In recent news, it has come out that dating app Tinder and ride-hailing company Lyft are collaborating on a new feature that will let Tinder members directly buy a Lyft ride for a date. This feature was initially teased by Tinder back in March of this year and the feature is now being rolled out to users, as a way to involve users and get them back to making in-real-life connections.
Tinder thinks that this feature will allow the users to book a ride directly from the app as a “thoughtful gesture while promoting personal safety for those ready to get back out there in the dating world after way too many months inside.”
This feature can be accessed by the users through a new Explore section of Tinder’s app where they will be able to access this collaboration between the companies and buy a Lyft ride credit for a person they’ve matched with.
The good thing about this feature is that the person or sender who will be buying Lyft ride credit doesn’t get to know the details of the recipient’s address but they can set the time, drop-off location, and value of the credit they want to purchase. The recipient receives a link either through a text message or email, using which he/she can book a ride.
For this feature to work, both the sender and recipient must have a Lyft account. If the sender has a Lyft account and the recipient doesn’t then the recipient can create one using the received link. The sender can choose to book a one-way ride or roundtrip ride for the recipient and if the recipient doesn’t use the ride or only uses a part of it then the sender will get a refund.
For recipients who are not comfortable with this, can opt-out of this and not take the gifted ride. It is an optional feature that is made available for the convenience of users and if users don’t want to accept the gifted ride then they can simply reject it and the sender will receive a refund.
To ensure that users don’t fall for any scam and their safety, rides can be purchased without the need of exchanging addresses and these rides are only valid for drop-offs within a half-mile of the set destination. So, if you are worried that someone might scam you and travel to the other end of the town then it is not possible because of the ability to set drop-off location. Any credit that is unused or partially used will be refunded after the expiry date.
Both the companies have tried their best to make sure that this feature could not be misused by making sure that the addresses of the users are not exchanged and the sender cannot be tricked into a free ride to somewhere else instead of the drop-off location. Because Lyft is only operating in the United States and Canada, this feature won’t be available to Tinder users elsewhere in the world.
Still, pitfalls of online dating are always there and aren’t exclusive to Tinder only, you would find them on all dating apps and of course, if you think that this is not the right person, you can just swipe left.