Sorry, wall of text incoming!

Let me start by saying that I really like the job! Just not so much the company.

For me, there are a number of issues which I will try to summarise in bullet point. I happen to have a lot of friends who are drivers, so some of these issues didnt happen to me directly, but I feel they could.

• No support if a rider abuses a driver - they say they won't release the riders info under privacy if you want to go to the police (not sure how this is legal, but it did happen to friend).
• No support if a drunk or abusive rider significantly damages your car (dents, smashed windows, ripped seats, etc). They will tell you this is 'normal wear and tear'.
• You can't defend yourself against a bad rating, and this matters when you get sacked at a 4.6/5 star average. I once had a couple finger bang in my (families) car and told them to cut it out. They got shitty and rated me a 1 significantly moving me towards that 4.6 cut off. I reported to Uber and they did jack all. I'm closer to being sacked because I told someone to not bang in my car and they get to ride again.
• They cut rates by 20% overnight, which means there's very slightly more trips but the extra petrol and car running costs don't offset the slight increase. Uber's profiting by maybe 5% but at the direct expense of drivers.
• They now punish drivers by locking them out of the system if they refuse to respond to 2 pickups from low rated riders or riders who are too far away (this only happened after the 20% cut when drivers had to be more picky - its not worth traveling 20 mins for a $4 trip. This is actually a breach of contract and there was a recent settlement in the US regarding this).
• They encouraged drivers to finance cars through them knowing full well rates/pay would be dropped (30% over 12 months). Now there are many drivers (usually older folk) who are stuck with cars they cant afford.
• You now get marks against you for various things like 'professionalism' and 'vehicle cleanliness'. This is fine in theory, but whenever the app crashes or the GPS screws up and you ask Uber to adjust the trip you will get marked as being 'unprofessional'.
• Their support is a shambles! I think even they admit this. They moved their email support from here to a call centre in the Phillipines. You will just get copy/pasted response for most questions. If you go to the office in the Val you will speak to a third party contractor who is not an actual employee of Uber.
• If you get fired you can't ask why so, again, you can't defend your position. But you can pay $75 for a 're-education' course.

The sad thing is all this just sorta happened at once in the last 4 or 5 months. For the year or so before that they were great!

Look, I don't want to dissuade anyone from giving Uber or Ride Sharing a go, but this is stuff to be aware of, thats all.