Both Uber and Lyft partner with a pair of online service marketplaces that allow ride-hail drivers to comparison shop repair facilities and, as part of more far-reaching driver rewards programs, access service discounts at those shops. Uber’s partnership with CarAdvise dates to 2018. Lyft’s similar partnership with OpenBay followed in July 2019, beginning in three markets and expanding to 40 by the end of last year.
Both platforms skew toward a large network of independent shops but actively encourage dealers to list their shops. “It’s our belief that dealer service is not as expensive as everybody thinks,” says CarAdvise CEO Greg Tepas. “We’re a great platform to help dealers price their services any way they want and demystify that idea.”
Mike Kalin, service manager at Wickstrom Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram in Barrington, Ill., says it is too early to know how much ride-hail business the arrangement will bring. Service tickets originating through CarAdvise tend to be for marginally higher amounts than average, but Kalin says that many repairs thus far have been warranty work.
At the end of the third quarter of 2019, CarAdvise partnered with FCA to add the automaker’s approximately 2,700 dealers to its network and to integrate with the systems those dealers use for scheduling and billing.
“Our partnership with FCA came about because of pre-existing relationships on the fleet management side,” says Tepas, formerly CEO (and still vice chairman) of fleet leasing company Emkay Inc.
FCA treats CarAdvise as if it were a large fleet account, and the two parties negotiate fleet pricing in advance. Discounted rates are then given to Uber drivers on a tiered basis according to the volume of driving the individual customer does on the platform and their customer ratings. Discounts range from a few dollars off a first service to oil changes that are capped at $50.
Shops listed on CarAdvise can pay to market directly to customers with special offers, including those targeted at ride-hail drivers specifically.
In OpenBay’s partnership with Lyft, discounts are similarly tied to work volume and rating but filtered through a system of “driver reward points.”
“It’s a great win for any company to partner with Uber and Lyft,” says Harry Campbell, founder of the ride-hailing industry website TheRideShareGuy.com. “But when it comes to actual discounts that drivers are getting, these partnerships are not always that meaningful.”
Campbell says that ride-hail drivers are often set in their ways, therefore discounts and special offers need to be enticing.
“If they’ve always gone to an independent shop and have a good relationship there, it’s hard to get them to switch,” he says.
That said, Campbell adds: “Uber does have 2 to 3 million drivers in the U.S. Even partnerships that aren’t a rocking success with drivers are likely to bring in business.”