Fixing an error on Uber’s map?

August 8, 2023 8:05 AM

My friend’s house in Toronto, Canada is situated on a one-way street that has a narrow laneway behind it, for all the homeowners’ garages. For some reason Uber thinks her garage is the house, meaning every Uber gets lost in the back laneway, instead of coming to her front door. How can she change the pin to the front of the house?

Having the pin on the garage leads the car to take a strange route into the back laneway. She uses the garage for storage, and can’t exit her property through the garage, so when the Uber arrives, she can’t get to it. Once the Uber is in the laneway, it’s really hard for the driver to find the front of the house, as the laneways are a confusing maze.

Her current solution is to use an address a few doors over (which correctly sends the Uber to the neighbours’ house) and then text the Uber driver when they’re close… but it would just be better to fix the map. The address has been incorrect since the dawn of Uber.

So-
What map system does Uber use?
How can she get it updated?
Thanks!

posted by nouvelle-personne to Travel & Transportation (6 answers total)

Typically you can drag the pin that sets the pick-up location. She might just have to manually drag the pick-up location to the road in front of her house when she orders the ride.
posted by hepta at 8:38 AM on August 8, 2023 [11 favorites]

I've had uber attempt to pick me up in the laneway behind my house when I ordered the ride while in a room at the back of the house. Since then I make sure I am at the front of the house when ordering and they have gotten it right ever since. Is it possible for her to place to order from a place that's closer to the street than it is to the laneway? Their map seems to consider the entire property as my address, and routes the car to whatever road is the closest to the position of the phone ordering. This is just a guess on my part but it may be worth trying.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 9:08 AM on August 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Unfortunately, this is a quirk with the mapping system nowadays. I haven't looked at her specific case, but I used to do door-to-door delivery, and some of the addresses I get were... misleading would be probably too kind. Basically, Google (and other mapping companies) ignore doors. They drop the pin in the "rough center" of the plot of land of that address. If that pin is closer to your back door than your front door, too bad! Because to Google, that is your address when they calculate distance... to the center of the destination address, NOT the front-door (or driveway leading up to it. Let's just say I've been tricked more than a few times when I realized I was driving down the street and the address is nowhere near where the pin was or there's no front door where I was expecting it to be.

The only way to "fix" this is to move the pickup location manually, as others have mentioned, and you have to do this for every trip. Would be nice if Uber would let us define "home" with some sort of "fixed instructions" like "if I order ride from home, they should always come to X" but so far, that's not a priority for them.
posted by kschang at 12:02 PM on August 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

Check OpenStreetMap, which is sort of a Wikipedia of maps. If it's incorrectly showing the laneway as a normal street or otherwise showing data that might be leading to the incorrect routing, your friend could try to update the map. This data will feed back into Google, Apple, and other commercial maps at some point.

My house has an alley on the side which Google used to incorrectly show with the name of the main street. This lead to people's phones telling them that the street just curved around our house, which made for some confusing situations. By fixing the label in OSM and reporting a mistake of Google Maps (right click on the map) I was ultimately able to get it cleared up. Same sort of thing should work for your friend given enough time.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 1:18 PM on August 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

Uber is probably just using Google Maps data. You should be able to fix this issue permanently directly on Google Maps.
posted by Text TK at 2:12 PM on August 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think it depends on the underlying map that Uber is using. The local delivery app here always pointed drivers to the garden in the back of my apartment building, which is wrong in so very many ways. Turns out they used google maps for their app, and I was able to get the address corrected in google maps:

Put in your address to google maps and then click "Suggest an Edit" you can then reposition the pin or send a note. It took about a week and then I got an email from google that the address was updated. (I hope everyone in my building appreciates the change!)
posted by LizBoBiz at 6:27 AM on August 9, 2023