The war for on-demand transportation services escalates as rivals Uber and Lyft throw accusations of unfair practices against each other.
Both car-on-demand companies are accusing each other of booking rides on their rival's apps and then cancelling them right before the designated pickup.
Lyft, whose cars have the trademark pink moustache, has claimed that 177 Uber employees around the United States have booked a total of 5,560 phantom pickup requests since October. The company determined that the cancelled rides are from Uber employees through cross-referencing the used phone numbers with Uber recruiters.
The phantom requests make a drastic impact to the availability of Lyft drivers, who will not be able to accept any other requests while moving to the location of the bogus pickup. In addition, the income of Lyft drivers are jeopardized, as they consume both gas money and time on moving to a pickup location only to have the request cancelled.
In addition to the cancelled pickups, Lyft drivers have complained that Uber employees take short rides which present low profits to the drivers in a bid to lure them to sign up under Uber instead.
"It's unfortunate for affected community members that they have used these tactics, as it wastes a driver's time and impacts the next passenger waiting for that driver. We remain focused on growing the business faster than any competitor through better customer experience and innovation," said Erin Simpson, a spokeswoman for Lyft.
However, Uber shot back at Lyft's accusations, stating that the claims are not true in a statement sent to TechCrunch.
In the statement, Uber says that it is Lyft employees, including on the company's founders, have been cancelling booked rides.
The number of cancelled trips by Lyft employees total 12,900, according to Uber. However, the company, instead of exposing Lyft's questionable tactics, intends to focus on building and maintaining their platform of on-demand transportation.
"These attacks from Lyft are unfortunate but somewhat expected. A number of Lyft investors have recently been pushing Uber to acquire Lyft. One of their largest shareholders recently warned that Lyft would 'go nuclear' if we do not acquire them. We can only assume that the recent Lyft attacks are part of that strategy," Uber said in the statement.
Lyft responds to these claims by Uber, stating that they are false allegations. The company said that it remains confident as it approaches revenues worthy of an initial public offering, with a growth rate of 30 percent month over month.
