The building I live in has a hard to find entrance. It also happens to be right next to a very popular hotel.

The result is that:

Drivers don’t intuitively find my building’s ramp When they get stuck, they default to thinking I’m at the hotel (building next door), where I’m sure they get a lot of requests from

This leads to frustration for the driver and I.

It also leads to missed uberPOOL and Lyft Line rides, since you need to be ready in 2 minutes (if not you get charged a fee + need to restart the request).

For Uber and Lyft, it means lost revenue and a subpar user experience. They could’ve also had a driver available at 2 minutes sooner.

So, I typed up a text message template that I copy/paste to send them when they’re about 4 minutes away from arriving.

It worked almost every time, yet some drivers were still missing the entrance.

Wondering why some were still getting lost, I started asking if they got the message and if it was clear enough. I quickly found out that the ones that didn’t get it, only knew how to read in Spanish.

I went on to add a Spanish version to the text:

I do live in Miami, after all.

I followed that up by asking if they were getting these extra long messages as one, as opposed to it being split by character limits. I wanted this to be clear and easy as possible for the driver.

They confirmed that they did get it in one single message, even on Android.

So, that was it. No more missed rides or unnecessary waiting.

As part of some future iteration, it would be great if I could add these “default pickup instructions” to my saved Home and Work addresses.

My guess is that a lot of people have similar issues.

Easy fix and everyone one wins.