This article isn't about surge pricing, it's about a specific way that Uber investigated a plantiff pressing suit, possibly violating witness integrity.
The problem is that it also is in conflict with many anti-price gouging laws on the books. But we're talking about Uber, so who really cares about laws.
> we're talking about Uber, so who really cares about laws
Conversely, we're talking about laws and lawmakers, so who really cares about what makes economic sense, what's good for people, or what people actually want?
I've never found it a serious problem in most cities. Sometimes I have to wait longer.
The problem is with surge pricing, people can't choose to wait longer, than can only choose to pay an amount many people can't afford. That's what upsets people.
you sure can, just dont accept the ride and wait 20 minutes and try again. i imagine they dont give an option to reduce the price by giving them a specified extra time they would have to wait because models get complicated
... and a game between people choosing the 2nd option and drivers denying rides after the peek window erupts. uber has to have some sense of a guarantee the person can get the ride when uber says they will, so I too would shy away from an overly complicated model.
its my opinion that people are not upset about having an option to wait longer, but are in fact upset they have to pay more for the ride when they want it. they think they are being price gouged for more proffit
A lot of people would honestly prefer to wait in a line (seems fair on the face of it, everyone treated the same, first-come-first-serve) then wait a less-transparent amount of time due to people willing to pay more to (effectively) jump them in line.
How do you think people would react to grocery stores saying "oh, the checkout lines are long right now, everyone gets hit with an extra 20%!" The underlying mechanics are different, but that's kinda the customer experience it gives off.
That is quite similar to "wait until the surge is over".
Without surge pricing, the Uber/Lyft model doesn't really work. It's mainly needed to bring out enough drivers to drive all riders. Without it, people can easily have to wait hours, and the service becomes useless.
I agree that the customer experience feels arbitrary and predatory. In part because people don't have any intuitive sense for dynamic pricing. And in part because we don't trust Uber/Lyft.
If/when they figure out a way to communicate or implement this better could be a game changer.
Around the messaging, to pull in idea from 'autokad's post, maybe just explicitly different peak/off-peak rates being advertised (like with energy) would make a big difference in feel.
Their experiments in not even mentioning it's in surge seem like an improvement themselves—I don't want to know that I could be paying a lot less—some higher level of predictability to make it feel like a mature market/commodity could close the gap even more.
Peak and off-peak are quite easy to predict when it comes to electricity bills. Night is off-peak.
A better analogy would be cellphone roaming, if when you placed the call, you were told exactly how much more you were going to pay per minute. Roaming is (and long distance charges used to be) even worse than Uber's surge pricing because you only see the charge afterwards.
