How many times have you audibly groaned after discovering that, following a night of debauchery and consumption of one too many Long Island Ice Teas because we both know you’re still just a bit classless, your Uber won’t be arriving for another ten minutes? For those unaware of the time conversion, one minute spent waiting for an uber is equivalent to five traditional human minutes, so ten minutes will just about ruin the night. To make matters worse, you went out to the busiest neighborhood in the city and your Uber driver is whipping a Toyota Camry.
Well, in times like these, every company knows that the band-aid solution to remedying customer dissatisfaction is the implementation of a rewards program, and Uber is the first ride-hailing app to test the incentivized waters. Those of us all too familiar with watching the little Uber car fly around the screen of our smartphones, simply wishing for a safe ride home, have no fear, your loyalty to Uber is about to pay off.
If you live in Miami, New York, New Jersey, Denver, Tampa, and four other US cities, starting Tuesday, when you open the Uber app, you’ll be greeted by a tab on the bottom of the app’s home screen offering you entrance into the pantheon that is “Uber Rewards.” Uber’s loyalty program, offered to faithful riders who wouldn’t dare take Lyft, gives rewards members perks and incentives like free Uber Eats deliveries, priority pickups from airports, free upgrades to nicer cars, and a dedicated customer service line, according to Wired.
The ride-hailing app’s new loyalty program incentivizes riders to take advantage of every service Uber has to offer, including food delivery, and discounts on the company’s recent foray into the micro mobility sector.
“As people use Uber more and more in their every day, we wanted to find a way to reward them for choosing Uber. We understand that offering the benefits has a cost to Uber but we think of it as an investment.”
–Nundu Janakiram, Director of Product, Uber
If you are as confused about how Uber Rewards as I am, let’s break down the loyalty program together
The Breakdown
Once you’ve opted into Uber Rewards, you will start to earn points for money spent taking Ubers home from the club, ordering late-night snacks from Uber Eats and riding some of the company’s shiny new Jump scooters around town. The accrual of points takes place over a six-month period, and there are several point-thresholds that, once you pass, you’ll be rewarded with the perks associated with that threshold.
- Uber Pool, Express Pool and Uber Eats —> 1 pt
- UberX, UberXL, and Uber Select —> 2 pts
- Uber Black and Black SUV —> 3 points
There are three levels of membership in the Uber Rewards loyalty program; Gold Platinum, and Diamond. Regardless of what status you have, for every five-hundred points earned, you’ll be rewarded with $5 worth of Uber Cash to be used towards your next ride or food order.
Once you hit your first five-hundred point threshold, you’ll join Uber Gold and will no longer be penalized with cancellation fees, so long as you rebook a ride within a fifteen-minute time frame. In order to reach this threshold, Tech Crunch mathletes figured out you’d need to take 2 Uber Pools per week, one Uber X per month, and one Uber Eats order per month to hit Gold in six months.
“The Gold level is all about being there when things aren’t going exactly right.”
–Nundu Janakiram, Director of Product, Uber
At 2,500 points, after taking a step back to recognize that you may have a problem, you’ll hit Platinum, and get all the kickbacks from being a Gold member plus guaranteed price protection on one route between your two favorite locations, no matter the amount of traffic or cost change from surge pricing. Additionally, you’ll get priority pickup when you travel to/from the airport. Though I’m not fully sold, this perk spoke out to me because whenever I fly, trying to track down an Uber while standing outside an airport is like trying to find Waldo after being diagnosed with color-blindness.
If you’ve managed to earn enough money to afford usage of the Uber app amounting to 7,500 points, first of all, congratulations to you, my friend. Second, you will be crowned with Diamond-status and have access to a dedicated customer support line solely for Diamond customers. And get this, the support line is staffed by actual humans whose job it is to troubleshoot even your most mundane issues.
“One thing that’s important is that we don’t want to make the experience for people who are not in these levels poor in any sense. It’s not like 80 percent of people will suddenly get priority airport pickups, but we do want to monitor very closely to make sure we’re not harming the service more broadly.”
–Nundu Janakiram, Director of Product, Uber
Overall, this seems like a solid move from Uber to incentivize its current users to remain loyal, while attracting customer on the fringe to try the ride-hailing app. As Uber looks to go public later this year, the company’s new loyalty program may prove invaluable when the opening bell rings.
