No, except for UberPool. For your trip, make sure you don't select UberPool - you can only order UberPool for 1 or 2 passengers.

As a rider, I wouldn't know that waiting costs for Uber are less than I taxi. But as to your question, I recently asked my Uber to wait for me. I arrived from the airport with tons of luggage. I needed to get some medicine from a pharmacy. Dragging all that luggage around would have been a pain in the ***. So I asked him to wait for me at the pharmacy. He did for about 20 minutes. I gave him a generous tip for which he appeared grateful.

I took Lyft from dupont circle to IAD back in July. A week before that, I took taxi on the same trip. Taxi fare was about $75. This is my Lyft receipt:

Ride (28.14mi, 43m 27s) $37.84
Prime Time + 50% $18.92
Trust & Service Fee $1.65
Toll: IAD Dropoff Fee $4.00
Tip $10.00

There was a prime time surge of $18.92. But even with a $10 tip, I still paid less than the taxi.

You can get an estimate from both Uber or Lyft app, but sometime it won't give you one. I think it was the case for IAD. It did not give estimate for whatever reason.

I am pretty sure you won't be able to combine sign up credits. You have to pick one over another. You could have sign up credit for both Uber and Lyft and take Uber there.. and Lyft back.

I don't tip on Uber because I don't carry much cash. That's why I pick Lyft if I could. But even on Uber, my rating is at 5.0. I just checked. I did have one uber driver at DC told me that he once got a $75 tip when I asked him if anything usual happened to him as an uber driver. I don't think drivers grade you low if you don't tip them.

Got in an Uber today and there was a big sign on the back of the front passenger seat reading "TIPS ARE APPRECIATED". My dad asked how much we should tip the driver and I said nothing. I also gave him 4 Stars and left a note saying the sign was inappropriate. If we were using him for something abnormal or he did something above and beyond I'd tip, but a mere ride to the airport coupled with the sign does not warrant a tip.

This.

A 4-star rating over this?

Drivers with ratings under 4.6 can be terminated by Uber (who knows if this actually happens though).

The driver simply wants to change the tipping culture associated with Uber and make the passengers aware that tips are not included in their fares.

I think the appropriate recourse would be to write Uber and suggest tipping be added as an option in the app (as it is with Lyft) in order to avoid the awkward sign in the car.

Disagree. From Day One, Uber's business model has always included the promise of a hassle-free, tipless, and cashless ride. If you are an Uber driver, you presumably knew this and agreed to the concept, otherwise you should not have signed-up as a driver. If you now disagree with this philosophy after signing-up, the answer is not to "Attempt to change the tipping culture associated with Uber", it is to stop driving for Uber. If I saw a tipping sign in an Uber vehicle, I would view it as an attempt to extort money from me in exchange for a decent passenger rating. In my view, extorting money from me certainly warrants the downgrade of at least one star.

The problem here is with Uber. When they first began, the rates were set such that tipping truly was not necessary. What really should happen is that drivers should organize to get rates raised again so that Uber is actually fulfilling the promise of a ride where a tip is not necessary. Instead, they choose to take it out on riders because we are the easier mark.

Why do drivers need to "get organized"? If a driver doesn't want to drive for a given rate, just don't log in. If a driver is willing to drive when there's a certain level of surge pricing, log in then. If Uber is taking too big of a cut, then it'll hurt their bottom line as total use of the platform will decline (similar to how a tax impacts a demand curve).

All of this can handle itself fine without tips or collusion amongst drivers or riders.

I agree with this in principle, but in practice, I don't think it's quite that simple. From what I understand, depending on the market, surges often occur in only short increments (like 10-15 minutes). Also, if you are logged-in at any time, any ping that you do not accept will count against your acceptance ratio if you don't take it. This works against some of the Uber incentives and guarantees. Additionally, Uber drivers know where the start point is, but have no idea where the destination (and therefore how long/profitable a ride might be) As an individual,it seems that it would take a lot of monitoring and discipline to truly optimize fares this way.

To move a behemoth like Uber, I really do think that some amount of driver collusion will be necessary to enact real change. That said, there is also too much incentive for the individual to act in their own best interest and not to join in on any sort of collective action. Hence, they work on the path of least resistance and take it out on the rider.

I'll admit I have no idea how predictable and how long surges last. My experience with them has been some semi-obvious cases...rush hour in big cities, that kind of thing.

But there have been one or two weird ones...Sunday at noon in downtown Chicago, for example. That one seems so out of the blue that I'm guessing a driver couldn't really plan for it, even if he/she was active on a driver forum that discussed surges. (Hey, not too different than trying to find a rare Pokemon... ;))

Do you tip your UBER driver?
 

I usually do when I visit big cities (2 to 5 buck per trip).

Is this a North American thing? I've never even seen the option to do so.

No, you have to tip in cash.

I never do. Tipping in cash defeats one of Uber's main selling points: one consistent and reliable payment method.

No, I usually do not carry cash and appreciate the in-app payment UBER offers. If UBER would add the option to just add a 15% to 20% tip with a simple click, I probably would if the driver was really nice and I had a good ride.

Ah, right. I assumed it'd be on the app (the black cab apps over here allow you to do so, for example).

I wouldn't do so unless it were the cultural norm - and it seems to be debatable even in the land of the free-ly flowing tips.