Uber Users Can Now 'Request a Ride for a Loved One'

'Request a Ride for a Loved One'

Slightly unfortunate phrasing. Sounds a bit like Uber Hearses.

As someone who's often having to order an Uber for his grandma, I'm excited for this feature. Up to this point, I'd have to constantly sign out of my account and sign in as her, to request an Uber ride, so I'm curious to see how this new feature will make it more convenient for me.

Could be useful in some instances such as picking up an elderly parent for a visit, or God forbid, getting your drinking-age kids safely home from a wild binge party.

Not a big change, I've done this in the past by just entering in whatever pickup address they were at. This just cuts me out of the communication chain. They've never had a requirement to "come to your current location" though, I've had them pick things up from stores and bring drop them off like a courier before too.

edit: I learned something from an Uber driver yesterday. I received two calls back to back with the "this is your Uber driver confirming your...". That seemed confusing so I asked my driver when he picked me up why the two calls and he said the prior driver transferred me. He then asked "did the first driver ask where you were going?" to which I said yes. Turns out this is a slightly scummy trick some of the drivers pull, they want longer fares rather than short runs but Uber won't tell them the destination before they accept the rider to prevent them from screening out a significant portion of the user base. Drivers will call you before they officially accept in the driver app and ask you where you are going, if it's a short run they will transfer immediately so they don't get dinged for canceling a customer (which would happen if they accepted the ride to find out the destination first) and you are pushed onto the next driver (who may do the same thing). This is evidently pervasive and well known amongst the drivers. Time for Uber to use the big data they like so much to identify the culprits and weed out this behavior making for a terrible user experience. Personally I'd like the option to just flag "don't call me, I put all the data in the app," I know a lot of the drivers are trying to improve my experience by calling me and letting me know they are coming and how long - or at airports to figure out if people put in floors and door number correctly - but to me it's redundant (and I'm well aware of how to use the service at airports), I'm using an app rather than calling a car service because I don't need the hand holding.

What a surprise that Uber didn't allow this in the past. The Chinese copycat company Didi-Chuxing has had it at least by last Dec.