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Comment by minhazm | Hacker News Reader

It's much simpler than that. Drivers accept and then they cancel the ride themselves if they don't like the destination or the earnings. Normally you would penalize those drivers but I imagine with Lyft losing market share they likely can't afford to penalize drivers all that much.

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No, drivers don't see the destination until they arrive and the trip begins.

I'm often on one side of the Bay Area trying to get to the other and had many drivers pull up, then cancel or try to get me to cancel when they see I'm going across the Bay.

My assumption was that most drivers are using 3+ different apps, so if they get an Uber request while they're driving a Lyft route they just don't accept it, hence the bouncing around "finding another driver" because all the drivers are already busy

Also, riders are using two or three different apps, so if Uber promises a 2-minute wait and then confirms with a 6-minute wait and Lyft is promising a 3-minute wait, cancel the Uber ride and now that driver is available again.

Doesn’t that incur a cancellation fee?

Usually not in my experience, as long as it’s within a short time (5 minutes?) since booking.

I don't know about lyft but with Uber this depends on the country (gov regulations might force to be transparent with the drivers beforehand).

That's at least not true for Lyft as of October last year. But there are many factors, like other apps, traffic, getting offered something better from another app, etc.

> With upfront pay, drivers can now see ride information and what they’ll earn before accepting a ride. Drivers will have access to trip details including the pickup and drop-off locations, estimated time and distance to complete the ride, and a map view of the full ride in addition to the fare.

https://www.lyft.com/blog/posts/upfront-pay-and-the-next-cha...

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