Uber charges more if you have credits in your account
viewfromthewing.com
viewfromthewing.com
I set pick up and destination, exit the app, open another rides app, wait few minutes for uber to notify me that the price went down.
I only give it initials (instead of full name) and phone number, not even my gender, I rarely rate drivers positively, if it is not a negative experience, I skip reviewing, so they don't know I "like" the service.
When it takes more than a minute to find a ride, I cancel the ride and choose the "others" option, as this is the de-facto the option for "I will just take a cab", so I get inserted on the "churn risk" list.
I use a virtual card that I some time leave empty so payment fail after the ride, and on the next ride I readjust my virtual card limit on the next ride and pay the last bill so I am added on the "poor and miserable riders" list.
I am well protected
I would prefer not to harm the driver, unless he was a dick or was driving a garbage can, I would then rate it 1-star with a clear conscience.
It doesn't work everytime btw.
I don't know man... saving a few bucks on the average HN 300k+ salary doesn't make a difference, but let people have their principles. Isn't that the source of the original hacker mentality and the stuff we like to celebrate here?
> but let people have their principles.
I believe I did..?
I’m pretty sure there are plenty of Europeans/etc. here..
But idk if it’s doing anything. At least back when Uber had tiers (platinum / diamond) it was more obvious the perks you get with more use (like with airlines), but now that they dropped those I’m feeling less inclined to keep using just Uber vs a mix of all apps and picking cheapest.
If you are a difficult customer who is rarely satisfied and complain of most inconveniences, you will get the better drivers.
Because simply, the algorthm is prioritizing sales, not nice and chill riders.
This type of attitude sometimes makes the world a worse place. If everyone has this attitude, the system can break down.
> I rarely rate drivers positively
Drivers live or die by their rating. Refusing to give good reviews harms the drivers who are already barely scraping by. This is a very good example of how you can cause real world harm with by trying to game the system for yourself.
Assumes we all benefit from playing into the system Uber created.
Maybe true on a local maximum.
But is it true on the global one?
A "global maximum" closely parallels the definition of faith. It's the maximal good for the maximal number of people, and a real destination for some (surely not all are worthy of it, as long as human evil exists). How we get there, what it is, who actually makes it there, on what basis, what's preventing its realization at present, how to overcome such obstacles --- these are the questions that religions (including secular humanism) answer.
It's also possible that the algorithm behind the scenes allocates drivers to demand based on ( proximity AND driver rating ).
If so then lower ranked drivers would be 'starved' out by higher ranked drivers.
They’re a tech company;a decent rating algorithm should be one of the most likely things for them to excel in, or they’d just lose to any company that does because all the good drivers they’re dropping are immediately signing up to work for a competing service.
tl;dr It is in ride-services’ best to retain good drivers, no?
Until that meaningfully changes I don’t think they care about anything but earnings.
Interestingly, that attitude is what allowed them to come in and replace yellow cabs as the de facto driver for hire option.
I drive on Uber part-time. In my city at least, rating is not such a big deal. The vast vast majority of people give 5 stars ratings (i'm talking about 99% of ratings).
I assume there are some people who only give ratings when the service was exceptionally good or exceptionally bad, or would otherwise consider 3 stars as a fair rating for a normal experience. Let's call there honest raters. As a driver, i don't think honest raters can have such a big impact on me, because the platform is designed so that there's no preference to always match honest raters to some particular drivers. Their honest ratings will be spread more or less uniformly among drivers.
And, if we want to apply Kantian logic and think "but what would happen if everybody did the same?", well, Uber is a live system too: if more people would become honest raters, then the ceiling of what's the minimum average rating you need to have as a driver would be lowered accordingly. Uber needs drivers too. It needs to keep a healthy balance of available drivers and available passengers. If either of the two gets too low, if would lose the other part in short time.
Same here, and all that means the scale is different. 4.70 is I drive on Uber part-time. In my city at least, rating is not such a big deal. The vast vast majority of people give 5 stars ratings (i'm talking about 99% of ratings), 4.80 is bad, 4.90 is good, 4.95+ is very friendly. I no longer am assigned any drivers below 4.85 because I started consistently cancelling every driver I got below 4.8.
I mean I get it, you end up hurting those that have the least power. It is a rough predicament to be in.
Or: bad actors speed up the rate at which the system improves to not rely on the goodness of individuals in order to operate.
Isn't that the rule that Uber itself already imposes on its customers and drivers?
Its just literally the attitude of uber itself, were not talking about some social security system
Any system like this entails a set of individual incentives. If following those incentives would lead the system to break down, the system is already broken.
This is one of the two reasons why I don't use Uber. The rating thing amounts to emotional blackmail, and that's not a game I'm willing to play.
It also means that driver ratings are meaningless.
Yes, that is why "I like how people [in comments] are keen to change the world", I don't want everyone to be as lazy as I am.
> Refusing to give good reviews harms the drivers who are already barely scraping by. This is a very good example of how you can cause real world harm with by trying to game the system for yourself.
No uber rider owe feedback at all, even if there is no gain of skipping it..
I would understand your argument if I were giving negative feedback on purpose for good drivers, which I consider a false testimony and a lie, but every user have all the right to skip reviewing, owing no more than the ride fees.
Just tried this, didn't get any notification.
I also don't know if ithas other factors, like region, number of rides, etc..
I don't live in the US, and over here a driver rating below 4.8 guarantees you a rollercoaster ride by an angry man. I've cancelled enough times straight after being assigned such a driver that I now only get drivers with near-perfect ratings. Doesn't take any longer either.
It's sad that it's come to this, but you've really got to make the algorithm work for you.
I'm not in the US, and over here, any driver with a rating unf
Claims like this go viral because they're practically unfalsifiable (It isn't in Uber's best interest to make their pricing algorithms public) and generate clicks. But when you take a closer look, it's always some anecdote that can be explained by people selecting different pricing tiers, or by multiple phones looking at the same route implying increased demand (the latter search might display a higher price). A proper experiment would involve dozens of phones under different scenarios making searches in a random order, then trying to correlate the variables with the prices. But for whatever reason, nobody ever does those experiments.
For what it's worth, I checked the price of an Uber with credits in my account against Lyft to the airport just now, and Uber was slightly cheaper.
0. https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/verify/verify-does-uber-ch...
Pricing algorithms should be not be private. Free markets depend on transparent pricing.
I mean, there are no surprise post-ride fees or anything. They're quoting you what the actual price is, and they're free to quote whatever they want for whatever reasons they want. Nobody's forcing you to agree to it. There's nothing stopping you from getting a competitive quote from Lyft by simply switching apps on the phone. Or by calling a cab company. Also there's nothing that keeps you from choosing to wait for a bus.
*Edit: Per Uber's help page there are exceptions to the up-front price quote actually being charged, but they are exceptions. My basic point that it's still a free market stands. "The upfront price you’re shown may change due to a number of circumstances, which may include adding stops, updating your destination, significant changes to the route or duration of the trip, or you pass through a toll that was not factored into your upfront price. In addition, you may incur wait time fees for the time you take to get to the car at the pickup or multi-stop fees for time spent at an on-trip stop."
> Due to unanticipated tolls or surcharges on this trip, we’ve adjusted your upfront fare to reflect the actually incurred charges. Please see the receipt breakdown for details.
If every customer has a different price, like Uber does, that opens up pandora's box. Naturally customers will start wondering about patterns and what they can do to lower their price. They might speculate if people of race X are given a slightly higher price on average, or what other physical characteristics might play a role.
Your supermarket doesn't play that game.
Unfalsifiable means it's impossible to submit evidence to contrary. In this case the proposition is that Uber sometimes charges you more based on having credits in your account. There is no way to prove this never happens through an experiment. If an experiment showed that two rides cost the same to users with and without credits, it doesn't show that it never happens.
There is a phrase "penny wise and pound foolish". That phrase is a good description of what's being alleged here. Trying to grab a few percent in ways that are likely to bring the hammer down when discovered is not exactly a great idea.
People would forget a week later and continue to use the app. I think that saying is a bit naive to the post antitrust capitalist world
DoorDash stole tips and got away with it. The precedent has been set. The "hammer" you're talking about hasn't existed for over a decade.
That assumes that there is a hammer that will be brought down and that the hammer actually has some weight behind it.
The reality is that it takes years for governments to react to people breaking or bending the law in novel, creative ways. The fact of illegality didn't stop Uber and a bunch of other competitors to provide taxi services, nor did it stop AirBnB from facilitating the running of illegal hotels world-wide.
Yes, eventually the hammer came down, but seriously, not even a million euros fine and of that, 50% suspended for Uber [1] or a few hundred K for AirBnB [2]... that's a joke, that's pennies for these ultra-large corporations. And so, yes, breaking the law and paying fines until it's actually hitting execs personally is the more profitable option in the mid run. Just change which law you break and you'll get off.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/uber-and-execs-f...
[2] https://www.hotrec.eu/en/policies/_airbnb_fined_on_the_balea...
I don't know whether they are charging more when users have credits in there account. It seems plausible I guess.
Here are some plausible reasons why it may not be the case:
- If Uber's analysis determined that the best price to charge to maximize profit is independent of whether or not the user has credits
- Because predatory practices would generate bad press and push users to competitors, which would reduce profits
EDIT: There is another account I missed in the article where identical rides are compared, so I take this back
The point of the OP is that it is impossible to submit evidence that contradicts these anecdotes, because it is impossible to prove something never happens through experiments.
Two data points, one gathered immediately after another for the same route from a separate device, from a provider known to track demande and use "surge pricing"?
> He went a step farther and did something I didn’t: he checked Uber prices “with someone else’s phone” who did not have a balance in their Uber account – and Uber was pricing the route at the usual $20 for them.
Specifically, transparent in that I can compare prices, which I can just check with my work phone or Lyft or Waymo, so they are. But when I buy a can of coke from the store, I have zero clue as to why it's priced. The algorithm used there is as opaque as Uber's is. I'd love for Uber to be transparent as to why a ride costs what it does, and how much goes to the driver, but there's no reason for them to do that.
(Or has food stamps.)
Also, the coupons they print on the fly with the receipt could be custom priced for that specific customer, as well.
Prices are different in different physical neighborhoods. Why shouldn't it be the same for digital neighborhoods and the user has an iPhone, or extra cash lying around? It offends your (and my) puritanical sensibilities, but prices are all made up and have no relation to what something costs to make (it's true. think about that deeply) anyway, so of evils in the world, Uber's pricing strategy is hardly the worst of it.
This... isn't true. The same item at a Walmart near San Francisco will have a different price than in nowhere, Kansas.
But the person I was responding to was saying that the reasons for a price need to be transparent, which I think is orthogonal to whether a company has universal same-price-for-everyone guarantees.
And most companies do not charge the same thing to everyone, even within a market. Think about AAA and senior discounts, loyalty programs, etc.
If Walmart would have a custom price for everyone that walks in based on how much Walmart thinks they can afford, then yes: absolutely there should be more transparency.
Go to an auction house, or a swap meet. Haggle for prices, against other buyers, negotiate with sellers. Approach any salesman in a business with unpublished prices (B2B especially.) Try to purchase a home or a vehicle, middleman or not.
Think about it, and you'll discover that pricing algorithms have been subject to human whim since before the invention of money.
The amazing innovation of markets was indeed, up-front price tags, fairness to all buyers, yet any underlying algorithm was still private and proprietary, so the consumer at a Safeway doesn't really have any idea what his carton of milk costs or why he's paying $7 for it.
This post sounded like it's saying that the later search is the one with the lower price.
- positional pricing, certain geocodes command what is called pricing elasticity, aka. people going to the hospital dont care about the price. Time based pricing elasticity is also exploited, for example, people leaving the concert at 12am likely dont have other options
- driver bonuses and rider coupons optimizing for marginal rides. The riders and drivers at the margins of pricing are typically switchers, which mean that if you are loyal to any particular app, you will likely never get see these coupons or bonuses
I'd love to see ProPublic or other investigative journalists do some research here. Especially on the driver side, because they seem to have even less leverage than average riders.
(1) N drivers authorized on the Rideshare platform are engaged.
(2) these N drivers drive simultaneously and in a similar geographic preference- as if they live in the same neighborhood, but also are optimizing as drivers do. And yet drawn home.
(3) pricing, earnings, etc. are recorded per driver and compared across drivers on the Rideshare platform(s).
Now we engage the experimental component. With N drivers we can have N/2 drivers engage in behavior A or behavior B. Then, when the Rideshare platform denies they do this or that depending on that or this, there is good evidence that is not the case. Statistical evidence. Tallyho, bandits!
How in the world is this unfalsifiable? Can't you just have two Uber accounts and cross check their prices?
That makes no sense, that's not what unfalsifiable means. By your logic even conservation of momentum is unfalsifiable, since you can't prove it holds in every situation. In fact I'm struggling to think of a single scientific theory that would be falsifiable by your definition.
Perhaps what you are getting at is that scientific theories can not be "known true" through experiments. This is correct. Theories can only be strengthened by experiments. It is not uncommon for theories long-believed true to be falsified later, despite extensive experimentation supporting them. Conservation of momentum, for example, doesn't apply when you zoom out far enough (i.e. general relativity).
The proposition that is unfalsifiable in this case is this: "Uber sometimes charges different rates based on if the user has credits." An experiment where the same rate is shown would not falsify this proposition, nor obviously would an experiment where a different rate is shown.
No. That would only prove something about your specific time/location/instance of the experiment. It doesn't prove that the law holds in all time/space/instances of the experiment. That's literally impossible to prove, and that's what you're demanding here. You're claiming that just because you can't prove the pricing theory always holds then it's unfalsifiable. That's nonsensical and not how anybody uses the term.
From Karl Popper: "The only way to verify a claim such as "All swans are white" would be if one could theoretically observe all swans, which is not possible. On the other hand, the falsifiability requirement for an anomalous instance, such as the observation of a single black swan, is theoretically reasonable and sufficient to logically falsify the claim."
How is this different from what I am saying?
The opposite claim, "that Ubers do not always charge the same rate" -- the one that logically flows from falsifying the first -- is the claim that is unfalsifiable.
Is it a valid criticism of the claim? I would generally agree with you and say not really.
> A proper experiment would involve dozens of phones under different scenarios making searches in a random order, then trying to correlate the variables with the prices. But for whatever reason, nobody ever does those experiments.
Because of how much Uber spent doing counter-intelligence against every locality in the planet, I feel like even that might not be good enough. I could see them "knowing" what's going on!
Uber support also confirmed it, after a lot of question dodging (emphasis mine):
---
Thank you for reaching out to us.
The prices of the trips and promotions are unique to users, that is correct. If you have in the future any trip that you feel like it's too expensive, please open a contact, attach the correct trip and we will gladly review it. There is sadly nothing you can do personally to change the fare rate of the trips before any discount is applied.
We wish you a nice day.
That article certainly doesn’t prove that was an urban legend. Uber built an entire system to serve fake data to government officials
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-f2971465-73d2-4932-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-...
They were almost kicked out of the App Store for building a system to deceive Apple’s employees, too:
https://financialpost.com/technology/personal-tech/uber-was-...
Given the other ways they tried to intimidate journalists, anything like this which is conducted with the journalists’ own phones or near places they frequent is inadequate to say whether this actually happened — especially after it was going viral and all they’d have to do is flip the switch and lie about it until the attention dissipated.
Compare the vibe of: "So what if he was convicted of home-invasion robbery, that doesn't prove he ever mugged anybody in an alley!"
True in the most literal sense, yet also missing the point.
Put another way, if I say someone cheated at cards and you say that’s an urban legend because they were never caught, knowing that the alleged cheat was Bernie Madoff might change your confidence in that belief because you know without a doubt that he was willing to cheat in even more serious areas.
I appreciate that you checked and that you acknowledged the limitation of it as an anecdote, but it doesn't actually give us much information.
Companies are always doing experiments behind feature flags on subsets of the population. Some of those experiments would surprise the public. At any given time, the set of experiments that would surprise the public are only ever seen by a tiny slice of users.
People outside those companies will never hear of most experiments. And often only a few people inside the company will be aware of them.
Something like this is more like an existence proof (does it ever happen?) rather than a proof of universality (does it always happen to everyone, or even to most people?)
I wonder if there is enough granularity in this data to make a determination if there's a large discrepancy/variation in fare in certain taxi zones at the same time with Uber, compared with Lyft or other competitors.
[1] https://www.nyc.gov/assets/tlc/downloads/pdf/trip_record_use...
[2] https://www.nyc.gov/site/tlc/about/tlc-trip-record-data.page
[3] https://www.nyc.gov/assets/tlc/downloads/pdf/data_dictionary...
You obviously don't need to justify your observations to anybody else, but if you did find a conclusive result it would make a good blog post.
[P.S. chat gpt could help with the statistical test part]
... At the same time, I also am aware of how hilariously dumb chat GPT can be in deep technical contexts. I've taken to saying that when it comes to a technical topic, chatGPT will confidently tell you the wrong thing to do 50% of the time, but that's fine because it will give you the terms and context you can use to audit its solution yourself. Even if you don't understand the answers you can easily have chat gpt explain the gaps, again, 50%, but giving real information contextualizes the conversation better. I would expect this to improve accuracy, and my personal experience bares this out.
There was a brief window of time where the strongest chess players were chimeras, humans who assessed AI suggestions. Quickly even they found themselves outperformed by engines.
I suspect this is happening here as well. And I also suspect its going to take a good deal longer.
The rideshare tab in Maps gives me time/distance/traffic estimates and no prices. Whether I'm logged in, or Incognito. No prices unless I tap "Open App ->"
There is no rideshare tab in the desktop version, only tried it on my Android.
https://waymo.com/blog/2024/09/waymo-and-uber-expand-partner...
In my market, Maps is showing me options for Lyft or Waymo autos only. However, Lyft is co-branded with scooters and e-bikes, so if I opened that app instead, I'd be presented with even more options.
So, our Maps experience may depend on the market and other variables, which brings us back to TFA's topic, I suppose.
Yes I know they are literally paid to not have these questions. But deep down, is there any remorse or guilt at all or is it just "not my problem" attitude all the way to the bank?
On a tangent, this is why I think there need to be more regulations with software development. Any real engineering discipline has tons of oversight and government agencies breathing down their neck to ensure compliance. Software came out when all these pushes for safety has been gutted and as a result we have a free for all race to the bottom.
It garantees that there is always one person in charge who will take personal responsibility for the act and will fight for thing to be done properly and no one can bypass him.
You'd have to massively expand the bounds of what constitutes "engineering" when programming software.
This would immediately kill open source. Anyone who isn't an engineer couldn't write code unsupervised. Anyone who is, would refuse to release code publicly licence because you'd have professional liability for anyone that uses your code in perpetuity forever.
I like the idea because licensure helps deal with the power differential that some professionals have over the average person. But the lines would have to be drawn very carefully to avoid killing open source.
Specifically, if we had widespread “codetermination”, which gives board seats to union members, the people that build things would have a say in what they’re being asked to build.
We don't have legal or cultural barriers to leaving to work somewhere else if you don't like what your current employer chooses to spend their money on (and modern telecommuting counters issues from living in a one-employer town). Without those barriers needing to be compensated for, this sounds like just trying to seize control of other people's stuff.
Or does being sketchy / probably immoral vs being actually illegal make a difference? Maybe something around twisting yourself in knots to justify something being corrosive in ways that knowingly doing wrong isn't?
Kind of how Apple justifies crazy App Store policies/pricing for keeping "customers safe".
The difficulty arises because the counter-argument of "surge pricing can kick in way faster than new cars show up on the road" is, in its details, subtle. And "this is just grabbing money for no increased service" goes against many people's idea that people should be able to charge arbitrary amounts for services if they feel like it. "People shouldn't be bidding against each other like this for transportation" is yet another can of worms.
This is a space where there are so many sticking points that many people will disagree with. A place where you can really understand gaps between people's axioms, depending on what part you focus on. And it's a place where Uber sits comfortably in the conclusion of the simple arguments, and the opposition to its tactics lies in the conclusion of very long, nuanced, contextful arguments (that still, at one point, require acknowledging that it's not good for society as a whole for a service provider to have unlimited pricing power, which is a big ask!).
This is almost certainly not what it does. What it (almost certainly) does is maximize Uber’s profits. Meaning if they can make a few extra bucks by raising prices and leaving someone out in the cold and a driver without a job they will.
This is not to say that Uber has any obligation to do anything different, just a reminder that profit maximization is not the same as welfare maximization.
The general idea was enshitification once new subscribers dried up. We auto renewed everyone that we could into a drastically different, and more expensive, pay structure then forced them to call if they wanted cancel.
I knew it was scummy at the time (circa 2012), and now wish I had at least SAID something. As a fresh college grad still, I needed the job and stability.
In an ideal world, we would empower workers to stand up for what is right, but every step of the system is designed to take that away from us. Having a moral choice is a luxury in today's workforce.
This is why we have student debt. It keeps employees compliant and subservient.
No I don't think there is a cabal of industry conspiring to achieve this. But, with thousands of little nudges from business this is where we ended up.
I know sales leaders who intentionally encourage their sales people to get into financial commitments (e.g. buy that bigger house, a new sports car). This is all so that the seller is desperate and will work crazy hours to ensure they get their commissions and can pay these financial burdens.
Regardless, I'm also not clear what I think about government regulating the price of a service like Uber. My first thought is probably more harm than good. We mostly don't regulate the price of airline tickets. I don't see how Uber is any different.
- do they believe they're doing a job that is otherwise net positive to society or their users ?
- how hard would it be to successfully argue against this feature getting implemented ?
For instance I'd they think Uber is saving humanity but this feature would cost their whole career if they went hard against it, the remorse would be negligible.
For others it could be the last straw breaking the camel's back.
In general I think we're turning the blind eye to many shitty practices if we assume it's a small issue in the grand scheme of things. I mean, we wouldn't have so many dark patterns and spam emails from almost every companies we interact with if it wasn't the case.
When was the last time you went to tell your marketing department to dial it down ?
It is not a single dollar worth it to them and people don't seem to see the connection between their own working conditions and their demands for consumption.
Sure, Uber also destroyed or at least challenged a lot of taxi monopolies. For that alone it was surely worth it. But I think "abusing" the price flexibility of customers is anything nefarious as they certainly do the same.
If this isn't already happening, I expect this will be the future of our industry.
If they were doing something relatively frictionless that obviously increased efficiency? People wouldn't care.
Mindlessly doing what the model says, even though it's awful for the customer, to marginally increase profit some of the time by charging some customers more? People get pissed off...
If people are thinking this is evil, it's the motivation and the result that matter, not the means through which they achieve their goal.
And if they used ML as a black box, it could act in problematic ways. Maybe the ML figured out that it could charge Black riders more. They didn't look into it and just rolled it out. Things like that can happen when you don't look into stuff.
And I'd say that it's questionably legal. If a store charged you more money because you were using a gift card, I think we'd all agree that the store had unjustly taken value from you. Here, Uber is allegedly charging people with credits a higher amount - essentially stealing gift card value.
I'm not sure "oh, it was just our ML deciding to steal your money," is a great defense. Ok, but what was the ML supposed to do. Well, it was supposed to figure out who we could take more money from for the same product.
The difference is the former has an element of being one step removed, and we use that tiny accountability gap to sleep better at night.
The comparison to modern army drone pilots comes to mind... we're now exploding Enemies from the comfort of a playstation controller in a base somewhere in Utah. The PTSD comes in when the operators realize that tiny accountability gap has just been mental gymnastics to suppress what they've really been doing.
But also I'm not convinced that getting someone to pay more is the same as screwing them over. For example - countries where fines are based on your income, or needs based programs that charge you less when you make less are mostly accepted as social good
This is like physical shops offering different prices to clients based on how they are dressed and other indirect indicators.
Lots of things work this way though.
1) Airlines charge more to fly direct from A -> B while charging less for someone to fly from A -> B -> C. Some people try skiplagging to game the system but you run the risk of getting banned by the airline if you do that.
2) Another hilarious experience I have had is when I was paying things for my wedding. Some vendors (florists, cake makers, etc) will charge outrageous rates if you tell them it's for a wedding. But they will charge very reasonable rates if you claim it is just for a non-wedding family event (for the same amount of flowers, same size/layers of cake, etc).
3) A similar thing I have been warned about is electricians charging more if you claim you want an EVSE installed for your new Tesla as opposed to having just a regular NEMA 14-50 outlet installed in your garage. For the former, they will quote much higher while the quotes are cheaper for the latter (this is despite the exact amount of work and materials - you can even get them to confirm they are going to use the same gauge wire, etc).
I think they can do all of these tricks but once it becomes known that they are engaging in these shenanigans, it will dilute the value of their credits. So if Costco tries to sell me $100 Uber gift card for 20% off, then I will instantly value that 20% discount to be worth 0% and not purchase that gift card ever.
> The ML model, after much historical analysis, figured out that it can charge users more if they have credits available. The relevant engineers treated the ML model as a black box, ran an A/B test, saw a 1.3% increase in revenue, and decided to roll it out.
This is the same thing. The fact that they might be turning a blind eye to why the ML model optimised the way it did doesn't absolve them from responsibility.
It's called "dynamic pricing" for a reason. Like stock market prices, it fluctuates rapidly based on hundreds of factors.
You don't need credits to see different prices—just compare with a friend's phone. Sometimes, their fare will be higher than yours, and other times, it will be lower.
I don’t think many brokers offer different prices to their clients based on attributes. How is this even a remotely valid comparison when you’re saying:
> Sometimes, their fare will be higher than yours, and other times, it will be lower.
After being gaslit by Uber support for weeks, they finally admitted to charge riders different prices, and that there was nothing they could do to reset my price multiplier[1]. I suspect it was because I added a Work profile with corporate credit card for a trip years ago.
So I deleted my account, waited 30 days for the data to be expunged[2], and created a new account under a new email address and without my middle name. The prices are now normal!
This plus drivers constantly cancelling rides, makes me avoid Uber as much as I can.
-
[1] Quoting Uber support: "The prices of the trips and promotions are unique to users, that is correct. [...] There is sadly nothing you can do personally to change the fare rate of the trips before any discount is applied."
[2] After requesting to delete your account, I received an email asking to explain the issue and if they could help me. Replying "no" automatically reactivated my account and reset the 30 day timer.
Building a history that you won't assault the driver or puke in their car is actually material to them offering you rides. You might not be someone who would try and rob the Uber driver, but lets admit that such people exist, and that it's in Uber's best interest not to let people like that use their platform.
Not to excuse taxi robbers or taxi drivers raping female passengers, but... somehow humanity seems to have existed with that for decades just fine? What is different between now and back then, maybe other than that we're finally taking women seriously?
I use Lyft 99% of the time (and multiple times a week) because I find it to be more reliable (as well as slightly cheaper) than Uber. It doesn't seem destroyed to me.
Also, some uber drivers, take your ride while literally not being in the car and wasting your time. Anecdotally, I took an uber one time that was less than 20m from me. After 5 minutes not moving I went to check wth was going on. The driver was talking with other uber drivers. His excuse over text? Police was checking some papers. I literally was unable to get any other drivers because they were the most close to me.
This report shows multiple drivers all located in the same area (literally, phones next to each other), getting marginally different quotes for the same ride.
What is accounting for these differences?
Taxi industry may have been shitty, but at least the price was transparent. You pay while the meter is running. With Uber/Lyft, it’s a fucking black box.
For all we know, the algorithms learned which drivers tend to take whatever is given to them so they can opt to shave a couple of dollars.
I feel if I open Uber ahead of a planned travel and type in a destination to get an idea on the price, the price is $X. I then open the app back later when I'm ready to travel (say 15 minutes later after packing and leaving the hotel) and the price has gone up (sometimes by quite a bit).
Now maybe I'm just unlucky and the dynamic market prices have gone up every time, but I've never seen the same price or less.
Which makes me wonder if Uber records your interest in using them to get to a destination and then increases the price when you come back after committing to using them for your trip.
I now only open the app and search when I'm ready for the trip.
If every time you notice it's higher than usual, you do this, and notice the price eventually decreasing... but you never switch apps when the price is already normal, and you never not try the other app if you wait... in other words, might just be confirmation bias.
I rarely use Uber/Eats, so when I do I almost always have ~1/3rd off through some voucher or something. They also do vouchers that work over multiple purchases in order to build habits.
With apologies for stereotyping.
The app lies about everything. What the wait time is likely to be, how many drivers there are, whether your driver is moving or not, how long it will take to find another driver when the first driver cancels, etc.
Wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be true. Completely consistent with the rest of my experience with this company.
And the trick of course is to first get the deal (which lasts for 1-2 weeks typically), and then add credits.
In general, I do wonder if/when all of the slimy anti-competitive, anti-labor stuff these companies are doing will come out. I'm not holding my breath for jail-time, but boy, would it be nice.
While I'm here, it sure would be nice if someone were to spin up a fediverse/decentralized alternative that municipalities could adopt and interconnect.
I have conspiracy theories about Spotify autoplay (wouldn't it seem smart to prioritize songs with lower licensing cost?) and would like to see them checked. Surely I can't be the only person interested in the specific ways products used by hundreds of millions of people actually work?
There's a lot of superstition and anecdotal evidence in this area and it would be great to see a reliable source of actual research.
I don't know if this particular claim is true but dynamic pricing is getting out of control. Things should have an advertised price rather than some amorphous ML system deciding to charge you more because you're desperate or you can afford it (according to some criteria).
These companies have to be careful too because they may open themselves up to discrimination claims. There are protected classes you can't discriminate against under federal law. Facebook already settled a case of race discrimination in housing ads [1]. This has nothing to do with dynamic pricing but I guarantee you dynamic pricing will open up more of these issues.
[1]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-secures-gr...
here's my favorite rideshare gouge, I'm sure others have had the same experience.
"currenly 20 minute wait, upgrade to uber+$ for 3 minute availability?"
YES!
"OK booked, your ride at the higher rate is on the way, currently 20 minutes away!"
now, it is possible that "offer" message was shown to a bunch of people at the same time and somebody snagged it in front of me leaving only the other car 20 mins away, i.e. the computer was "honest", but I shouldn't be paying the higher rate. clever programmer types can come up with other scenarios, the point is, we need guarantees that the market making is honest, or we need regulation.
However I should, as someone who just left a concert, have a notion as to how much it's in my best interests to either rideshare with my friend and deal with two stops, or walk up the street to a restaurant and kill an hour or two while we wait for the chaos to dissipate. If the price difference is going to pay for a drink or an appetizer, then maybe I voluntarily timeshift.
And we don't seem to be near that bar at the moment.
Uber is going to have a lot of fun pricing a market where the bus is 10x cheaper and faster than the Uber thanks to dedicated lanes.