Uber Offering Lyft Drivers Free $50 In Gas, Signing Perks To Switch Teams

http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/11/uber-offering-lyft-drivers-free-50-in-gas-signing-perks-to-switch-teams/

by hackhackhack • 13 years ago

19 33 13 years ago

techcrunch.com

livestyle• 13 years ago

I just arrived in Indianapolis for a conference and the Uber experience was far superior.

First Lyft wouldn't pick me up at the airport and now at 1am they are closed?

p.s Uber brought me to Steak and Shake and actually meet me inside the airport personally and escorted me to their car.

I love how their service is still paramount to the overall experience.

xivzgrev4• 13 years ago

Uber black or UberX? UberX would be the fair comparable to Lyft.

elsewhen• 13 years ago

Is Uber developing a lyft-like p2p service in addition to their black-car & taxi offerings?

joshfraser• 13 years ago

Yes, they're calling it UberX and they've had it for a while.

cmwelsh• 13 years ago

No, that's their taxi service, which is mentioned in the grandparent.

cjrp• 13 years ago

In London, UberX is just a cheaper cab service using the Prius.

thefallsman• 13 years ago

Uber has been making huge strides. I think it is a much better company that lyft. With lyft you're supposed to talk to the driver, keep them entertained so that you get a good rating. Uberx is not that much more expensive and the drivers are much nicer and have much better manners.

I'd much rather pay the extra few bucks on an Uber.

pain_perdu• 13 years ago

Lyft is more fun. I took 50+ rides in the summer. Unlike Uber, Lyft hires for personality. I became friends with some of my drives, had crazy city tours (including a walking tour!) and just generally had much more pleasant experiences versus the many Uber trips I've had in multiple cities.

CaveTech2• 13 years ago

But you're paying for it. It's friendship prostitution.

philip12092• 13 years ago

I think that Lyft sells the experience, and Uber sells the transparency. A perfect Lyft experience is fun and social. A perfect Uber experience is subtle and seamless.

philip12092• 13 years ago

I noticed this last week that Uber has begun distributing lit logos for UberX cars to display on their dashboards. It struck me as quite Lyft-like.

leeskye• 13 years ago

Lyft received some major 'lift' today via Conan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNM7Z7hir_I

goldenkey3• 13 years ago

The flatbread line was priceless.

sargun• 13 years ago

I wonder if they paid for this, and how much it cost.

erex78• 13 years ago

Does this bother you? Aggressively targeting your competitor's employees? Imagine if Google went to your startup and offered everyone 100K signing bonus to leave. Would this be OK, within the bounds of acceptable competition?

sliverstorm• 13 years ago

Google and Facebook were doing that to eachother for a while, until they reached a gentleman's agreement to stop poaching eachother's employees.

If memory serves HN was very angry, saying it was collusion to keep developer salaries below true market value.

jamesaguilar2• 13 years ago

So was the government. They sued these companies, apple also.

jamesaguilar2• 13 years ago

As an employee, I sincerely hope companies are doing this.

praptak• 13 years ago

As an employee I say it depends. What if they just wait after the competitor dies or just loses the contracts and fire the employees afterwards?

Even if I know that the company making the offer has such plans I'm still in a nasty tragedy of the commons with my coworkers.

CaveTech2• 13 years ago

That's almost exactly what recruiters do...

johnhok• 13 years ago

Yup. I recently got a Google recruiter who emailed me at my work email which is not publicly available anywhere.

rodgerd• 13 years ago

Why wouldn't it be?

whywhywhy5• 13 years ago

As an employer we would be furious. As an employee we would be delighted.

po• 13 years ago

What this makes me think is that the market for drivers (or at least good drivers) is in high demand and they are a limited pool with more leverage than is recognised. That means they can probably command higher prices which will ultimately have to be passed along to consumers somehow.

anigbrowl• 13 years ago

Higher input prices are not wholly passed along to consumers, although this is a common misconception. The degree to which prices go up vs producers accepting a smaller profit depends on the elasticity of consumer demand.

Where this relates to the apportionment of a tax burden, it's known as tax incidence, which is probably the best search string to start with.

xivzgrev4• 13 years ago

It's a fair point. I think you'd have to segment labor market a little more, by personality (silent & professional/fun & engaging).

My thought is that Lyft does well with the second type, and Uber is recognizing value in that market.

I don't think it will drive up costs though. Here Uber is not promising them a higher rate - just switching bonuses. Uber has strong incentives not to offer higher rates, changes their whole cost structure. This is just a recruiting expense.

I don't see these services implementing multiple tier payment structures, because that would have to be passed to consumer and then pricing gets complicated when all you want is a ride now.

Now I think you're absolutely right the supply is tight. Lyft has some serious driver shortages as it is, and this is not helping matters.

I wonder when they'll start letting drivers share cars (or even use a third party car such as Zipcar), but that would help open up the SF market to labor that is constrained by not having a car of their own (which, I'd estimate that's quite a few people).

Uber Offering Lyft Drivers Free $50 In Gas, Signing Perks To Switch Teams

Related Stories