My car is in the shop and if I could I was going to run somewhere across town, then my wife could pick me up after work. The place is about 10 minutes away.
I pop open Uber, and type in where I need to go. 10 minute ride, but it’s priced at $25 and up from there. I was like holy shit ok I don’t need to go that bad I can wait.
A few minutes later I get a push notification that said “Prices have dropped!” I click it and it opens up the exact same route but now the fare is 9 fucking dollars.
Even looking now, it’s $11-12. I’ve worked in a mobile app company before… That shit isn’t random. They appear to be testing some “fuck you pricing” and then if you don’t bite they cut it to the normal rate. Someone at the company is currently running numbers to see if they can get wealthy people to bite on the inflated pricing.
Fuck you Uber. Not like your company has a great history in the first place, so I guess I’m partially to blame.
IIRC Uber has patented dynamic pricing based on a ton of data, including your phone battery being low. I wouldn’t be surprised if they hiked your fare just because you were on the car shop.
Obviously they say its not in use but who could check
Edit: some further reading https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication Files/22-050_ec28aaca-2b94-477f-84e6-e8b58428ba43.pdf
And it’s unlikely the driver would have seen any of that difference either.
just when you thought Uber couldn’t get any scummier
Thus actually happened to my friend a few weeks ago. Went from a 40 dollar ride to 20 after passing on the 40 for a little while.
This exact thing used to happen to me with Lyft. I would be out late until around 2am at my friends house some nights drinking. When I would open the Lyft app and look for a ride back home they would be at around $90!!! I would wait for about 20 minutes and the price would drop to about 35-40$. It was outrageous and made no sense. Eventually I stuck with just grabbing a cab each time instead for around 45$
2am, when the bars close and all the drunk people need a ride home and half the drivers are home asleep? No, I have no idea why there might be surge pricing at 2am …
The enshittification never stops.
That’s why I used to always keep at least 2 apps installed and check prices in both of them a few times ahead of my schedule. I never saw a change in price this steep. Sometimes it’s a reasonable supply/demand dynamic, common during game days around here, but you can never trust them.
Yeah I can understand surge charging during peak periods to reduce demand on their drivers, but this is a whole new level of predatory. And you know damn well the driver likely isn’t seeing any extra cash from it.
It’s not Uber, it’s “drivers” using group chats to co-ordinate surges and move from area to area.
Basically, big groups designate a part of town to collectively ignore. This means not enough drivers are there to handle the requests, so the surge kicks in to attract more drivers into the area with bigger fares. When the surge is on, they all come in, grab the inflated fares, drop off, and co-ordinate again for another area.
So when jobs aren’t being backed up, your trip would likely be $9. But if a big group is blocking the area, there’s enough of them in the group chat to influence prices.
Because they all use three or four ride share services, switching won’t help. They won’t risk missing the Uber.surge.when everyone decides it’s time to start pickups.
I think the prices change according to the demand at the moment. I have seen prices skyrocketing when the subway stopped working in my city. But you might be correct. I wouldn’t doubt that they use psychological strategies like that on custumers.
There’s definitely on demand pricing. I know that between classes at the university I’m near prices. Would skyrocket then go down. Supply and demand makes sense but the rest of that shit is absolutely scummy and I hate it
It literally isn’t random. They’re good enough that they were able to geofence Apple to hide the fact they were tracking users
This kinda happened to me today but not with Uber… My dog has some dermatitis and I needed to get some ointment, so I open up Petco’s website to see what the one down the street from me had on hand. They had exactly what I needed, and the price was listed at $12. Cool. I walk down there and find the thing, but it’s $16. Not cool.
Nowhere on the site does it say that the price listed online is special for online purchases. I should have just left and ordered it online for pickup to save $4 but then it would take I don’t know how fucking long to be ready and I was already there. Bastards.
Couldn’t you have asked for the manager? In a non Karen way, assuming the site price wasn’t online only they should be able to honor it.
I didn’t even think about it until now. Probably could have price matched their own advertised price.
They price match their website, so does PetSmart. Always check the website because this seems like their SOP now.
I notice this too. Always, always open the app, check the rate, close the app. I think this triggers some flow where they think you’re cross comparing prices with Lyft, so they offer a more competitive rate on the second check.
Best to have both apps installed anyway so you can check both.
