showing Lyft Premier only rides is that it never shows you Lyft Line rides, which can be great when Prime Time is high. I don’t turn on Premier only very often because I find that I get very few requests in Boston, but it is a nice option to have.
Lyft Prime Time
Lyft Prime Time is the additional surcharge that drivers get when it is very busy on Lyft. The Prime Time rates can vary between regular Lyft and Lyft Premier but I see that the actual cost of Lyft can be similar to Premier if the surge is high enough on regular Lyft. Lyft Prime Time is very location specific, so while you may be sitting in the middle of a high Prime Time zone, you may get a ride that has a Prime Time surcharge that is much lower than the maximum Prime Time percentage you see on the driver screen. It is a hit-or-miss when it comes to Prime Time and my typical strategy is to accept one of the first three requests with Prime Time since it may disappear after the fourth or fifth request. As always, I recommend rejecting Lyft Lines even with Prime Time.
The Little Known Feature About Lyft Premier
Recently, I was driving when a large convention was in Boston. I wasn’t interested in driving in the afternoon but I would like to pick up a few Lyft Premier rides so I switched to Premier only while I was still at home. Within a few seconds, I got a ping. It was a normal Lyft but it was 100% Prime Time. I kept getting rides that had more than 100% Prime Time for the next few hours since it was very busy on a Friday afternoon with the convention in town.
If Lyft drivers are in Premier only mode, it will also send you regular Lyft requests that has more than 100% Prime Time.
This will increase utilization of Premier only drivers while also slightly reducing Prime Time rates. I am unsure about Lux-only mode, but it would either be more than 100% or 200%, depending on how Lyft coded this feature. I would expect it to be 200% Prime Time since Lux is approximately 3x more expensive than a regular Lyft.
Will This Change How I Drive on Lyft Premier?
Even with this feature in place, I don’t think that most drivers will get enough requests on Lyft Premier to keep Lyft drivers in Lyft Premier Only mode a lot of the time. For the past few months, I only get about 3-5 Premier trips after leaving on the app in Premier-only mode for about 5-8 hours a day. I live very close to downtown Boston so I often get requests from there but I’m also not the closest car either.
I also don’t find Prime Time to be above 100% in Boston for this feature to really help drivers in Boston. Most of my trips are without Prime Time or Surge Pricing on Uber. There are still times during the week where there is Prime Time, but this is often not when I want to drive, like late nights on Friday and Saturday. In addition, Prime Time on Lyft is very location specific so it may be very difficult to get the highest Prime Time ride in any given area.
I believe that this feature is a great addition for the Lyft Premier tier but it doesn’t make it a “must-have” feature on Lyft. This feature benefits those who already have a Premier car, but I wouldn’t recommend buying a Premier car solely because of this feature. At this point, I find very few reasons to get a Premier car solely for Lyft. If there is Uber Select in your city (it is not available in Boston), it may make a little more sense to get a car that qualifies for both, but the profit margin isn’t much higher on Lyft Premier or Uber Select.
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