I’ve currently completed 18 Relay Rides trips. I’m grateful for the renters and the income it has provided our family. Sixteen of those rides has gone on financially as agreed. Some totally kicked ass. I’ve had two trips recently though were I feel I was shorted money I should of been paid. The response of Relay Rides was prompt as usual, but it did not address the issues. What is a challenge is whether to do anything about it?
The most annoying Relay Ride actually has one of the issues. It is only $5.08, but it is money. He didn’t have time to fill up beforehand and he was already late. He agreed to pay cash. My original estimate was $25. He thought it was $20. I was already a little pissed because they were late. Lot’s of times it’s not a big deal. This time it was noon in the hot sun, Hope was with us and not real happy about going down to DIA. Sitting in the car at noon with a baby is not exactly fun. She wasn’t too bad, but hey it’s lunch time why am I not eating is all she thinks. I didn’t feel like arguing and hell it could of been $20. It was within my margin of error. I didn’t want to argue so I let it go, and took the twenty cash. I also don’t want to have my ratings jacked up. I filled up the tank after driving to the first cheap gas station at Tower Road. The total was $25.08.
The other time was a super cool couple with two small children. They took the E-470 the toll road down to Parker. They paid the toll in cash, but I didn’t know how much it was. The brother they were staying with said it was $13. That is correct if you have the transponder. I didn’t, it’s now on order for both Relay Rides vehicles. If you don’t have the transponder for the E-470 authority and all Express Lanes in Colorado. I got the bill and it was $17.55. Between these two incidents I’m now 9.63 in the whole.
The Relay Rides response was about they now have a system where I can now submit a trip reimbursement directly to the renter. This allows me to communicate directly with them and get my money directly from them. This is also what Relay Rides customer support told me. The problem is that these requests disappear within 48 hours after the rental I believe. By the time this information was received by me that functionality was disabled. What am I going to do now Relay Rides? The first incident is my fault I could of submitted the request sooner and the problem is solved. The other incident though was a bill in the mail that happened over a month later. Nothing structurally in the system can prevent this.
The real tough part is trying to figure out what to do and this is the struggle with all things and companies in the rideshare economy. Even if it all works out great and appropriately what am I gettting. Freaking not even ten bucks. How much of my time am I going to waste chasing down this money? I have other things I can and should be doing with my time. Even writing this blog to talk and share about the incident takes a lot of time. I also believe that chasing down both of these customers will result in a negative experience with Relay Rides. This reflects poorly on the company that I am representing and that pays me. It can also result in potential bad word of mouth as opposed to positive word of mouth for all of my fellow Relay Rides owners. Should I have to fade this $9.63 outrage or should Relay Rides reimburse me directly? They are a big giant corporation (well damn well bigger than me), they can afford it. If they had to pay me the money and did it for everybody else that figure than jumps to the hundreds of thousands nationally and maybe even millions.
By the time a put in the time and energy to get this money shouldn’t I be doing something else to just go out and make another ten bucks or am I just letting people take advantage of me. I’m kinda torn and conflicted and not 100% sure what to do.
We have a Facebook group for Relay Rides owners.