

Uber Expectations as We Grow - gwintrob
http://blog.uber.com/eta-expectations

======
bluetidepro
The thing that I didn't see in the data is while yes, the longer uber is in a
city the less likely you are to wait, there is also a flip side of the driver
no longer waiting as long when uber becomes more established in a city.

Let me explain...

When Uber was first in Chicago it was normal to wait 10-15 mins for a ride to
pick you up. You would pull the app out while you still had a few things to do
in the apartment before you left, order the Uber, and then by the time you
were ready it was right out front waiting. The time waiting felt very
seamless, although there might have been an actual 10 minute wait. When it
also first started drivers were totally okay with waiting a minute or two for
you because the demand wasn't as high back then. They didn't want to lose a
potential customer. However, now that Uber IS more abundant in Chicago you can
no longer do that little technique. Most drivers will get pissy with you if
they have to wait outside for more than 30 seconds, or if you are not curbside
waiting for the ride when they show up. Since drivers now also have more
options for people to pick up, they can be more choosy on the customers they
decide to take. They can easily cancel rides if they are too far from the
pickup or are waiting to get a new customer. So since you can't "queue" up a
ride like the "old days" you have order the ride when you are actually ready
to go and are already waiting. Now that you do this, the wait is felt 100% by
the customer (which was once avoided), if that makes sense. So what used to
feel like nothing now feels like you are waiting in the cold for possible 5-10
whole minutes, which obviously often feels a lot longer that. Thus making you
more likely to cancel the ride if you see an empty cab or another opportunity.
So there is a bit of a catch 22 here, if I'm using that phrase correctly.

It does makes sense that they don't want to expose this side of things though,
because that places more blame on their own quality of drivers. It probably
shows that as a city is active longer, the ratings/quality of drivers goes
down drastically. I've noticed it quite a bit here in Chicago, and it's really
disappointing. The average quality of driver I get nowadays is almost 1 to 1.5
stars lower than what I got 2 years ago.

I'm curious to find out if anyone else has had this same experience or not.

~~~
jamoes
> waiting in the cold for possible 5-10 whole minute

Isn't this largely solved by the GPS mapping of your ride from within the Uber
app? You can easily see exactly where the driver is, and step outside right as
the driver is pulling up, regardless of how long the total wait is.

~~~
rahimnathwani
In my experience (using Uber in Shanghai and Beijing), the latency can be 0 to
2 minutes, so it's hard to time it exactly. It takes me 2 minutes to get from
my apartment to the place where a driver would normally pick me up.

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ChristianKletzl
One of the reasons I am frustrated about a long waiting time is wrong
expectations set by the map. The map in SOMA typically shows that 5+ cars are
within 2 minutes. As soon as I request, the closest is 7 minutes away.

~~~
untog
AFAIK there isn't a lot they can do about it, because Uber drivers have to
manually accept jobs. Those 5+ cars within 2 minutes presumably turned down
the job.

~~~
jacalata
Ok, but can they do something about the car that I do get saying "5 minutes"
and actually meaning "9 minutes, including the bit where I watch him drive 2
minutes in the other direction"?

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benhamner
As Uber grows in a city, the average wait time should also decrease pretty
dramatically. There are more cars on the road, so a pickup from any given
location/time should arrive faster on average than it would two years ago.

The precise methodology is opaque in the post, but there's a chance that these
results are driven more by increasing liquidity in the marketplace instead of
increasing expectations of Uber over time.

------
cpks
Honestly, I believe the data, but not the conclusion. When I first started
using Uber, it was a taxi replacement. I take taxis once every few weeks e.g.
to go to the airport and similar. Most of my other transit was either by
subway, walking, bicycle, or didn't happen.

When Uber dropped to a couple of minutes, my usage pattern completely changed.
It's a casual form of transport. Hungry? I'll take an Uber to where ever I
want to eat. Running a few minutes late? I'll Uber it instead of biking. I now
meet people more than I used to. When transport became fast, cheap, and
convenient, I started using it a lot more.

If I see a 15 minute wait time on an Uber, I'll usually cancel it, but that's
not because I'm any less patient than I was a year ago. It's just that Uber
now fills a niche in my life that was unfilled a year ago, and indeed, that I
didn't know existed. When Uber jumps up to 15 minutes, my usage patterns go
back to what they were with taxis, and I cancel most of the casual trips.

~~~
rayiner
It depends on where you live. In New York or Chicago, you just hail a cab,
usually in a minute or two. Pulling out an app and trying to get the marker in
the right place and waiting 5 minutes is a step backward for the kind of usage
you describe. An app is a very clumsy replacement for street hails.

~~~
sethhochberg
For me this goes doubly so when I happen to be walking somewhere (in NYC) and
see a cab driving past with its light lit - I might have normally walked the
15 blocks, but since there a cab right there, and its available right now....
its almost like an impulse-buy on the transportation.

------
harmmonica
How much does competition account for the "impatience" that Uber's seeing?
When I launch Uber and see a "long" wait time, my immediate reaction is to
launch Lyft to see how long their wait time is. Not that Uber would go
sticking info about their competitors in a blog post, but you wonder if
there's any connection between the "patient" cities and how much mindshare
competitive services have in those cities (i.e., no competitors outside of
legacy taxi companies = people willing to wait longer).

------
kiyoto
"The bottom line is that we realize we have to continually raise the bar, to
get you home from the bar. We are aware of this challenge, from both a
technological as well as people perspective, and are doing what we can to
fulfill our mission of bringing reliable rides to all who want them."

Yes, because it's really critical to get home from the bar in a state of total
inebriation =)

Also, I didn't know giving reliable rides was Uber's mission. I thought it was
"evolving the way the world moves." This may sound like nitpicking but if you
pause for a moment, the difference, as far as a company mission goes, between
"giving reliable rides" and "evolving the way the world moves" is pretty big.

~~~
JeremyMorgan
>Yes, because it's really critical to get home from the bar in a state of
total inebriation =)

Not sure if that's sarcasm or not, but I do think this is one of the more
powerful positives to Uber, keeping drunks off the road.

~~~
n72
Cabs haven't done this?

~~~
jordanthoms
Uber is cheaper and more convenient than a cab, so it makes it much more
viable to leave your car at home when going out drinking.

------
dhruvbird
Couple of questions about the post (since the link above doesn't seem to allow
comments):

1\. Were the numbers for the chart "Willingness to wait in a city 2013 v/s
2014" generated based on estimates from the Uber app or real wait times that
were logged once the customer was picked up?

2\. Also, looking at the same graph, it seems some of the rides that were not
completed because the ETA was < 4.5 minutes (Probability=1) could have
trivially been completed had Uber just dispatched the driver a little later
(or had the driver delayed him/her-self a bit).

3\. What is the volume of rides as a % for each range of waiting times for the
ETA?

4\. What is the revenue per ride as a % of total revenue for each range of
waiting times for the ETA?

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aaronbrethorst
Notable point: This blog post was authored by one of Nathan Myhrvold's[1,2]
sons.

[1] Yes, _that_ Nathan Myhrvold. Microsoft billionaire(?), founder of
Intellectual Ventures, creator of the best cookbook I've ever seen, and
notorious patent troll.

[2]
[https://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2009/01/28/pages/1076/index...](https://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2009/01/28/pages/1076/index.xml?page=2&)

------
vmarsy
Could one of the factors be the difference between users?

Early adopters who really liked the Uber concept for various reasons and
wanted to use Uber

VS.

Now a majority of users who heard about Uber because it's supposedly better
than other means of transportation , but when they try to book it and see a
longer waiting time than just getting a Taxi, or taking a bus/train , they
don't want to wait for a Uber car.

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eggsome
Is it just me, or does it seem short sighted to end iOS6 support now? I tried
to use the Uber app on my phone the other day and ended up having to call a
taxi. Obviously you have cut your losses with legacy stuff eventually, but
surely it dosen't cost much for one more iOS target.

~~~
madeofpalk
Off the top of my head, iOS 8 adoption is currently like 90%, iOS 7 adoption
(before 8) was at like 95% at it's peak.

So current iOS 6 usage would be less than .5% of iOS devices? I would suspect
(without any sort of proof), that Uber's demographic doesn't overlap much with
people running a 2 year old phone OS.

------
kyledrake
Easy for Uber to "raise the bar" when they're so ethically low right now they
could parachute out of a snake's ass.

~~~
dannymick
Best comment I've ever seen on HN.

~~~
olivermarks
+1

