Uber Introduces Pickup Corrections, Lets You Update Your Location Mid-Request

Uber is now improving ways to let customers edit pickup locations for the driver to reach their exact location without hassle. This new feature allows Uber riders to update their pickup location if they happened to request from the wrong place. This update, unfortunately, is only available for iOS users in the UK, US, and Canada for now.

Sometimes when you book a ride on Uber, you may be prompted to use a slightly different location where you are exactly, leading to some confusion for the driver, and multiple phone calls to bring the driver to your correct location. Often, you are forced to cancel your request, and book a new ride. With this new feature, Uber eliminates the need to have multiple conversations on the phone, and lets you alert the driver to reroute via the app. If you realise your driver is heading to the wrong location while coming to pick you up, you can now tap the new ‘Edit’ button next to your location and make slight tweaks if required. You can move the pin around a bit to let your driver know that he is headed in the wrong direction. Of course, this feature has limitations on location tweaks, and won’t allow you to change the location to the other side of town. The speed of the location being updated for the driver will be based on if the driver is using the Uber app's navigation, or a third-party app.

The driver is then notified about the location change, and can re-route to be back on track to your pickup location easily. “The pickup is a core part of the Uber experience and we’re always looking for ways to make it as painless as possible for both riders and drivers. This simple fix gives riders more control over their pickup experience and saves everyone time and avoidable headaches, ” Rachel Holt, head of operations for Uber in North America, and software engineer Ryan Yu, explain in a blog post.

Furthermore, Uber also notes that the company is making changes in the way it handles complaints against drivers. This change will favour the driver a little bit, as the company now feels that the cards are always against the drivers, and complaints’ are sometimes exaggerated and wrong. While evaluating complaints, Uber will now take into account the drivers history. Going forward someone with three rider complaints but just 100 trips under their belt will be treated very differently than a driver who has received three complaints but completed 10,000 trips. Instead of a one-size-fits all approach, this policy will take the entirety of a driver’s time using Uber into account.