Uber is giving you less time to get in the car before it charges you
Uber is experimenting with giving you only two minutes to get in the car before your driver starts getting paid.
Drivers previously had to wait for 5 minutes before they could collect a cancellation fee or start getting paid for a trip. Uber is currently testing the shorter 2-minute grace period in New York City, New Jersey, Phoenix, and Dallas before bringing it to other cities.
The change was first reported by TechCrunch.
Uber previously gave passengers 5 minutes to get in a car once it had arrived at the requested pickup destination. After the 5 minutes were up, a driver could cancel the ride and collect a cancellation fee from the late passenger. Under the new policy, drivers start earning the per-minute rate for the city they're in after 2 minutes of waiting.
In short, making your driver wait longer than 2 minutes means they'll start charging you before you get in the car.
The catch for drivers is that they must still wait for at least 5 minutes before they can collect a cancellation fee. That should keep drivers from waiting for 3-4 minutes and canceling to collect fees from would-be passengers.
The same two-minute wait time has already been in place for all UberPool rides, a ride option in some cities that pairs multiple passengers traveling along the same route with one vehicle.
Uber's product manager for driver experience, Maya Choksi, told Tech Insider that a shorter grace period for normal Uber rides was a "highly requested feature we've heard from drivers."
She noted that the two-minute wait window is "still an experiment" and that "the biggest thing we're looking for is a reduction in wait times."
All passengers in an area with the shorter wait time policy will be shown a message in the Uber app explaining the change when they book a ride.