‘I nearly passed out’: A $640 Uber ride for a 30-mile trip to the airport

washingtonpost.com

6 points·aburan28··5 comments

I haven't used Uber or Lyft in a while. If it's the same now as then, both apps seemed to make it purposely difficult to estimate what you were paying ahead of time, burying their estimator in multiple menus and including multiple warnings of it being inaccurate. Plus, not including surge pricing in the estimator. It was basically impossible to tell the app "I'm here and going there, about how much will it cost" and get any sort of straight answer. Has that changed more recently?

Hm, my experience is different now; they both seem to make the button prominent at the time of the request confirmation.

However, on Lyft, I remember being unable to get a fare estimate after I confirmed the request, which would potentially give someone a chance to be shocked and back out early.

tl;dr: Bonnie ordered an Uber SUV and is bad at math.

I don't think you can dismiss UX attempts to discourage checking the total fare estimate as "being bad at math". Yes, someone can work out the logical implications of various alerts, but no, human psychology doesn't always do this quickly or in a way that reaches a reflective equilibrium.

With that said, this is Uber SUV, with a $14 base fare[1], during a confirmed 4.4x surge, which really should alert the user to get an estimate.

[1] https://www.uber.com/cities/washington-dc

Supercilious wastrel.

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