What isn't transparent about surge pricing? The app straight up tells you "you will be paying more for this ride." If you don't like it, get a regular cab.
I don't know why people act as if Uber is twisting their arm when it comes to surge pricing.
I don't know why people act as if Uber is twisting their arm when it comes to surge pricing.
It's absolute nonsense to categorically state that variable pricing interferes with planning more than variable availability does. In particular when the variable availability, fixed-price option is still an alternative.
That seems like it would be more stressful and a worse solution than either of the other options (taxis' fully fixed-price or Uber's fully-floating price), since you don't even know what part of the spectrum you'll end up on at any given point!
Any savvy individual (who needs to be able to schedule their Uber rides in advance for whatever reason, instead of just using a Taxi to schedule rides like others have been doing for the last 50 years) will quickly learn when surge pricing is effect namely, Weekday mornings when people are going to work, Weekday evenings when people are leaving work, Weekend nights (sometimes), and any event where you can expect alot of people going home at the same time (concerts, sports games).
In any case, and back to my original point, Uber doesn't force you to use their service and they are not the only game in town. If availability is more important predictability get an Uber, otherwise just get a Taxi. It doesn't make sense for Uber to become more like Taxis because people are unaware they have choices.
This is way way way off. Looking just at my experience in San Francisco: weather patterns (in detail, across different parts of the city), public transit issues, tourism, events, fluctuations in the city's population and travel across various holidays/festivals/three-day weekends, changes in price of Uber, changes in price of alternatives (i.e. Lyft drops prices)...and the interplay of all these variables (e.g. public transit happens to have diminished capacity along a critical line for a given event vs having diminished capacity on an unrelated line).
It's not market fundamentalism to acknowledge that what the market is good at is this sort of massively decentralized, million-variable price optimization[1]. This is precisely the reason why direct price controls on consumer products tend not to work: because it's damn near impossible for any entity (even the freaking US gov't) to accurately gauge the million variables that go into setting supply and demand. The idea that Uber could do this without being way, way, way off almost all the time is a hilariously bad idea.
As someone alluded to below (and I alluded to above multiple times): The product Uber is selling is predictable-availability rides. The product taxis are selling is predictable-price rides. It's nonsense to say that reducing the predictability of Uber's availability would be "less stressful" or easier on its passengers.
[1] Note that it optimizes for allocative efficiency. Much of what market fundamentalism gets wrong is ignoring that allocative efficiency is not always what our goal is. That's not relevant in this case though, since we're explicitly talking about how a centralized, top-down rate schedule is a laughably terrible idea.
Note that Uber isn't a free market because the drivers aren't setting prices.
Most people just get used to paying whatever the checkout bill is at the grocery. Or if money is tight, then yes, it does cause increased stress, but middle-class American society seemingly doesn't care about the routine stresses of being poor. UberX is not targeting a market that will be stressed to pay for a ride, though.
As for groceries usually sales are advertised, in force for pre-defined period of time and, as you say, discounted from the price that is in force most of the time so that if you are surprised by a price it is in your favor.
Not to say I'm against transparency - it would most likely be incredibly rich data and give more power to drivers, but it seems Uber's trip up from a public point of view is that users feel cheated due to surge pricing. I'm having trouble understanding how one can feel cheated when the prices are laid before you - maybe Uber should replace "4x" with the estimated amount (of course then you'd have the complaining if the estimate is a little bit off).