Uber, Lyft avoided millions in pay by locking NYC drivers out of apps: report

Uber and Lyft have been locking New York City drivers out of their apps to avoid paying millions of dollars in pay, according to a report.Rideshare app drivers have been getting locked out of the two apps – with messages that flash “unable to go online” or tell drivers to go to a busier location – for minutes or hours at a time.The lockouts are an attempt to make Uber and Lyft drivers seem busier on paper – which could save the companies nearly $30 million in pay by convincing the city not to raise a key portion of its minimum wage formula during its annual review, according to a Bloomberg report.The frequent lockouts – which come without warning – have left Big Apple drivers scrambling to support their families, the report said.Uber and Lyft have told drivers they are forced to “limit access” because of rules from New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission. “Bloomberg’s characterization of lockouts as a loophole is inaccurate and we’ve asked for a correction,” Uber spokesperson Josh Gold told The Post in a statement. “The truth is lockouts have been a terrible but intentional feature of the pay rule since the TLC passed it in 2018, which is why we’ve said for years that the TLC should ditch this outdated approach.”The TLC’s minimum pay rule for rideshare drivers is not a fixed rate, like some other laws, but rather a complex formula that considers factors like trip time and time spent with passengers.A key facet of the minimum pay rule is the utilization rate, which is a measure of how much time drivers spend with passengers. The current rate is 58%, which assumes that for every 100 minutes a driver works, 58 of those minutes are spent with a passenger while the rest is spent searching for rides.The higher the utilization rate, the lower the minimum fare for each ride.If the TLC raised the rate, for example, the fares would go down and the companies would be forced to make up the difference from that loss to meet the minim...