Monday is Nationwide Canine Day, and Lyft seized the chance to make amends for a function equal to 1 Uber has had for about 5 years. When heading someplace with a furry companion, Lyft’s new Pet Mode enables you to designate that you just’ll deliver them alongside, making certain you’ll get a driver to accommodate your canine or cat.
Like Uber Pet, Lyft’s Pet Mode provides a surcharge — on this case, $4 plus tax. The corporate says the charge goes on to the motive force.
The brand new Pet Mode might’ve turn out to be useful a 12 months in the past throughout the saga of Tux the Cat, who was being taken to the vet by her proprietor Palash Pandey. A Lyft driver in Austin, TX, was accused of dashing off with Tux (inside a service) nonetheless within the automobile’s backseat, ignoring Pandey’s pleas as he banged on the window. The driving force responded to Pandey’s in-app messages, claiming to not have the feline.
Days handed as Pandey made determined calls to the Austin Police Division and viral postings on Reddit and X (Twitter). Ultimately, media shops picked up the story, and Lyft’s PR crew went into disaster mode. CEO David Risher even obtained involved.
Tux was lastly positioned below a stairwell a couple of mile from the drop-off level. It was a momentarily viral fiasco with a feel-good ending, however a function that ensured passengers obtained matched with pet-friendly drivers would have doubtless prevented it. “[The driver] informed me that if he’d identified I’d had a cat, he wouldn’t have picked me up,” The Washington Submit reported Pandey as saying. “He mentioned he was allergic to cats and would have canceled the trip. My drop-off location was a pet hospital, and I used to be holding a pet service, so it’s onerous to determine that one out.”
