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Monday is National Dog Day, and Lyft seized the opportunity to catch up on a feature equivalent to one for about five years. When heading somewhere with a furry companion, Lyft’s new Pet Mode lets you designate that you’ll bring them along, ensuring you’ll get a driver to accommodate your dog or cat.
Like Uber Pet, Lyft’s Pet Mode adds a surcharge — in this case, $4 plus tax. The company says the fee goes directly to the driver.
The new Pet Mode could’ve come in handy a year ago during , who was being taken to the vet by her owner Palash Pandey. A Lyft driver in Austin, TX, was accused of speeding off with Tux (inside a carrier) still in the car’s backseat, ignoring Pandey’s pleas as he banged on the window. The driver responded to Pandey’s in-app messages, claiming not to have the feline.
Days passed as Pandey made desperate calls to the Austin Police Department and viral postings on and (Twitter). Eventually, media outlets picked up the story, and Lyft’s PR team went into crisis mode. CEO David Risher even got .
Tux was finally located under a stairwell about a mile from the drop-off point. It was a momentarily viral fiasco with a feel-good ending, but a feature that ensured passengers got matched with pet-friendly drivers would have likely prevented it. “[The driver] told me that if he’d known I’d had a cat, he wouldn’t have picked me up,” The Washington Post Pandey as saying. “He said he was allergic to cats and would have canceled the ride. My drop-off location was a pet hospital, and I was holding a pet carrier, so it’s hard to figure that one out.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at
Console Bang News!
Like Uber Pet, Lyft’s Pet Mode adds a surcharge — in this case, $4 plus tax. The company says the fee goes directly to the driver.
The new Pet Mode could’ve come in handy a year ago during , who was being taken to the vet by her owner Palash Pandey. A Lyft driver in Austin, TX, was accused of speeding off with Tux (inside a carrier) still in the car’s backseat, ignoring Pandey’s pleas as he banged on the window. The driver responded to Pandey’s in-app messages, claiming not to have the feline.
Days passed as Pandey made desperate calls to the Austin Police Department and viral postings on and (Twitter). Eventually, media outlets picked up the story, and Lyft’s PR team went into crisis mode. CEO David Risher even got .
Tux was finally located under a stairwell about a mile from the drop-off point. It was a momentarily viral fiasco with a feel-good ending, but a feature that ensured passengers got matched with pet-friendly drivers would have likely prevented it. “[The driver] told me that if he’d known I’d had a cat, he wouldn’t have picked me up,” The Washington Post Pandey as saying. “He said he was allergic to cats and would have canceled the ride. My drop-off location was a pet hospital, and I was holding a pet carrier, so it’s hard to figure that one out.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at
Console Bang News!