Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/08/02/uber-drivers-gang-cause-surge-pricing-research-says/

by kgwgk • 9 years ago

188 170 9 years ago

telegraph.co.uk

ada1981• 9 years ago

Good for them. Someone should build an app they can run that automatically logs them in and out to maximize pricing.

Though I imagine it wouldn't be hard for Uber to implement some basic security to thwart it.

briandear3• 9 years ago

And if prices are high, customers will seek alternatives. So it could backfire.

Also, this practice is illegal as it amounts to price fixing/collision. These are all independent businesses conspiring to raise prices. These aren’t employees of the same company – they are independent contractors which means they are separate businuess entities from each other which means they are committing a crime.

Collusion is a crime and that’s exactly what these separate business entities (who happen to have Uber as a customer) are doing.

briandear3• 9 years ago

To the down voters.. is this not collusion? We are all welcome to our own opinions, but facts are what they are: businesses conspiring to force prices higher is the very diffenition of collusion. The size of the entity makes no difference under the law.

mannykannot• 9 years ago

This is as economically rational as surge pricing itself.

pgeorgep• 9 years ago

Sounds like a nice little loophole the drivers found to make a few extra bucks. It's always interesting to me when people find little tricks they can do the bend an algo their direction.

This reminds me a lot of the LinkedIn algo hacks that's driving me nuts right now. If you post super long form, cheesy, generic paragraphs of text with no links/visuals - you get massive exposure. The result has been superficial posts filling up my feed talking about who knows what.

Much like the nuisance of a pricing surge on Uber, these algo hacks can be a real pain.

jxramos3• 9 years ago

lol, looks like two can play at that game...

"Separate research at Northeastern University has previously found passengers can game surge pricing with simple tricks such as waiting five minutes or crossing the road."

I know I've waited out twenty minutes or so to bypass the surge or at least dampen the surge to a rate I was comfortable with. Sort of becomes an auction experience at that point.

mikeash2• 9 years ago

Obvious in hindsight. This sort of thing is inevitable any time you have dumb software on one side and humans on the other side.

I'm mostly a fan of these non-taxi "taxi" services, but it seems like they are slowly and painfully rediscovering why taxis ended up so regulated in the first place.

bbarn2• 9 years ago

Yeah, I'm mostly not a fan, now that we're a few years in. Waves of people inexperienced, untrained in shuttling people around a major metro have resulted in downtown Chicago being an utter mess compared to only a few years ago. Chicago forced cab drivers to go through a training and certification course that at least forced them to understand the major routes and grid system we're on, and every time I've been in an uber they are completely tethered to their phones nav systems.

So, now we've got an army of drivers who can't drive, don't know where they are going, playing with their phones all day. It makes for an unpleasant experience whether you're on a bike, driving you car, or sometimes just walking across the street.

mring33621• 9 years ago

Fellow Chicagoan here. I agree. Used to be that cabs were the most annoying, unpredictable cars on the road. Now it's the Ubers and Lyfts.

toast02• 9 years ago

I used to think cabs were terrible drivers, but most of them (especially in heavily regulated markets) are very experienced drivers and simply disregard rules of the road that are inconvenient for them.

In contrast, 'ride sharing' drivers seem to have no sense of direction, and are genuinely oblivious to the rules of the road.

In short, when in either type of car, I fear for my life.

bogomipz3• 9 years ago

"Waves of people inexperienced, untrained in shuttling people around a major metro have resulted in downtown Chicago being an utter mess compared to only a few years ago."

Has the city published any traffic impact studies? NYC showed concerned for Uber impact on traffic and made an attempt to get data and it turned into a political kerfuffle with accusations of protecting the taxi industry etc. I don't like the title of this blog post but it points to similar of what you are stating about downtown Chicago:

http://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/02/27/its-settled-uber-is-ma...

stillhere• 9 years ago

ADA non-compliant vehicles as well. Disabled passengers cannot ride an Uber most of the time. It has been difficult to sue Uber though.

awkwarddaturtle• 9 years ago

This is just the first step. The ultimate goal is driverless taxi fleets. Whether that's achievable ( technologically, legally, etc ) is another story.

ajmurmann• 9 years ago

I've had the occasional Lyft driver who could have made better choices. However, the one thing I've only had with taxis is a driver who is actively malicious and makes one turns clearly on purpose to drive up the bill. Lyft cars also have been consistently much cleaner. The skankyness of some taxis I've been in is just without competition.

sixQuarks• 9 years ago

Uber was actually a little too early into the game. They are going to have legacy issues transitioning into self-driving taxis. The whole end-game with this is to have self-driving cars and get rid of drivers, this was the stated goal at least 4 years ago.

This is where Tesla is going to have an advantage. They're going to start with self-driving, no need to deal with pissed off drivers and other problems that come with a transition. Same thing with their dealerships - they didn't have to deal with the dealer-franchise system.

jdauriemma2• 9 years ago

So true. Good luck getting a driver to pick you up around Wacker. Upper/lower confuses the heck out of the uninitiated.

jxramos3• 9 years ago

That might explain the two red light runners I've seen in the last two days with Uber stickers on their windshield. One nearly struck me and would have if I didn't slow down my approach.

wenc2• 9 years ago

I live in Chicago, and my experience with rideshare drivers has been uniformly good. Many of them genuinely enjoy driving. Some can be opportunistic but I guess my baseline for city driving was shaped in cities where the traffic is much worse than Chicago's (try Sao Paulo). I actually think Chicago drivers are ok.

The worst drivers are cab drivers in the Loop during rush hour who will honk at the slightest provocation, who don't use turn signals, and will suddenly stop in front of you. If Chicago cab drivers are trained, that training certainly isn't evident.

On the other hand, Lyft drivers have stars docked if they exhibit unsafe driving behaviors, and they are deactivated if their rating gets too low (4.6 stars is the threshold I believe).

Many non-casual Lyft drivers actually try not to crash their ratings. https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-real-reason-Uber-and-Lyft-us...

Cabs don't have this feedback loop. Only accidents will get them off the road.

Edit: I speak as a driver and a passenger. I imagine things have gotten worse for bicyclists. Also, I don't use Uber, only Lyft. I've heard Uber drivers are worse because Uber is more liberal with their rating system.

arstin• 9 years ago

Yea my experience with biking in Chicago is that at least cabs are clearly marked as such so you know they might cut you off at any moment and you'll cuss at each other. Uber drivers will just stealthily swerve into your lane and full stop.

Plus the GPS systems here will take you down these speed bump residential roads and do crazy contortions to drop off on a one-way road.

On the flip side though, when I first moved here a cab was like $20 each way just from like Broadway to Kimball. Now it's...$4.

smsm426• 9 years ago

I'd think making a nav system work properly with given map once is more efficient than making hundreds of drivers to constantly learn it over and over.

It makes for an unpleasant experience whether you're on a bike, driving you car, or sometimes just walking across the street.

How drivers guided by a nav system is worse for streetwalkers than any other drivers? And, from my experience, long-term commercial driving doesn't always make a driver a model road citizen - in fact, in many places taxi drivers are kinda notorious for being less than model co-roaders.

godzillabrennus• 9 years ago

Chicago cab drivers were the worst. Uber drivers are leagues better.

Last time I was in a cab in Chicago the driver ran a man over in the street and just kept going. When I jumped out to see if the victim was okay the driver yelled to me that I was fare dodging before he sped away....

overcast• 9 years ago

Yeh, this unpopular view is now becoming popular. I've said it from the start, there is a reason for regulation. We just needed the awesome software to manage real taxi services. The price isn't sustainable, people want the on demand taxis.

criddell2• 9 years ago

there is a reason for regulation

Uber coming along has been a good reset for the regulations. There were a lot of ineffective and counterproductive regulations in place and I think wiping them out and starting over is a good thing.

Sarasota, FL is an interesting case to study. The traditional taxi companies complained about Uber in the city and rather than fight Uber, the city removed the regulations on taxi companies. So far, I don't think much has really changed.

As for the gaming of surge pricing, I think that's fixable. Uber just needs to think more carefully about driver incentives.

cormacrelf• 9 years ago

I am often reminded of this tweet:

Which is funnier: tech bros innovating their way to public transit, or bitcoin folks slowly reinventing financial regulation?

- @PlanetOfFinks, https://twitter.com/planetoffinks/status/850848359392870400?...

smsm426• 9 years ago

You may see it as funny, I see it as refactoring. If we try it in a different way and end up with the same solution, we know it's there not because somebody 60 years ago wanted to make a quick buck out of it and then it stuck because regulations are forever.

randyrand• 9 years ago

The fastest way to advance your career is to switch jobs every 2-3 years.

Have we kept the same regulations because they work incredibly well? Or because we are complacent.

abandonliberty• 9 years ago

There's a lot I don't understand about Uber.

What's the Uber business case?

Is there enough profit in taxi services around the world to justify their valuation and financial losses?

Do they hope to recoup through a future monopoly? Tracking Data? Self-driving vehicle fleets?

sliverstorm• 9 years ago

Originally it was the idea that an on-demand app was going to revolutionize taxis.

Now it seems to be, avoiding regulation for fun & profit.

tyingq• 9 years ago

I'm somewhat surprised no app has popped up to be the driver private peer to peer network. For chat, news, stats, and automating things like this.

freeone3000• 9 years ago

Traditional means of communication seem to be sufficient, between driver forums and whatsapp groups.

ph0rque• 9 years ago

So, they are forming an algorithmic flash union? Nice...

erikb• 9 years ago

edit Supporting comment apparently wasn't appreciated. No delete button.

aianus2• 9 years ago

I drive part time and it definitely covers costs and then some. I gross something like $0.90/km and my costs including gas, maintenance, and depreciation are around $0.30/km. Net is something a little more than minimum wage ($11/h).

rectang4• 9 years ago

Until you get in an accident. The rideshare companies have offloaded lots of aggregate risk onto individual drivers. What would be a line-item cost to the umbrella company is now often a life-wrenching crisis for a driver.

briandear3• 9 years ago

It’s voluntary. If it becomes unprofitable, drivers leave. If they lose money, they won’t do it.

They give a share to Uber because Uber is their lead generation. Many businesses give a share of their money to Google because Google brings them business.

An Uber driver can market their own business and keep all the money if they want just like a business could go out and market without using AdWords.

If you are unhappy with the pay Uber drivers make, you are welcome to pay whatever you want. It’s called a tip. Hand the driver cash for whatever amount you think compensates for the “exploitation” you imply (and are enabling by your own admission.) Otherwise, choose another transportation option and the market will respond.

I rarely hear anti-Uber people demand that supermarkets charge more for tomatoes despite those that pick tomatoes working in extremely tough conditions for low pay. I used to drive a taxi for a summer and I know it’s a non-stop hustle and not the best job, but I was at least in an air conditioned car listening to the radio all day and not out in the fields picking fruits and vegetables. It ended up being a low profit pursuit, so I ended up moving on to something else.

I have a hard time feeling sorry for people that do jobs like Uber because they, with some moderate ambition, could improve their lot – they already own a car, they could make deals with local companies that send lots of people to airports, for example. They could work on building an actual business while they pay the bills with their Uber income – just as an example. Still other drivers might start a mobile car wash service for other Uber drivers, etc. There are plenty of ways to evolve past depending on Uber as one’s sole income. But most people aren’t ambitious at all – they just want to just do what they’re told and collect a check no matter how meager. Other drivers use Uber for extra income or it’s a transitional job.

Any driver thinking they will make a career out of Uber is a fool. If they don’t like the conditions, they should be working hard and to create something of their own. It doesn’t take much money, but it takes ambition.

rectang4• 9 years ago

But most people aren’t ambitious at all

It also takes sufficient life-situation stability, good health, and so on. Shaming people for lacking "ambition" is neither universally appropriate nor universally effective.

EDIT: I didn't originally upvote the parent comment, but I now have. I think there's a very interesting debate to be had when we consider individuals as economic actors. Disadvantaging individual participants in the "gig economy" too aggressively (e.g. by prosecuting Uber drivers for collusion) forces us towards solutions like unionization by dividing us into privileged capital and downtrodden labor. I'd like to talk more about we might empower individual actors (e.g. by improving the social "safety net" and making the job market more fluid).

LordKano• 9 years ago

I know someone who drives for Uber due to the lead generation but also does jitney service on her own for people that she already knows. That way, no one else gets a cut of the revenue for leads that she had produced herself.

It's my understanding that a lot of people operate in a similar manner.

aianus2• 9 years ago

The first guy to log back in (or the guy who doesn't log off at all) wins the game to the detriment of the others, limiting the extent of this practice.

You can't have a successful oligopoly when there's no barrier to entry.

alextheparrot• 9 years ago

The post seems to make clear that once the surge pricing becomes active more than on person can capture customers at that price level, meaning their earnings are likely higher by doing this.

CodeWriter233• 9 years ago

It takes more than one ride dispatch to quell the surge. I've watched bar/club closings stay in surge for 30 minutes while cars stream in to pick up riders. I personally have given 5 surge rides in a row, albeit short rides, just by picking up at a particular hot spot, getting a local, drop them off, go offline, return to hot spot, wash, rinse, repeat.

frandroid3• 9 years ago

go offline

So you're priming the surge pump, so to speak, since you know where the ride requests will be anyway.

s73ver2• 9 years ago

And yet, the consumers have still all lost.

frikk• 9 years ago

That's not entirely true. In our market, there aren't many Uber drivers and it's easy to game the system.

A few weeks ago I took a ride with someone who was trying very hard not to "join the uber mafia". He said that most of the time he also has to turn off his phone, otherwise he gets screwed over.

The reason is that when there are no more drivers, he'll get matched with people on the other side of town. He doesn't get paid for the drive out, and sometimes people still cancel after waiting 20 minutes for an uber to show up after ordering. Even with surge pricing it didn't make financial sense, so he'll turn off his phone too or switch to Lyft during these periods.

potatolicious• 9 years ago

Surge pricing - at least on Uber - is only re-evaluated at a fixed frequency. Which is to say even if the supply rushes in to fill the void there is still a certain amount of time before the surge is turned off.

I imagine multiple people (heck, many people) can win the game in this period.

PinguTS• 9 years ago

People game the system. Always. Have learned that for years when it comes to safety systems.

Even uneducated people become very intelligent when it comes to gaming the system to their advantage. It is always a cat and rat game between technical adjustments and when people find a way to game the system again.

losteverything• 9 years ago

This.

People learned the phone company would refund any Denied All Knowledge of a long distance call. Call up, get a credit.

Then phone company said you cant DAK calls 2 months in a row: so customers called in every other month.

Then, they eliminated operator handled calls for small bills. Call in, get an IVR, get a credit.

Phone company caught on and limited credits to $7 per month, every other month.

Customers started crediting <$7...

And on and in...cat and mouse.

Then, few realized you only had to pay 91% of the past due balance to not get shut off..

Others finally realized that if your account gets associated with a elected federal official or a PUC complaint you account will never get treated for collections.

--- Another simple one: having to press "0" 3 times to get to an agent on some IVRs..

kennydude2• 9 years ago

Pressing * or # constantly does it some IVRs too.

asdffdsa3212• 9 years ago

Just 3? I usually mash that 0 button

scrooched_moose• 9 years ago

--- Another simple one: having to press "0" 3 times to get to an agent on some IVRs..

I have better luck just making indistinct noises. After three "I'm sorry, I didn't get that"s it almost always transfers me to a real person.

obsurveyor• 9 years ago

Say "agent" has always gotten me a real person when the 0 or the */# buttons don't work.

SilasX3• 9 years ago

... Americans don't deserve the telephone.

1vn• 9 years ago

Adversarial networks but real life, expensive to run as well.

iamleppert• 9 years ago

A simple solution to this would be to simply limit the number of times one can log in and out per day to something reasonable, or to place limits on the frequency etc.

gregorymichael• 9 years ago

If you ask Uber drivers if they enjoy it, the #1 thing you'll hear is "it's flexible." They're willing to put up with all the other bullshit -- the low pay, the lack of benefits -- for the feeling of control. Chip away at that and bad things will happen.

reaperducer• 9 years ago

Don't need to do much research. Just read the Uber driver fora. They talk about it openly.

Still, even with a huge surge, Uber is 1/2 to 1/10th the price of a cab in my city.

yawz• 9 years ago

Still, even with a huge surge, Uber is 1/2 to 1/10th the price of a cab in my city.

This summarizes why the model would continue to work. It's similar to low-cost airlines: most of us hate them, but most of us still use them.

volkk• 9 years ago

Main difference being uber is literally the same experience compared to a regular cab (most of the time), whereas a low cost airline is horribly uncomfortable (read: spirit) and charges for everything.

johnhenry• 9 years ago

The article implies that this is an active, coordinated effort; but I have to wonder if any of this is/could be an emergent phenomenon based on the existence of the surge pricing algorithm.

dawnerd• 9 years ago

I think some of the surge times are built in. At WDW it's on the dot when the parks close. There will be tons of drivers on the map too. Uber (and Lyft) know that a all the people they shuttled in for cheap in the morning will need a ride home and didn't plan an alternative.

GlickWick• 9 years ago

I suspect it's less hard-coded and more a case of the algorithm realizing that there's a huge influx of riders every day at X location at Y time, and just auto-surges until there are a number of days without said influx. It's important to build a surging algorithm this way, as otherwise you'll have an awkward period of low prices with high demand that ends up losing you money in the long run.

asdffdsa3212• 9 years ago

I see it more as an economic thing: surge incentives drivers when demand outweighs supply -> drivers manipulate supply to increase price. Kind of fascinating

kgdinesh• 9 years ago

Uber Drivers in India have been doing this since 2015.

cctan• 9 years ago

What did Uber in India do about it? Does it affect the prices that much and frequently?

calvinbhai2• 9 years ago

Why would Uber do anything about it? Its in Uber's interests to not solve it. They get more money no? Same with its competitor in India, Ola.

CodeWriter233• 9 years ago

I saw scrawled on the wall in one of the port-a-potties in the LAX TNC lot, "No Surge, No Drive".

Uber went on a campaign of hiring cabbies. I guess the fact that cabbies congregate and organize completely eluded Uber management.

qq66• 9 years ago

Not to mention, cabbies are often socially, ethnically, and even often genetically connected with each other, making the penalties for noncompliance high. If you're spotted driving when you're supposed to be boycotting for a surge, you may find yourself getting dirty looks from your roommates, your friends, and even your family.

qrbLPHiKpiux• 9 years ago

Uber is such a hot mess - with everything - it's fascinating to watch it all.

gmisra• 9 years ago

Price hacking is the new growth hacking, these drivers are truly disrupting a regulatory regime that limits their freedom.

nikon• 9 years ago

I suspect this happens in London. I always take a "Gett" (fixed price black cab) if so, and it's usually the same price / cheaper and they know how to drive.

EGreg3• 9 years ago

I am currently talking with Warren Mosler about implementing Unconditional Basic Income in local communities (Hi @sama! :)

Cartels is the main danger with unconditional basic income. If you make sure everyone can eat, you create a moral hazard, where the insured are not sensitive to price anymore. Having said that, we already have means-tested welfare and food stamps, and cartels of fruit stores don't spontaneously appear everywhere. However, they may appear in food deserts and other places where there aren't a lot of participants. Competition is the only factor I can think of to combat this. But in some areas with few participants, this collusion can ultimately happen.

And then of course there is this result: https://www.arxiv.org/abs/1201.3798v2

Does anyone here have constructive thoughts on how to overcome this problem? Price controls and collective bargaining via single payer is all I can think of besides competition.

abakker3• 9 years ago

Competition in this case is really a proxy for choice. UBI should rationally be about promoting the ability for consumers to choose how to spend money, rather than being constrained to have no choices due to lack of resource. to solve the problem you are describing, people still need to have the self-interest to make good decisions, and the willingness to carry them out.

If consumers won't shop around, or make price sensitive decisions, then the market for the good in question becomes price insensitive. But, I think UBI is attractive primarily because it doesn't seek to tell people how to spend their money, or tell them what the right choices are. As an alternative to welfare, it should allow consumer preferences to play a greater part in the market.

EGreg3• 9 years ago

The problem with UBI versus, let's say, single payer, is that buyers compete and therefore drive up price. In short they "defect" from the price the other buyers pay.

Think about patio and his posts in the past about increasing your rates. That's how it happens.

When you have insurance, then the buyer and seller can join forces to raise prices - that's called a moral hazard.

SilasX3• 9 years ago

My go-to example (of the dangers of cartels extracting the added UBI) is the time they bought out a bridge to remove the tolls and then landlords raised rents by the exact cost of twice-daily crossings. (Of course, I've never researched the purported event itself.)

Any UBI plan needs to come with a firm understanding of this dynamic and how to prevent it.

Search for "bridge":

http://www.landvaluetax.org/current-affairs-comment/winston-...

659087• 9 years ago

Uber drivers are just trying to mimic the sort of behavior the company they "work" for is so well known for.

bagacrap• 9 years ago

Doesn't uber itself game the surge pricing? That is, they'll show you surge prices more often if you have shown a tendency to accept them.

xenadu02• 9 years ago

I haven’t seen any proof but it seems like Lyft does this. I almost never accept surge prices and I absolutely will never accept anything beyond 1.5x. Often if I leave the app open or check back 30 seconds later it will lower the surge rate.

It makes sense if you think about it: giving people who won’t pay surge prices a ride anyway makes drivers scarcer for those who will pay, raising surge prices even further.

I’m pretty sure that surge pricing outside a narrow range will eventually be made illegal. It makes too many people too angry and they’d rather get on a car waiting list than see a 3x price. You can argue the economics all you like but people are irrational.

gertef3• 9 years ago

Drivers are liquidity providers. If you are willing to wait, you can wait for a lower price.

btreesOfSpring• 9 years ago

I remember dealing with the emergency IT issues that popped up with our NYC offices after hurricane Sandy wrought havoc upon much of lower Manhattan's power grid. We were lights out for at least three days. Had to take lots of taxis to move hardware to places with electricity. Even if we wanted to be creative, the subway was certainly not a transportation option and foot was wight prohibitive. The pickup rules for taxi's were suspended during this emergency period. Taxis could pickup fares mid-ride, turn down any rider going to a undesirable destination, & charge whatever they thought they could get. Lucky for me, despite all other storm-born chaos, I was in a sweet spot for where taxis were more than happy to drive. Even so, seeing the number of people who were turned down for their destinations or who in turn declined a ride because of the driver chosen price hike was fascinating; a sort of real-time, impromptu emergent market in infancy rapidly growing into maturity.

So not to say that these ride share services have moved to remove all these kinds of consumer protections that clearly were quickly dropped and exploited once they were removed due to the state of emergency but to a large extent, I feel like I had the chance to experience the larger forces of gamification that would happen if these protections were removed and circumstances were ripe for profit. Overall I am very happy with the changes ride sharing services have brought to supplement transportation options but there are certainly a lot more of these bumps and kinks to be worked out if these businesses hope to avoid a wave of government regulation.

rch• 9 years ago

This sounds a good control systems approach that provides drivers with an indirect way to influence pricing. If Uber decides to 'out' cheaters somehow, then I'd worry about coercion by other drivers.

mabey• 9 years ago

Yup. Last week I left a Dodgers game in about the eighth inning, and there was a huge parking lot full of Ubers and tons of people were standing around waiting but couldn't find drivers. The drivers wait until the game ends and the masses exit so that the real surge pricing kicks in.

loceng• 9 years ago

I wonder what, if any, ways are there to counter this kind of behaviour?

rectang4• 9 years ago

Driving for Lyft/Uber in traffic jams is economically unrewarding, because the fee schedule is tilted towards per-distance-unit and the per-minute fees are a pittance. Raising the per-minute fees would incentivize drivers to take fares which are currently not worthwhile rather than wait for surge pricing.

However, drivers do not set the per-minute pricing -- that's the rideshare company's prerogative.

cpsempek• 9 years ago

During a fare, an uber driver told me that when he goes to an area with lots of drivers, he will turn off his app for a minute or so to artificially decrease the number of drivers in the area. If this is practiced by multiple drivers repeatedly, the result can cause a surge. He told me that he does this, and, that he holds training sessions where he teaches this practice to other drivers, among other things. I do not know if this was actually effective or if it still is.

wavefunction• 9 years ago

Damn, a real hack!

whipoodle2• 9 years ago

It would be pretty easy to build a service to coordinate this. (And of course Uber would whine about it even though that's exactly the kind of thing they do all the time)

exhilaration• 9 years ago

I would think a Whatsapp group should be sufficient.

valuearb• 9 years ago

What about the free-rider problem? Doesn't this just make it that much more profitable for drivers who keep their phones on?

jbob2000• 9 years ago

This is easy for Uber to fix. The surge (or the calculation of drivers) just needs to be delayed by 15mins or so. He can still turn off his app, but now he'll have to do it for more than 15mins, thus potentially losing 1 or 2 rides.

avn2109• 9 years ago

Uber presumably takes a fixed cut of the fare, so they have at least some incentive to look the other way during surge collusion. If the drivers do it simultaneously to both Lyft and Uber then both companies will be happy to see this going on.

Obi_Juan_Kenobi• 9 years ago

Increasing the latency with which you respond to conditions seems like it comes with real downsides. They should just figure out a way to punish this practice.

SilasX3• 9 years ago

Or they can have people go through the driver onboarding, google for stuff like that, and then ban teachers of this stuff when they find out about it.

arprocter• 9 years ago

Unless I'm mistaken it seems like surge pricing in one area would encourage drivers looking for rides to go there, which would then cause other surges in the previous areas they were in

afinlayson• 9 years ago

Uber is being disputed by what sounds like the Uber of unionizing. Ohh the irony.

baby_wipe• 9 years ago

As the price for an Uber increases, the number of people who want a ride will decrease, resulting in less business for the drivers.

frandroid3• 9 years ago

I don't really buy Uber's denial. They can profit from this; knowing their ethical framework, you'd think they're encourage it.

GauntletWizard• 9 years ago

How is this unethical? This is the exact point of these marketplaces - The drivers are saying "I won't accept a fare at these levels", Uber is responding by raising the price (and it's pretty transparent to consumers - The whole point of "surge pricing" is to incentivize drivers that would otherwise not be on the road). The multiplier framework is pretty clear upfront when you're paying more.

This sounds like a fix to one of my major complaints about Uber. The prices are too low. I like cheap rides, but I also like knowing that the people who are giving me rides (and providing me services, selling me goods, making those goods, etc) are making living wages.

And, to some level - This is collective bargaining. This is precisely what Unionists want, without all of the mess involved in actual unions. The drivers are collectively demanding higher wages, and Uber is responding.

On the other hand: There's a good reason we're seeing this pushback. Uber is a shitty, predatory company, and has relentlessly worked to drive down driver wages well beyond sustainable rates. (It's also a shitty company to it's full time employees, to which I will attest.)

bozoUser• 9 years ago

I use Uber pass fairly regular on my commute to work. One other minor unrelated thing I have seen is if the commute is within < 1-2 miles the drive ends up giving you a bad rating (not that ratings matter to me) but uber has no way to screen this fake rating. I made sure I was at the pick up point well before the car arrived, and minded my own business throughout the ride.

On talking to couple of drivers on a few occasions they confessed that they do this to filter out folks asking for lower mile rides!!

edit: This is obviously not in high uber/lyft density zone like a downtown SF where one can assume most of the rides endup being in the 2 mile radius.

noncoml• 9 years ago

I am not sure about this.

I drove Uber for a month or so, and use to love short rides because:

1. I would stay in the region of my choice

2. They would help me reach my bonus # of rides targets

mtl_usr3• 9 years ago

It should be pretty easy to filter out, given that there will be a very strong correlation between length of the drive and rating.

Passenger rating does matter when it comes to how fast you are getting your ride.

ChuckMcM• 9 years ago

It seems to me this happens more frequently when the employer / employee relationship is perceived to be adversarial by the employee.

habosa• 9 years ago

This. As soon as you have an adversarial relationship between buyer/seller (of any good, not just labor) all the bad behaviors come out.

A prime example of this is the airlines. Southwest and Virgin have somehow convinced staff and passengers to be polite to each other, so boarding and other things go smoothly. The same flight for the same price on United or American is a mess of elbowing and passive agressiveness.

kentosi• 9 years ago

Passive "aggression".

Also, would this be mostly BigCo vs SmallCo culture difference? United and American are kinda massive ...

gertef3• 9 years ago

Surge pricing is technologically archaic, and really has been since the start. Uber should be running instant automated auctions like stock market and webads do.

sgroppino• 9 years ago

Take one or two stars off the rating of the trip depending on the amount of the surcharge. That seems to be the only way to fight back as a consumer.

johndoe902• 9 years ago

Might be a coincidence, but lately I've noticed the same thing in Russia.

kusmi• 9 years ago

When it happened to me I immediately filed complaint asking for a refund, and they issued it very quickly with an apology.

Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

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