Uber introduces surge pricing in downtown Sydney during hostage siege | Hacker News Reader

Uber introduces surge pricing in downtown Sydney during hostage siege

mashable.com

15 pointscovi19 comments

I'm all in favor of price surging and all that, but it saddens me that Uber spends so little time thinking about PR. Particularly, there's an obvious fix that will probably win them a lot of support: during surges, only charge the 20% fee on the base price. That way they can very justifiably claim to be earning no profit from surge incidents and are increasing fares solely to create enough availability.

It is better for Uber to be as honest as possible about their practices. This gives everyone else the greatest insight into the corporation and allows us to form more accurate opinions about their practices and to decide whether or not to support them.

A company hiding their intentions through obfuscated PR techniques is detestable. It also does not appear to be a great long-term strategy. Look at Comcast, they love to play the PR games and they are almost universally reviled because of it.

People will support honest organizations that are improving things. Trying to wrap fundamentally flawed systems in the pretense of nobility is a silly game to play and many are tiring of it.

How is this bad for anything except Uber's public image? If prices remained the same, cars would be unavailable. If you want that outcome, then simply don't order a ride. There's absolutely nothing wrong with surge pricing when there's an actual spike in demand - the alternative would have been not getting a ride at all which you can still do with surge pricing. This problem is exactly what happens with traditional taxis - you simply can't get where you want to not matter how important it is. This was meant to be one of Uber's strengths - greater availability. Now that gave us a little, we expect charity from them too?

Dispappointing to see this post on hacker news. Most of the people getting angry at uber don't even understand how their system works.

Some random guy shared a screenshot of a 4x surge on uber black and now the media is saying "uber making $100 off fares in a hostage situation!". So silly.

A lot of other industries have regulation in place to stop price gouging during emergencies, such as this one. I'm all for Uber raising prices at 1am on a Sunday morning, due to supply/demand -- that's fine! But during an emergency, people find it icky that a business would take "advantage" of it like that. I initally thought it was just an algorithm, which doesn't excuse it entirely but is more understandable, but from Uber's tweets it seems they were aware and OK with jacking prices up that high despite the fact they knew it was an emergency.

tl;dr -- Taxis aren't going to jack prices up 4x in an emergency, because it's illegal, and that's a good thing. Uber made a misstep here, and I've in favour of Uber normally (and finding the media backlash against them lately fascinating). It's a good thing they've gone back and reversed their position, this is an emergency and peoples safety is more importantly than a multinational company's profits, according to society.

It's a bit disappointing that you see it is OK through an understanding of the system.

In a time of emergency, its just not right.

Market pricing can be justifiable but not when the person may have no choice. It is taking advantage of people.

Marketing bullshit. Really not that hard to get out of "downtown Sydney". Took me 2 minutes this morning to get out of walk out of the Sydney CBD to a relatively safe zone.

People are acting like there's a hurricane. Trains still run. Why are people entitled to a black car?

Right now, everything is fine on the train system. Go to Town Hall and you'll be fine.

I always assumed it's an algorithm, not a conscious human flipping a switch.

Unfortunately, appears not:

https://twitter.com/Uber_Sydney/status/544319760809222144

"We are all concerned with events in CBD. Fares have increased to encourage more drivers to come online & pick up passengers in the area."

Well if that's the case, then that's pretty terrible :/

And it looks like now they've about-faced:

https://twitter.com/Uber_Sydney/status/544329935943237632

"Uber Sydney trips from CBD will be free for riders. Higher rates are still in place to encourage drivers to get into the CBD."

The problem with Uber is that the right thing to do never seems to occur to them naturally.

It's an issue that will continue to hound them until they take active steps to change their thinking.

That doesn't prove anything. Their twitter person was probably just reporting on the current surge level.

It answers the question in the comment I was replying to: that there are conscious humans watching the price changes.

This is simple supply->demand. Hotels do the same thing when there is a big event in town.

And most places have anti-gouging laws to prevent them from doing it in emergencies.

Is it really 'simple' supply & demand? From Uber's Tweets it sounds like they actively alter the prices. Does Uber actually offer a truly fluid, lasseiz-faire market?

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