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Comment by xnx | Hacker News Reader

I'm wary to try this for fear of my Uber account getting locked.

Great example of something that on-device general agents should be able to do: Operate the apps to get prices and summarize prices.

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I've been using this for a few months at least on both android and ios and have not been banned or locked out of any of my linked accounts but obviously that can change at any moment

That's a valid concern but I think it's unlikely. No one's account has been locked for using this app. Rideshare companies take a large cut of the ride fare, so locking user accounts for using third-party apps is against their incentives. It's more likely that they would try to prevent this app from working, rather than targeting users of the app.

Not a ban, perhaps... but if I have two users - Alice who uses the app according to normal patterns, and Bob who consistently predicts and declines when my dynamic pricing algorithm tries to push above market pricing, and has a remarkably high look-to-book ratio - I'll want Alice to have better drivers, better service, faster pickups etc., because I'll have larger lifetime margins from choose-the-app-on-vibes-Alice than from race-to-the-bottom-Bob.

If my known-good supply is limited at any given time, I have every incentive to focus it on Alice, and I'd be inclined to try out e.g. new drivers on accounts like Bob's.

Rideshare data teams are incredibly talented, capable, and motivated. One does not simply front-run a market where the biggest players have a massive data advantage, control your latency, and are effectively unregulated.

An alternative possibility is that a rideshare company sees that Alice always takes the price that's offered so Alice receives the standard price, whereas Bob is price-sensitive so he receives personalized discounts on rides until the prices reach the amount that he's willing to pay.

Which is a competitive success story. It's much more profitable to avoid competition with abusive dynamic pricing and punish users for price-shopping.

This is what most airlines and hotels do, the best prices go on google flights and google hotels and the worst prices are in their own apps.

That's exactly right. This is a big market and this gives consumers another option to choose best priced rides. Think like you mentioned such as booking.com, sky scanner, Agoda, Expedia etc etc. Competition is good.

Race-to-the-bottom Bob belongs with the likes of Ben Bitdiddle and Louis Reasoner

They barely want to ban drivers, you think they’re going to ban the revenue?!

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