Posts by BenWilson
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to goforit,
I get this response automatically to my request in the rider portal to get an invoice:
"If you’re in New Zealand:
For uberX rides costing less than $50, tax invoices are not required by the Inland Revenue Department. If your ride does cost more than $50 or it is for business expense purposes, keep in mind that many organisations are now starting to accept uberX receipts as part of their company expense policy. However, if this is not the case for you, we do apologise for the inconvenience as not all partners will have a GST number. At this stage you will only be able to download your receipt for your ride by logging into your rider profile on riders.uber.com.
Every trip is done with a different driver partner, so we aren't able to consolidate receipts as each driver partner is a different independent contractor."
Which is rather ironic because it was attempting to download the receipt from the riders.uber.com that actually triggered this message.So they do apologize for the inconvenience that you can't get a GST receipt.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I can get a GST invoice on older trips from the rider portal. But any recent trips give an error message like this: "We are still working on generating an invoice for this trip. Please check again later. If you still require support regarding invoices please press the button below to have a support ticket automatically created. We will then contact you as soon as possible."
My understanding is that their policy on GST changed with the bundle of changes I bring up in this blog. It's so confusing, with so many conflicted stories being told left, right, and center, that I don't want to make any real statements other than "I can't get a proper GST invoice at the moment".
Certainly I pay GST on my earnings. No question about that. Whether Uber pay any on theirs is up to the IRD to investigate. They certainly charge it, I know that much. Well, they used to, anyway.
The idea that you have to make a support call to get your invoice? O...Kay... Let's see how that one goes down with corporate riders.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Yup, it's a bit of a conundrum for public transport that Uber has got so cheap that it's actually less costly to a customer to get picked up and driven 2 at a time into the city than to get in a bus, with all the farting around before and after that involves.
But, on the flipside, it's also a sign that Uber is way too cheap. My next post is going to be on this, after I get a tiny bit of breathing space from the most insane couple of weeks of my life. Suffice to say, the fan is about to get soiled. Watch this space.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to goforit,
Well, they threaten to, anyway. It might be a bluff worth calling in NZ, since up until 3 weeks ago, there was hardly any trouble with compliance at all. This is a manufactured crisis. In reality there was and still is no shortage of people willing to take on the compliance costs. But they just want to grow far faster than that, by racing to the bottom all of a sudden.
A retraction of this arbitrary move will just mean their business model goes back to the more usual one of phenomenal growth with a reasonably happy worker base helping them disrupt the taxi industry. A failure to retract it is already leading to a drop in quality, worker disgruntlement, public distrust, regulators coming down hard on the less compliant workers, as they buy market share with the wages of the staff.
I think that pushed back hard enough, they will retract. If they don't, I think that NZ would be honestly better off without them. A gaping vacuum would open in the market for a homegrown solution, with a work-ready force of drivers right there. They could kiss that away in pique if they like, the kind of faux outrage that powerful people always display when asked to follow the commoner's laws. I don't buy it.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to Sacha,
Which logic? The public logic in requiring fingerprints to be collected, or the private logic in deciding to remove all services from Austin because the public voted on a law in a way they didn't like?
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to goforit,
Ben talking about taxes did you get the point I made you are not responsible for the payment of any taxes as thats the responsibilty of the PSL holder
Can I ask you to email me? Use the little envelope icon to get my address. Really keen to discuss this further. Keep it going on here too!
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to goforit,
when Uber is surge pricing the Uber work nearly stops and 15 mintues after the normal fares return the work kicks back in.
Absolutely. The canny passengers know to wait surges out. Drivers flock extremely rapidly and the surge dies, then they book at normal rates.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to goforit,
Fares can only be refused for specific reasons
Yes, anyone with a P Endorsement got taught this.
When a taxi driver down a small hire they are turning down profit. There is more many in short jobs than long ones. Tell you more later
You don't need to, that's already how I operate every time. 80% of my trips are minimum fare. I get $4 currently (before costs).
But keep it coming, sir! I think this business of making taxis the enemy has been an important part of disempowering the Uber drivers. We don't even have our most natural ally on our side.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to goforit,
Now you proberly get an idea why taxi meters are set where they are, everyone needs to be able to live off the work they do, its not all about the customers getting a really cheap deal.
Quite. From conversations with a lot of riders, I'm surprised how often the price is not the clincher for them. They genuinely think Uber is a better service, based on the other aspects.
As for the right to the wage, it's a very tough one, because taxis operate under a very different model. They get the off-street pickup, can stand in the most conveniently located places in taxi stands, and can refuse fares as they please (or at least so many of the riders claim). The refusal is often based on the distance the person wants to go. I'm not sure if this is legal, but it certainly happens all the time. Haggling with a driver is really common. But they don't have an app that gets them efficiently to the nearest fare at a moment's notice. Which probably explains the reluctance to do short trips, particularly since those involve relinquishing a sweet spot in a cab rank.
I don't have to fight for a spot on Ponsonby Rd outside a popular night club and stand there touting for business and haggling. I can park around the corner and just sit there, and the calls just come rolling in when it's busy. They find me, and then into the car in an orderly manner, rather than double parked beside an angry taxi, with drunks getting in from the middle of the road. Likewise at the other end of the trip. Quite a lot of the time the trips are "back to back". I get a request based on my destination, and drive straight to the other rider without any wait at all. It's a very efficient use of the vehicle resource.
It's also a very efficient use of the human resource inside the vehicle, which makes it harder work, I'd say, than driving a taxi. Taxis get to do much longer shifts before the mandatory break, in acknowledgement that actually they're standing around doing nothing for a whole lot of the time. Ubers are stuck with the 5.5 hour limit, and I think even that's quite a long time when it's hammer time. It's like a drive to Ohakune from Auckland without stopping.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to goforit,
They sure aren't and will probably realize this sooner rather than later.
I'm curious whether you can give me an example of a firm that pays a wage to someone driving under their PSL? It seems like the kind of thing that you could only do with someone who had a regular run, a bus route kind of thing, perhaps an airport shuttle.