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Comment by femto113 | Hacker News Reader

Uber's been buying revenue at the cost of margin in at least two ways by shifting rides to Pool (where they can declare the entire ride's cost as revenue, not just their cut), and ramping up Uber Eats (where they take a percentage of the total cost of the food and may actually lose money on the ride). Neither strategy can continue indefinitely.

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Uber's new "cheap" pool option forces you to walk up to 5 blocks (!!) and is the same price that it used to be. Lyft's pool option doesn't make you walk and the prices have remained unchanged.

Uber lost all of my (bi-daily) business when they moved to the pool express business model.

Interesting! That’s new to me, and honestly a benefit in places like SF, where dropping someone off or picking someone up at a specific address might involve numerous annoying loops / turns around one way streets, where the passenger could just make everyone else’s life easier and walk a block or two.

This feels like a positive change as long as weather isn’t a huge concern.

Agreed. A lot of one-way streets in Seattle. I had been setting the pickup spot 2 blocks away just for traffic / one-way / highway access, now UberPool automatically selects that spot and I save money. It's been a win for me personally.

Lyft offered this back in 2015 and called it "HotSpots". I thought it was great for the same reasons, but unfortunately they discontinued it after one summer.

https://www.recode.net/2015/8/25/11618002/lyft-kills-off-hot...

An issue with this, from a greedy consumer perspective, is that it allows the app more time to get you to your destination. If I do an uber pool express, the time saved from walking doesn't credit to my day; that time is used to pick up more and further passengers, and introduces further room for driver error.

With old-pool, the driver did have to make more loops to get to me, which lowered the available time to get to my destination (as per the estimated arrival time provided by the app). Due to the tighter timeline, I typically arrived at my destination quicker and with fewer pickups.

> Uber's new "cheap" pool option forces you to walk up to 5 blocks (!!)

Uber is disrupting the bus service.

Uber is disrupting walking.

Shared Lyft is amazing. Half the price at least.

I've tried to use pool a number of times in the bay area, all it did was make me waste about 30m each time, at the end of which I used Lyft to get to where I need to get to.

I've ordered pizza to my apartment 100 times and never had an issues, but Uber Eats drivers consistently can't find it. It's a nice service, but literally anything would be better.

Is there a choice given other well funded startups are doing same (Lyft, Grab etc)?

Plenty of companies prioritize margin over revenue. Owning a profitable niche is a much more defensible strategy in the long run than relying on investment dollars to grow unprofitably.

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