Reuters
Uber is experimenting with giving you only two minutes to get in the car before your driver starts getting paid.
Drivers previously had to wait for 5 minutes before they could collect a cancellation fee or start getting paid for a trip. Uber is currently testing the shorter 2-minute grace period in New York City, New Jersey, Phoenix, and Dallas before bringing it to other cities.
The change was first reported by TechCrunch.
Uber previously gave passengers 5 minutes to get in a car once it had arrived at the requested pickup destination. After the 5 minutes were up, a driver could cancel the ride and collect a cancellation fee from the late passenger. Under the new policy, drivers start earning the per-minute rate for the city they're in after 2 minutes of waiting.
In short, making your driver wait longer than 2 minutes means they'll start charging you before you get in the car.
The catch for drivers is that they must still wait for at least 5 minutes before they can collect a cancellation fee. That should keep drivers from waiting for 3-4 minutes and canceling to collect fees from would-be passengers.
The same two-minute wait time has already been in place for all UberPool rides, a ride option in some cities that pairs multiple passengers traveling along the same route with one vehicle.
Uber's product manager for driver experience, Maya Choksi, told Tech Insider that a shorter grace period for normal Uber rides was a "highly requested feature we've heard from drivers."
She noted that the two-minute wait window is "still an experiment" and that "the biggest thing we're looking for is a reduction in wait times."
All passengers in an area with the shorter wait time policy will be shown a message in the Uber app explaining the change when they book a ride.
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