Online car-hailing orders are being resold layer by layer, and nearly half of the multi-platform is commissioned, who is touching the 30% invisible red line

"Master, how much money did you receive there?" Recently, the reporter investigated the commission phenomenon in the online car-hailing industry, and checked the payment interface on the driver's mobile phone when settling the fare, and the result was surprising - the reporter placed an order through the Gaode map, and the system showed that the order was sent to the driver of the Ark platform. The one-way journey is 11.77 kilometers, takes 35 minutes, pays a total of 40.2 yuan, and the driver only collects 23 yuan. In other words, more than 4% of the fees are charged by the platform.

Order commission has always been an unavoidable topic in the online car-hailing industry. Drivers were once trapped by the opaque and excessively high percentage of the platform's commission, but under the action of the relevant government departments, the pricing rules were gradually clarified, and the invisible commission limit of 30% was formed. However, in the investigation, the reporter found that the total fee charged for many online car-hailing orders far exceeded 30% of the order amount, and some were even drawn nearly half.

Who is "committing crimes against the wind"?

"Yin and Yang bills" are frequent

In a local push, Master Cao was offered a new App "Shan Duoduo Assistant" by the salesman. According to the salesman, the app integrates several travel platforms, and online car-hailing drivers can choose to register with a certain company, which can not only add new order channels, but also get various discounts. "Taking orders from multiple channels can make more money. With this in mind, he downloaded the app, registered as a contracted driver of "900 Travel" on it, and then began to take orders through the "Shan Duoduo Assistant".

Before he could experience the so-called "preferential price", during a small talk with passengers, Master Cao found that the platform commission ratio was extremely high, and the amount did not match the actual payment of passengers: at 22 o'clock on January 5, he received a "big order" from Hongqiao Railway Station to Beicai Middle School on the platform, with a total distance of 36.86 kilometers. After arriving at the destination, he casually inquired about the price paid by the passenger for the order, and realized that it was wrong. "The passenger paid 140.13 yuan, but the driver side of the platform showed that the passenger paid 116.92 yuan, and the commission was only 86.79 yuan, and the commission rate was as high as 38%!

△ The passenger payment interface photographed by Master Cao.

△ Master Cao's collection interface.

Master Cao hurriedly checked the bill details with the passenger, only to see that the passenger chose the "airport pick-up service" through Ctrip, and his own order receiving interface did not show the source at all. "The platform usually prompts the source of the order, such as AutoNavi, there will be a prompt of the 'AutoNavi channel', or it shows the enterprise order, but there is nothing in that order. Based on this, he suspects that the order may have been "resold".

△ The source of this order is not indicated.

In order to find out the details of the order, Master Cao called the customer service hotline of 900 Travel the next day, but the other party failed to respond. "The customer service said that it was recorded and would be investigated and verified, and there was no movement. ”

On the Shanghai 12345 citizen service hotline and major social platforms, many online car-hailing drivers also complained about this "yin and yang bill" phenomenon.

Gu Dasong, executive director of the Traffic Rule of Law and Development Research Center of Southeast University and president of the online car-hailing branch of the China Urban Public Transport Association, posted a screenshot of the bill showing that a passenger took a taxi and paid 98.11 yuan at the end of the order. But the strange thing is that for the same journey, the driver's side shows that the passenger pays 71.46 yuan, and the driver charges 52.17 yuan. In the middle, 26.65 yuan disappeared out of thin air, more than half of the driver's actual receipt.

△ Screenshot of the bill posted by Gu Dasong.

If you look closely at the driver's order page, you can see that this order is a third-party order: that is, the platform where the passenger places the order is not the driver's order platform. After receiving the order, the customer will resell the order. The orders received by the driver's platform are already second-hand orders, and may even be third-hand orders.

The platform for reselling orders charges a fee of 26.65 yuan, and the carrier platform commission is 19.29 yuan, and the driver only receives 53% of the amount paid by the passenger.

A new type of collaboration between platforms

In 2022, the Ministry of Transport will launch the "Sunshine Action for Profit Percentage of Platform Enterprises in New Transportation Formats", and major platform companies will make public pricing rules and reasonably set the upper limit of the commission ratio in accordance with the requirements. At that time, the cap on the percentage of commissions announced by major companies was mostly between 18% and 30%. After that, 30% has also become an invisible "red line" for commissions in the industry.

However, the reporter's investigation and the personal experience of many online car-hailing drivers all point to the fact that many online car-hailing orders are undergoing layers of "reselling", resulting in a commission fee of significantly more than 30%.

According to the reporter's investigation, there are currently three development models of online car-hailing platforms - pure self-operated travel platform, self-operated + aggregation travel platform, and pure aggregation travel platform.

And in recent years, the proportion of aggregation mode has continued to rise. It was first pioneered by AutoNavi in 21017, and then Hello connected to Dida Travel and cooperated with Shouqi to carry out online car-hailing business. In 2019, after Meituan Taxi launched the aggregation mode, navigation platforms such as Didi Chuxing and AutoNavi Map also launched the aggregation mode. In 2022, Huawei's aggregate ride-hailing platform Petal Travel will be launched, and WeChat will also start internal testing of Tencent Travel. In 2023, Meituan's ride-hailing business will adjust, abandoning self-operated ride-hailing and fully shifting to an aggregation model.

According to data from the Ministry of Transport, as of October 31, 2023, a total of 334 ride-hailing platform companies across the country have obtained online ride-hailing platform business licenses. In October 2020, the number was 207.

With the gradual implementation of the aggregation model, all traffic platforms have seen the monetization model and have begun to distribute traffic (orders). The traffic platform distributes the order to a number of small and medium-sized platforms, and the small and medium-sized platforms match the order to the specific carrier driver, and a certain fee will be incurred in the distribution process, that is, the "resale fee" of the order.

Traffic platforms with the ability to obtain orders can charge a certain resale fee, sometimes even higher than the commission of the actual carrier platform. Since many small and medium-sized platforms have access to people and vehicles with insufficient qualifications, and often use low-cost methods to survive, large platforms can use the capacity of small platforms by distributing orders to retain more users, and at the same time do not have to bear the operational risks caused by non-compliance.

Therefore, it is not only a pure aggregation travel platform, but also a platform with self-operating capabilities, and is also willing to become one of the "players" of the aggregation model.

As a result, under the new cooperative relationship between large and small platforms, on the one hand, there is an order resale fee, and on the other hand, there is a commission on the carrier platform, which is superimposed to form a total commission fee of more than 30%.

It is recommended to limit the total amount of commission on the order

The platform "goose plucked", and the drivers felt very hurt. "The situation of order reselling and low-price orders makes it more and more difficult to make money by driving online car-hailing. When I first came to Shanghai, I could earn 3 yuan for running a kilometer, but now it is becoming more and more difficult, and I can run 1.5 to 2 yuan for a kilometer. "Master Wang came to Shanghai five years ago to open an online car-hailing service, and after seeing his income declining, he plans to return to his hometown in Chengdu next year.

The reporter learned in the interview that the coupons issued by some platforms in order to attract customers were eventually passed on to the drivers. Master Liu is a contracted driver of "Cao Cao Travel", not long ago, an order with a distance of about 40 kilometers, he only received 73.89 yuan after the commission. "The average is 1.8 yuan per kilometer, but the platform shows that the commission ratio is only 21.6%. As soon as I asked the passenger, I found out that he had received a coupon, and there are more and more low-cost orders like this, doesn't it mean that the discount on the platform is ultimately borne by the driver?"

△ Master Liu's collection interface.

Master Wu, who has been in the industry for more than a year, also has a lot of complaints about this, "This is also a tricky practice of the platform in terms of the percentage of commissions." The original order of 20 yuan was given to the driver 14 yuan according to the industry red line, but the platform issued a 5 yuan coupon to the passenger and gave the driver 11 yuan, according to the actual payment amount, the commission ratio dropped to 26.7%, it seems that the commission ratio has been reduced, in fact, the platform forcibly let the driver bear the cost. ”

In this regard, Gu Dasong is very worried: Will drivers have to rely on more time and hard work to maintain their basic income because of the resale of orders at various levels, and the income is meager, or even lower than expected? Is this phenomenon of order resale an important reason why the online car-hailing industry is becoming more and more "volume", and will it bring a series of potential safety hazards?

Some drivers said: under the combined impact of online car-hailing capacity saturation and reduced freight rates, the same turnover income used to take only 10 hours, but now it takes 14 to 15 hours. At such an intensity of work, from time to time there will be news that a driver has "fallen".

Different from industries such as express delivery and takeaway, the passenger transportation industry in which the online car-hailing industry is located has public service attributes. The most critical to passenger safety is the driver, and the driver does not have a stable income, does not have enough professional dignity and social security, and the safety lacks a solid support.

In view of the phenomenon that the total commission is too high after order reselling, some industry insiders suggest that the industry authorities should pay attention to and strengthen supervision in a timely manner, and standardize the commission ratio of the platform. Regardless of how many times the order is "resold", the total service fee extracted by each platform shall not exceed 30% of the fare, or the upper limit shall be set by the competent authority to ensure that the driver holding the steering wheel receives a reasonable proportion of the income, which truly reflects the more work and more rewards.

At the same time, optimize regulatory measures, establish a long-term mechanism, supervise the overall burden of taxi and network car drivers, effectively maintain the order of the industry, and promote the healthy and orderly development of the industry.