Lyft: Your sneaky cash-hungry friend with a car?

Lyft, long known as "your friend with a car," has gotten a little less friendly in the last few weeks. It used to be that the folks with the friendly pink moustache would pull up to your location and call to let you know that they're there. Now the moustache is gone (Thank God), but so is the timely courtesy phone call. According to one Lyft driver, in the last few weeks the car sharing company has instructed its drivers to start the meter on the ride as soon as they pull up to your address, and then wait a whole five minutes before calling you to let you know they've arrived.Lyft representative Paige Thelen sang a slightly different tune: "The ride will automatically begin shortly after drivers press the 'Tap to Arrive' button," she wrote in an email. "Drivers call immediately if the passenger isn't there and if three minutes pass with no sign of the passenger, they can leave and let us know that the passenger was not at the requested location. If the passenger is not at the requested location within three minutes (and the driver has tried to call them), they will be charged a no-show fee of $5."So supposedly, they are supposed to call when they arrive. Thelen didn't respond to a question about how long it is between when they press the button and when the rider begins to be charged for the ride.Either way, the practice is obviously designed to drive up fares as Uber and Lyft tussle over who can cut rates most, but no one's winning here. Drivers are still unhappy because they're making less and less money — far less than they did as cab drivers, according to both Uber and Lyft drivers I've spoken with — and passengers are unhappy because it's a sneaky, backhanded way to charge them more. On the one hand, Lyft is competing with Uber, known for its well-documented predatory business practices. On the other hand, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. — B.A.