Uber drivers told Insider Uber's fuel surcharge, intended to offset rising gas prices, comes up "woefully short."
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As gas price increases have cut into drivers' margins, Uber and Lyft announced extra fees in a bid to help drivers.
Uber is charging customers 45 cents or 55 cents per ride and 35 or 45 for an Uber Eats delivery, depending on the market, and giving it to drivers, beginning Wednesday.
Lyft announced its own fee for drivers of 55 cents per ride, beginning next week.
Six Uber drivers Insider spoke with said the new gas surcharge would do very little to offset high prices and conveyed frustration with the company. Drivers have also have expressed anger online.
"I think the words I want to use are 'woefully inadequate,'" said Nolberto Casas, an Uber and Lyft driver in Chicago, as well as volunteer with the Chicago Gig Alliance. "Napkin math" shows the surcharge doesn't quite cover increased gas prices, he said.
Casas drives part-time, completing about 40-50 rides per week. For 45 rides with a gas surcharge of 55 cents, he'd make back $24.75. He said it now costs him $240 a week to fill up his Honda Odyssey for work — a $70 increase over just weeks ago – with just more than one-third of the increase getting offset by the surcharge.
Uber's surcharge structure made sense on the customer side, as the price increase isn't enough to drive away customers, said Daniel Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities.
But for drivers, "that's not significantly moving the needle on the massive slap on the face they've gotten from rising gas prices," he added.
Lyft has said drivers said that even with fuel costs increasing, based on an internal analysis, "drivers nationally have still been earning more per hour on average than they were a year ago." Uber did not immediately respond to questions for comment on the surcharge.
Tracey Logan, who drives for Uber in New York City, won't be able to access the surcharge – per Uber's Friday statement and Lyft's on Wednesday. Uber and Lyft said that drivers there instead just received a city-mandated 5.3% increase in earnings.
Still, because of Taxi and Limousine Commission regulations, Logan rents a vehicle to drive for Uber. (Logan could apply to use a vehicle she owns for Uber if it were wheelchair-accessible, but with her back issues, she said she worries she could not help someone in a wheelchair get in the car easily). That brings her weekly expenses driving for Uber to $725: $525 to rent the car and about $200 for higher gas, she said.
"At the end of the day I'm glad TLC is regulating them, but we should still have more money coming to us, because the gas going up is beyond our control," she told Insider.
Drivers also reported not feeling consulted and argued that Uber — not customers — should eat the cost. "What we had asked for was an increase of 55 cents per mile," said Chicago Uber driver Marion Arriola. "They didn't think it through, and they didn't discuss it with any of us," he added.
Because of the gas increases and even with the surcharge, Arriola is interviewing for another job -- as a subcontracted chef at an Uber office. "Typical Uber fashion to contract this out," he told Insider.
Syracuse, New York-based driver Levi Spires told Insider the surcharge actually works well for him because of the fuel efficiency he gets with his Toyota Prius Prime hybrid vehicle.
"I am very grateful and happy Uber took the time to come up with a solution to help drivers with gas prices increasing," he said.
Uber, in its statement on the gas surcharge, pushed for drivers to get hybrids through its Green Future program, which offers financial incentives to electric vehicle drivers.
"EV is way more expensive, so I don't think I'm going to go that route," Bawa, a driver in Edmonton, Canada, told Insider. (He asked Insider to use a nickname for fear of blowback from Uber.)
