i wish i could just exchange money for specific goods and services: specifically, having ubers waiting for me. right now there’s this whole thing where it’s kind of a dick move to leave drivers waiting because it cuts into their profits, so they have some chance of just cancelling the ride, and/or leaving a bad rating which makes it harder for me to get rides consistently in the future. but a big part of the reason why i sometimes want drivers to wait for me is i’m in a hurry and uber wait times have substantial variance, so i want to call early to be safe! the best solution so far is to explain over chat that i’ll tip extra, but there’s no way for me to prove that i will, so there’s still a large cancellation risk. whereas if i could simply compensate drivers for the time they spend waiting all would be solved.
Waymo has a feature where you can pay a few bucks for the car to wait extra time, which you can send while the car is waiting for you. I’ve used it once when I slightly mistimed a ride hail from the airport. I think Uber and Lyft could implement this, but it’s definitely lowest friction to implement when there is no driver and the fee is just set by the company.
Have you looked into hiring a personal driver and paying by the hour? I do this sometimes, and it’s incredibly convenient because we can agree on a time when he picks me up. It also allows him to wait. For example, if I’m going to the gym and then head into the office, I can pay for one or two hours, and it’s just aligning incentives.
much more expensive and less convenient than uber (usually need to book much further ahead of time); also, overkill for a 30 minute ride because you can usually only book a min of 2 hours or something.
There’s a large class of services where you can do this, but with a step-change in the price like paying 50x − 100 more you pay.
i.e
- You could get a personal driver who’d wait for you however long you want. - Buying your own jet vs flying commercial lets you avoid airport wait time. - Getting a personal chef to instead of ordering take out.
I think the only way to mass-produce (both products and services) is to make something that works for 90% of the population 90% of the time, and that’s the only way to scale it.
But you can actually solve problems with money—it’s just a lot more than you’d want to pay for what seems like a trivial thing. Maybe eventually it’ll get solved as we get wealthier / demand goes up. etc (I think you just pay now to get through security lines faster in most US airports).
i wish i could just exchange money for specific goods and services: specifically, having ubers waiting for me. right now there’s this whole thing where it’s kind of a dick move to leave drivers waiting because it cuts into their profits, so they have some chance of just cancelling the ride, and/or leaving a bad rating which makes it harder for me to get rides consistently in the future. but a big part of the reason why i sometimes want drivers to wait for me is i’m in a hurry and uber wait times have substantial variance, so i want to call early to be safe! the best solution so far is to explain over chat that i’ll tip extra, but there’s no way for me to prove that i will, so there’s still a large cancellation risk. whereas if i could simply compensate drivers for the time they spend waiting all would be solved.
You can reserve ubers for designated times, FYI! My girlfriend uses this to reserve trips to the airport
Waymo has a feature where you can pay a few bucks for the car to wait extra time, which you can send while the car is waiting for you. I’ve used it once when I slightly mistimed a ride hail from the airport. I think Uber and Lyft could implement this, but it’s definitely lowest friction to implement when there is no driver and the fee is just set by the company.
Have you looked into hiring a personal driver and paying by the hour? I do this sometimes, and it’s incredibly convenient because we can agree on a time when he picks me up. It also allows him to wait. For example, if I’m going to the gym and then head into the office, I can pay for one or two hours, and it’s just aligning incentives.
much more expensive and less convenient than uber (usually need to book much further ahead of time); also, overkill for a 30 minute ride because you can usually only book a min of 2 hours or something.
There’s a large class of services where you can do this, but with a step-change in the price like paying 50x − 100 more you pay.
i.e
- You could get a personal driver who’d wait for you however long you want.
- Buying your own jet vs flying commercial lets you avoid airport wait time.
- Getting a personal chef to instead of ordering take out.
I think the only way to mass-produce (both products and services) is to make something that works for 90% of the population 90% of the time, and that’s the only way to scale it.
But you can actually solve problems with money—it’s just a lot more than you’d want to pay for what seems like a trivial thing. Maybe eventually it’ll get solved as we get wealthier / demand goes up. etc (I think you just pay now to get through security lines faster in most US airports).
but it would be so easy for uber to add this feature! it seems utterly crazy to jump all the way to having a personal driver.