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Comment by bpodgursky | Hacker News Reader

> Flat fares are designed to cover full fares for almost every trip, with a $20 limit for uberPOOL and $25 limit for uberX. You’ll be responsible for paying portions of the fare that exceed those maximums on each trip.

The pricing felt convoluted even before I saw this part. I can't see this being worth the effort, if you can't even guarantee the $7 prices.

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The overage feels generous to me. I'm not sure there's much of SF you can't get to with $25, even in traffic.

It seems like this is their way of addressing the problem of "being in the car". If you get in the car with your $7 UberX pass, then demand to go to San Jose, something has to happen. Getting out of the car is probably worse for the customer, so they cap the amount this pass buys you, knowing you'll never hit the limit under the intended use case.

Going to San Jose is explicitly not covered "when your trip begins and ends north of Cesar Chavez St. in San Francisco."

You can go to New York and your trip could still begin and end north of Cesar Chavez St. in San Francisco.

Woah, they explicitly excluded Bernal? Harsh.

They do need some way to prevent people from taking a $500 trip on a flat fare.

However, it seems like they could handle that with something like "Must start and end in San Francisco, with a single destination" (meaning, not a "go here, wait for me to get back, then go here" trip).

Yeah, this seems like a step backwards from their promise of transparent prices ("what we do on UberPool, but for everything"). What the heck is the point of flat pricing if you have to pay for overages anyway?

It'll create an opportunity for someone to build a "exactly how far does each free trip get me?" app.

Next step for Uber would be to create Zones like Caltrain, and charge subscription based on travel between zones. Then no need of coverage.

But going by Uber's history, this would be too transparent and wont workout for them.

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