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    > That's stupid and wrong, just like you are.

I think your inability to have a civil discussion without needlessly throwing insults around speaks for itself.

    > Users have a desire to get from point a to
    > point b. There's no incentive to cancel.
    > People don't do that.

There are trivial no-brainer cases where the potential for free cancellations allows you to offload costs on someone else.

E.g. you and your 4 friends need to get from A->B together, you each order an Uber for the ride, but you only intend to use one car. The ETAs are in the range of 15-25 minutes, you all have the "Fake Battery Status" app installed & cancel 3 of the cars when the first one has an ETA of < 2 minutes.

Now you're able to get where you need to go 5-10 minutes earlier than you otherwise would have, at no extra cost, but you've incurred a cost on Uber & lost opportunity (& real fuel costs) on the driver.

I apologize for being a jerk to you. You're right. That wasn't cool at all.

But nothing about the case you just described is trivial or no-brainer. Getting into that situation takes a lot of work, planning, and collusion. I would need to see some serious data to believe that this kind of thing actually happens often enough for it to be a problem.

In a place like NYC, getting places just takes time. An extra 10 minutes to get from point a to b just isn't a thing that people care about.

If you're going to assert that cases like these are common enough to cause Uber to have a default policy of cancelling a ride when a rider's phone runs out of juice, I think the burden of proof is on you to show it. Otherwise, I'm not going to buy into that.

And again, I apologize for calling you stupid.

Edge case

Users game the system all the time. Call an Uber then get in a taxi which drives by before the Uber comes. That's what the cancellation fee is about.

A policy you dislike is not an argument for regulation. It's an argument for you to use Lyft, gett or yellow cabs.

"In the case of a 97% vs. 3% battery, the call should be exactly as it is currently. Who is going to be the more lucrative for the driver."

Well, I disagree. I think they should optimize for Life Time Value (LTV) of Customer. So If a customer (with 3% battery level ) has been a uber user for more than say six months and have no history of cancellation and likely to be using it for next six months . He should be given prefrence over the one with less Life time value .

I could get on board with that, theoretically. In reality, how do you define history of cancellation. This thread has popped up at least some evidence that indicates that people show up in the system as cancelling rides for reasons that are not legitimate. Driver screws around and then cancels, claiming the user wasn't in the right place. User's phone dies, etc.

Your idea would be easier to make happen in reality if reality weren't so messy.