Ok, so I have been using Uber & Lyft a couple times a month in Las Vegas for a little over a year now and have a had few strange experiences.

First was a Lyft ride from Airport to Downtown. I fly into Terminal 3 and know the drill, walk over to Valet Level of Short Term parking where Ride Share pick-ups are. I order a Lyft and driver accepts and then I see my ride is there. Ok, I look around and don't see car. I call guy and he says oh, I'm on my way, I'll be there shortly. Ok, he arrives and I ask him if I'm charged when he clicks "driver is there"? He says well yes, but he made a mistake and it'll only cost me like an extra buck. Ok, whatever, then i notice he has a tip jar affixed to back of seat in back of car. On drive he proceeds to tell me he is the highest rated Lyft driver in Las Vegas. He then does the old cab driver question which way do you want me to go? I said just use Waze or your Lyft mapping app. He says, oh those things don't know ****. WTF? We get downtown which is normally like $18 to 25 with ride share and I see mine is $30. No big deal, but I felt like something was off. Anyway, driver comes out of car to shake my hand and is like hey can you please give me 5 stars.

I email Lyft and ask about the airport pick-up and get a response in like 20 minutes saying that driver shouldn't click they are there until they arrive at pick-up point. Lyft recalculated what ride should've cost and credited me the difference.

Whole thing was really strange. I'll write up my others shortly, but just curious about others experiences and how they've handled them.

Anyone else have strange Lyft or Uber rides in LV?

Can you imagine living your life, hustling a dollar or two here by doing little things like this? Screw that.

I've never had an issue with a Uber/Lyft in Vegas. That honestly sounds like a cabbie switching over. His rating will get him kicked soon

I did Uber part time when it first started for about 5 months before the rate cuts made is so -EV it wasn't worth it. I would do it 3 days a week 5am-8ish and then go into my day job. That was a lot of fun as I would cruise Industrial Rd and Chinatown first thing in the morning. Half of my morning rides would either be guys coming from Massage Parlors or strip clubs, or actual workers coming from strip clubs and massage parlors on their way home. Also the early checkouts to the airport. Everyday definitely had a story. I honestly wouldn't know where to start.

OP, in your scenario, Uber/Lyft no longer tells you if it is "surge pricing", it just gives you the estimated cost of the ride. I have seen the airport surge 1.3x - 2x at times from the driver's side of the app based on demand. When picking up rides from the airport we also see how many rideshare drivers are in the Airport queue and the approximate waiting time until you are 1st in queue. Also, all rides originating from and ending at McCarran are subject to an additional $2.50 Airport surcharge and a new 3% tax and $1.70 fee, all of which directly going to Uber that the driver doesn't get. At the current rates, a driver would only net ~$8 driving someone from the airport to Fremont St. It sounds like your last ride was effective of the new rate policies that went into effect a few months back.

The fact that the guy is soliciting tips might be enough to get him bounced.

This is how I determine whether to use Uber/Lyft or a taxi - am I in the mood to be raped in the wallet, or raped in the butt?

i used them about 20 times my last trip.it's better cheaper more efficient than taxi and you're in a much nicer car. most of them were cool- 3 or 4 were way over the top with their tip hustling in which case they got zero.on my last ride to the airport the guy was kissing my ass the whole time and before we got to the airport "hey do you wanna stop at the gas station for some coffee before your flight?" wtf- i say "no thanks", "ok man i was gonna treat you"

sure buddy.

My ride from the airport to the strip was free with some amex/uber promotion (up to 65 dollars free) so i took uber black,stopped at in and out which took a while and the final ride was 58 dollars before the promo. wish i could have gotten the driver that last 7.

also lol@ I'm the highest rated driver in vegas when you start off the ride trying to scumbag someone.

Why would you report him for that? Do you prefer your Uber drivers to make less than minimum wage?

Ok, 2nd Lyft story, I was picked up at airport and being taken to my place downtown.

Car is nice and driver is in his late 20s. I ask him how long he's been doing the ride share thing. He says for about 2 months.

I'm like oh, what were you doing before and he mentions he moved to Vegas from Chicago area to play poker and does Lyft part-time to earn a little extra on the side. So I ask where he plays, he mentions MGM and Luxor. I've never played either as I primarily play MTT.

I ask him if ever plays Tournaments and he said sometimes when he gets staked. So I was like oh whats your name I'll check you out on Hendon Mob and he says, "Who are the Hendon Mob?"

The fact that he had a "Tip Jar" was odd, since Lyft & Uber are designed to be cash free transactions.

I agree with pig4bill that Uber for sure might bounce him and Lyft probably would frown on the jar.

Also agree with others comments that most of my strange Lyft/Uber rides have turned out to be former cabbies.

Upside to ride share is problems are resolved quickly by both Uber & Lyft and MOST rides are great in cars that don't stink.

I just like knowing the total before I get in the car. With taxi, you don't know whether the route, the traffic, or other variables will cause a ride to be at the low or high end of some wide range.

One of the main principles of Uber is that there is no tip needed. If drivers don't like how much money they are making they can quit driving and supply and demand will work itself out (ie as there become less drivers, they will each earn more money). By soliciting for tips this guy in a tipless transaction, he is screwing over all the other parties (customers, Uber, other drivers).

WTF do you think would happen to a McDonald's employee if they solicited for tips?

Also, Lyft allows tipping through the app. Uber does not but I think they should.

I didn't realize there were multiple pickup locations at the Airport. I requested an Uber and then followed signs to the pickup location and was waiting forever while apparently the driver was waiting for me at a completely different terminal. Additional airport signage at the pickup location would probably be useful. Either way, don't make that mistake.

I did ride share and there were a couple girls at my pickup location. They looked like a "Kenzie" so I thought we might be ride sharing together but then I heard them mention they were going downtown while I was going to the strip. Then I saw them get in a car and my driver called me and it turns out that was my car too. LoL, needless to say I'm not that good at Uber yet.

On top of that Uber always tries to pick me up behind my house where it is impossible to get to from my house. I had no clue you can move the pin (I may have to move it down the street a bit though just to get them to enter our neighborhood). Probably an issue with Google Maps which has also had the wrong street names in my area for the past 10+ years.

I took a trip from Encore to ARIA and requested ride share. My driver tells me to get in and not worry about ride share because that doesn't work well for short trips he tells me. So I'm thinking: "Ok, whatever. It shouldn't cost too much either way". So he just takes off right away and drops me off at ARIA. My price ended up being $4.61, the price of a ride share.

Just wondering why you would want to rat someone out for having a tip jar when they are providing a better service on something you would usually have to pay 50 - 100% more on and then tip another 20%.

On top of the many reasons the "McDonalds tip argument" doesn't work, I wouldn't tip a McDs worker because they make a lot more than UberX drivers.

It's okay to be a cheap ****, just admit it. But to be a cheap **** and rat out someone trying to support a family just because they have a tip jar is the new nut low.

It baffles me that there are still 5000+ uber/lyft drivers on the strip giving people rides, casino to casino for less than $3/ride net. Crazy its that cheap now.

First off, it sounds like he had a bad experience, which in itself could be plenty of reason to rat him out for anything and everything. That's why I think it's best to always dot your Is and cross your Ts.

And actually you wouldn't normally pay 50% more considering all uber drivers would charge you the same. If it's about the price of the trip, perhaps you should be sending a tip directly to Uber because Uber is the one helping you in that regard.

Nobody should be trying to support a family on Uber. I have a buddy doing Lyft in Vegas right now and before Christmas he said he was only getting a rider once every couple hours (slow season, but still).

Well that one was a mess up on his part. He should have never left without another rider. I'm not sure what happens if the other rider doesn't show up.

I did feel bad for that guy and that's when I learned the app doesn't have tipping functionality. Although, if it did then I'm sure some drivers could try to game the ride share system.

You pay 50 - 100% more for the same ride with a Taxi, but yet tip another 20%. That was my point. I would never tip Uber directly because they exploit drivers. I always tip my Uber driver though unless he/she provided horrible service.

Take some of those savings you mentioned from the price of the trip and tip your driver. It will keep the good ones around. Otherwise you will end up getting what you pay for: Poor service in a beat up 10 year old Prius, which is what ride-sharing is transitioning too.

Taxis are a thing of the past. I rarely ever used taxis and will probably never use one again. So the comparison really isn't valid.

I'll use Uber as it was intended (tipless). Uber has different levels of car right? So if I don't like the quality of cars in UberX I should just move up in level I assume.

A lot of ignorant drivers who think it is an easy way to earn a buck. What they don't realize is that the market quickly becomes over-saturated with drivers

I drove Uber/Lyft for about 6 months while I was going to school after separating from the military. That's how long it took me to realize that any money that I was making was quickly sunk back into the increased maintenance cost and rapid depreciation of my Acura TL. The only way to really make any money doing UberX is to drive a ****ty car that barely passes the standards in which you really don't have a lot of depreciation anymore with the increased mileage. Even then, it is barely a minimum wage job.

This is why you see two things with UberX:

1. As time goes on, you increasingly see crappier and crappier cars picking you up.
2. If you do have a nice car picking you up, that driver has only been driving for a few months or less. They haven't realized yet that the money they are making today is just really trading in future equity of their car (I was one of those people).

To you it is not a valid comparison, but guess what, the world doesn't revolve around you. You just bragged in the Vlogger thread about how much money you have. But guess what, you sound like a real cheap bastard in this thread. Complaining about a $4 ride that you didn't have to tip on. lol, really? Have fun exploiting the poor and ignorant.

These are the types of people I would get all the time in an Uber in Las Vegas. You pick them up at a strip property, they load in 2 bags of luggage and in a 5 minute ride they tell you,

- About their $5k/mo rent in SFO/LA or any other city where people can't wait to tell you that they live there within ten seconds of meeting them.

- About their comped suite they had for their whole trip

- How they're up $xx,xxx.xx this trip.

- And all about their fancy luxuries and trinkets and foreign cars and multi million dollar businesses they own back home

4/5 of my riders would be like this unless they were locals, or here for a convention and don't gamble.

People can't wait to peacock. Image crafting for strangers is all the hype nowadays.

P.S. ...And they never tip. Ever!

Locals get it though and they tip quite generously, especially when they see the savings over a cab. The same ride distance wise in a taxi is more than double the cost of an Uber/Lyft in Vegas.

I didn't complain about the $4 ride. It's no more valid a comparison than you not tipping at McDonald's. When I worked there we made $4.25/hr minimum wage. Not exactly a living wage. People would leave their tables a mess and we would have to clean them off. I only ever saw a tip left once. I was fine with that though. I was making the money I had agreed to make per the terms of my employment.

FWIW, I did tip the guy on the ride from the airport because the price was the same as a shuttle and I would have tipped them. However, I think tipping him was a mistake and after reading up on it decided to go to a no-tip system.