alanslegal

Good tip. I had a driver ring me and then cancel my ride because he was too bloody lazy to come pick me up and drive me a short distance - IF only I screenshot his details I could have lodged a complaint.

diburning

Related: Pilot says Lyft driver kicked him out after realizing airport was just a $6 trip

Phoneyjoker

How is this related to scamming? The driver did not scam the passenger.

Scam:
a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation

Cancelling a passenger as a no show when the driver is 5 miles away is a scam. Cancelling mid ride is not.

Boraxo

cancelled 3 rides today (2 lyft, 1 uber) because the drivers either did not take the logical route to get to me or they did not stop on the right street (drove past it, both one-ways). finally got a competent one on the 4th try.

then, on my return, i removed the destination because i wanted to navigate as we go due to rush hour traffic. of course i got a driver who told me he needed a destination because he spoke no english! fortunately it worked out ok.

based on today's experience in SF i may have to reconsider taxis...or get a scooter

Phoneyjoker

I'd invest some time and energy in learning how to teleport .

HWGeeks

I like the crappy drivers from both lyft and uber who will accept a ride and not pick you up at all. Forcing you to cancel.

But I have two phones and two accounts, so I waited for one dude for nearly an hour, surprised uber didn't self-cancel it.

Gig103

Well, I had my first Uber 'cancellation' scam last week. PHX Terminal 4 is a loop. The notice says "Your driver has arrived" but when I track the driver, she was past the pick-up spot at the end of the terminal. Then she didn't move (no attempt to loop back) and after 5 minutes cancelled, saying I wasn't there. The way I see it, she drove right past so that the GPS would indicate she "arrived" then she kept going. I also imagine, based on where she was parked (end of T4 south), she was hoping her next ping was for a T4 North pickup so she could do it again.

I disputed the $5 and was credited back but now I need to start screenshotting like someone else said. The replacement driver was in a nicer car and we had a good chat on my way home, but what a bad taste this put in my mouth.

steve64

I don't want to discredit your story. I wasn't there so can't comment. But as a Phoenix Uber Driver, let me just remind you that there's always 2 sides to every story.
The Uber Driver's app usually works great, but sometimes it can be really goofy. PHX Skyhabor is a funky spot for it. Some things to consider ....

1) We live in a 3D world
Many times when doing a drop-off at PHX, I get my next ride ping within seconds of swiping COMPLETE TRIP and RATE PASSENGER. It is common (for example) for my drop-off to be Terminal 4 North, departure level (read: upper level). My new pick-up is Terminal 4 North arrival level (read: lower level). As soon as I accept, the app notifies me RIDER ADVISED YOU HAVE ARRIVED (maybe not those exact words).
Ummmm NO, I am several minutes away from pick-up as I have to "loop around" to get down to the arrival level. By coincidence, I may only be 20 feet above the new passenger, but that's not the same as "arrived".
I don't know how it displays on the riders app, but since the map display is 2D, I can easily see where it could appear that I just drove "by" you as I head off to find the "down" ramp.

2) I don't drive "as the crow flies"
Due to item #1 , after doing T4 drop-offs, I've learned to immediately head down to the arrival level, new ping or not.
Once down, as I drive past a designated Rideshare Pick-up Zone, I will get a ping for a ride from that zone. You know PHX, backing up is not an option.
At 1st I thougt this ping timing was just bad luck, but boy it sure does happen at lot. I now think the app is simply matching the physically closest driver, not realizing that if I'm slightly beyond the zone, my TIME to the pick-up may not make me the best driver for this ride. This leads me to Item #3 ....

3) PHX Terminal 4 is a loop
Well yea. A big, convoluted, multi-layered (see item #1 ) loop. The entire airport is a series of loops.
For a "normal" trip to the airport, the loops and their cutbacks serve their purpose reasonably well. By "normal" I mean the car has one purpose ... either a drop-off OR a pick-up ... then exit, said exit usually need a cut-over.
For Rideshare, cars are typically arriving as a "drop-off" then needing to convert to a "pick-up" before exiting. With this in mind, it's no longer simply "north curb" vs "south curb" with both of those repeated as "arrival/lwer lvl" vs "departure/upper lvl" ... you also have to throw "inner" vs "outer" lanes into the mix.. Your drop-offs want to be at the inner curb, PHX Ride shares zones are outer curbs. For my scenario in item #1 , there is no "loop cut-over" from the T4 "north/upper/inner" curb to the T4 "north/lower/outer" curb. Many scenarios require a decent driver away from your passenger to get to a valid cut-over point. And westbound (so the south lanes) if you miss a turn (or can't get into the proper lane due to grid-lock) then you can easily find yourself beyond T2 before you can cut-over.

Slightly off topic .... but is the most ridiculous "convert from drop-off to pick-up" scenario is having both at T3.
There is no public curb for T3 North. Drop-offs are anywhere on the T3 South, inner curb. As you approach T3 in the southern (west bound) lanes, baggage claim is 1st. For drop-offs it is best to continue down the curb to the west end because the ticket counters are there. Pick-ups are in the southern lanes, outer curb. Unlike T4, the Rideshare Zone is at the far (western) end of the curb (near the ticket counters, not baggage claim which in itself is just plain stupid).
So if you're doing a T3 drop-off with a known T3 pick-up, your new passenger is literally right there. The app will "notify rider of the driver's arrival" and indeed, I've had such passengers identify me and start walking over. It is literally that close. But official PHX rules state I must circle back to the proper curb or face a $500-1000 fine. On a local Uber Driver forum, I've twice seen posts from drivers in this situation who saw the "airport rideshare police" there and asked if they could do the pick-up of that person there waving at them ... in both those cases the reported answer was an absolute NO.

So....
I know there is a small percentage of drivers doing "cancel" (and other) scams.
But reconsider. Do you really know if your driver drove past you ?? Or possibly above you ? Or maybe just the wrong lanes to get to your curb because of where they were when they received the ping ?
Where they "stopped", are you sure they weren't actually caught in grid lock ?? It is very common along drop/pick curbs as everyone on a curb wants out into a lane and everybody in a lane wants a spot on the curb. The area around the west end of T4 south inner curbs gets a double whammy because you also have folks exiting the parking garage pay booths wanting to go transition left towards outer exit lanes while the few folks who want to get over to the north arrival lanes (IE" Rideshare "conversions") need to get to the right.
During the "peaks" (and airport traffic is notorious for going up-n-down in waves) my T3 drop to T3 pick-up scenario can be a 15 minute drive to travel what is actually 30 feet "as the crow flies".

diburning

I'm surprised that PHX doesn't have a staging area similar to taxis just to mitigate this issue. Most airports have them for Uber/Lyft, and works on a queuing system of first in, first out to be fair, and to help reduce traffic from drivers flooding the arrivals level trying to get a fare.

I got ride shopped the other night at BOS. Lyft driver called me asking where I was going. I gave him an honest answer, thinking that it would be a long enough ride (over 12 miles). It was 100% prime time. He cancelled on me. I re-requested and it was only 75% prime time at that point. His loss. I still reported him to Lyft though.

Gig103

I appreciate your post. I did consider point #2 (she just missed the pickup), and your point #1 (3d world) also makes a lot of sense. I even considered it being a GPS issue since I've had my Garmin get confused in arrivals.

The reason I felt it was an attempt to get cancellation fees was because there was no contact by the driver. I was watching her on the app, and figured she was going to loop around. Then she stalled at South-1. Traffic? Plausible, but with a random cancellation and her being perfectly poised to get a North-1 pickup, also fits my analysis. Heck, maybe she didn't want to go all the way out to Mesa-Gateway where I live (which she wouldn't know until she "arrived").

I thought that there was a staging area too, but maybe it's more like a "max radius" to pick up fares. Steve64 could clarify for us.

steve64

PHX does have a rideshare staging area (2 actually).
When PHX first started allowing rideshare, "queue" at the staging lot worked much as you'd think. A driver can see the count of cars in queue, driving onto the lot would have the app place you into the queue (leaving the lot removes you from the queue) and ride requests were filled from the queue FIFO.

I can't speak for Lyft but think they have a similar change to Uber's .....
New ride requests are now filled from "re-match" first, then the queue. The intent was why have a fresh drop-off head from the terminals to the queue when at the same time a driver is being pulled from queue to go to the terminals.
Sounds good, but it's why I think some of my issues above trip the app .... they all boil down to ... straight line distance does not equate out to estimated time to pick-up. If I'm driving in circles to position myself for the pick-up zone, then I'm defeating the purpose of re-match.

Supposedly, using "re-match" before the "queue" was supposed to reduce this. If a driver dropping off at PHX is quickly re-matched, then why would they care if the new ride is a short one. I'll tell you why ... driver greed.
It also assumes that drivers who don't want to risk waiting only to get a short ride, should simply not enter the queue. Duh. But that philosophy should be used whether or not there's a rematch.

The latest attempt to resolve this issue is "short ride protection".
If you get pulled from the queue only to get a short ride (the term "short ride" is not defined) then within the next 6 hours, if you join the queue again you'd be given a priority position (I assume related to "time already spent" waiting).
It's new so we'll see. I'm sure greedy drivers will find a way to work it to their advantage.

ContinentalFan

CMK10

I had something even more obnoxious earlier this week. I arrived at RDU and as I was walking off the plane, requested an Uber. I was coming down the escalator to the baggage claim and was about a one minute walk away from the pickup area when my phone went from "Your Driver is Arriving" to "On Trip". The driver didn't even stop at the curb and wait, he just started the trip, drove 1000 feet, and ended the trip. So I was charged $9 and I had to re-request another ride. No wonder the guy had a rating of 4.66. I was able to get a refund but it was really annoying.

rustykettel

CMK10

I witnessed some fraud today. I needed a ride from the Hyatt Place ATL South to downtown. I went for an Uber first but when I saw it would take 11 minutes for the driver to get there I switched to Lyft. A Lyft driver was there in a minute. I got in the car and saw he had the Uber app up with the same Tyler on the screen. I said I must not be his ride as I'm Charles and he said I was. He kept the Uber app up for a while until the rider cancelled and he got the $4.50 fee. Sadly I don't think there's any way I can report this.