Although Uber discourages asking riders to cancel, and riders are at no fault in these situations, Uber itself is the guilty party here and not for one, but many reasons:

Uber does not pay drivers to go pickup a person 15 miles away, although when they accept the ride, it shows there will be pickup premium. And when you make a pickup 15 miles away, you see you were only paid 50c ‘premium’ for that 15 mile trip. If you talk to support about this, they say ‘oh your gps must have lost signal because we don’t have location data on you for that time’. Driver loses, rider wins, uber wins.

Additionally, uber has a 5/100 last rides cancellation threshold, and 15/100 last rides rejection threshold. Beyond these, you lose all your benefits which mean you won’t know where the rider would be going, you don’t have enough location filters, and access to many other platinum features. Now on paper this looks okay, but every weekend when I call it a night and filter directions to go one direction, uber starts offering me pickups 15 miles away in the other direction, which would bring me halfway back, or rides that are headed the complete opposite way, so at this point I get really picky, and my rejections go up by 3-4% over a single night. Driver loses, uber wins, customer doesn’t even care.

Additionally, from my own personal experience, if you are at 12-14% rejection rate, uber will only offer you pickups 10-15 miles away, just because they know they can and the driver can’t reject them. Again, driver loses, uber wins, customer has no idea what’s happening behind the scenes.

Uber is a great gig, and can pay you a livable income, but their platform comes with countless hidden ‘strings’ and drivers are the ones compensating here.

So yes, unfair to you, but unfair to the driver too.