
Uber is experimenting with letting riders wait longer for a cheaper fare - prostoalex
https://qz.com/1308173/uber-is-experimenting-with-letting-riders-wait-longer-for-a-cheaper-fare/
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chrisabrams
Based on my rides recently I have seen the quality of drivers plummet on both
Uber and Lyft. I'd be much more willing to wait (and maybe even pay) for a
higher quality driver. Having a driver who cannot follow a GPS and takes you
in a circle 3-4 times around the airport or does not speak English well enough
to understand your request to stop on the right instead of the left like the
GPS shows can be quite frustrating depending on the scenario.

I wonder if this is the first step towards offering a "limit" option. For
example, where I live the average price from our house (Jersey City) to the
mall is $7, but some days it jumps up to $15 or more. My wife and I usually
choose to walk those days, but it would be nice to say "hey we want to go to
the mall today, let's set a $7 limit and when that hits we'll go." For the
flexible consumer it's easy to wait for a better price and not need to
constantly look at the phone to see what the current market price is. The
limit price could help create a queue which could provide a driver with a
continuous supply of rides during non-peak hours.

~~~
scrollaway
Here in Greece, we recently lost Uber. We're back to taxis. It's incredible
how bad an experience those are after going back to them.

Cars that smell like cigarette (that's if the driver isn't outright smoking in
your face), don't have AC, are old, dirty and with uncomfortable ripped-up
seats.

Send your lower-quality drivers my way. I miss not wanting to vomit whenever I
take a cab.

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tomp
What about Beat? I heard it works different than Uber, you can actually choose
your driver based on your desired characteristics (e.g. speaks English, has
A/C, ...).

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StavrosK
Beat is pretty much the best of both worlds for me. It doesn't have Uber's
"let's flaunt all the laws because disruption" attitude, but it still has all
the advantages, and every single driver I've booked with Beat has been
fantastic. I'm never getting a taxi without using Beat these days.

~~~
scrollaway
Hm. I'll try it out... Thanks for the recommendation.

~~~
StavrosK
No problem, you'll love it. The best is that you can pay via credit card so
you don't need to fuss with change at the end of the trip, you just get out of
the taxi and that's it.

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maerF0x0
I just wanted to drop a note to say I think Uber is doing a good job, all
things considered. Many public transit companies have been around for decades
and haven't figured out how to scale up to the kind of service Uber is
providing. 4B rides in 2017 is pretty amazing.

If I understand the math correctly, BART claims about 126 million rides (2015)
and cost $906M (~$7 a ride, comparable to some uber pool fares)

~~~
inferiorhuman
> If I understand the math correctly, BART claims about 126 million rides
> (2015) and cost $906M (~$7 a ride, comparable to some uber pool fares)

Scaling a mobile app is trivial compared to running a transit company.

BART owns/maintains infrastructure (including an underwater tunnel) and
vehicles, provides benefits (health, retirement, etc) to their drivers, and
operates a multi-jurisdictional police force.

Uber meanwhile hired a couple of tech bros (paid largely in stock instead of
actual currency), pays their drivers near minimum wage with no benefits (as
they're not actually employees), and disregards as many laws as possible (so
there's little-to-no cost to enter a new market). It's not surprising they've
been able to scale. What's surprising is how expensive their service still is.

~~~
kemitche
In the same breath you complain that they don't pay their drivers enough and
that their service is too expensive.

Drivers aren't going to get more than a few percentage points increase without
increasing the price to the end user.

~~~
code_duck
"In the same breath you complain that they don't pay their drivers enough and
that their service is too expensive."

You seem to present that as a contradiction, but the obvious conclusion is
that the GP believes Uber keeps an unfair share of the ride fees.

Based on my vague internet research, it appears Uber keeps 20-25% plus various
fees, like how credit card settlement charges work, which can add up to 40%+
for some rides.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
And the amount Uber keeps has to go way up too, if Uber is to cease operating
at multi-billon dollar _per year_ losses to become profitable. Currently they
only take 20-25% and the rest of the required income to meet operating
expenses is subsidized by VC funding.

And the losses are so large that it likely means _both_ raising prices to
riders and reducing the net payout to drivers at the same time.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Hence why Uber is unsustainable without VC dollars. As soon as driver pay goes
down further and ride costs increase, their model falls over.

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dm8
Lyft used to do something similar couple of years ago (at least in Bay Area)
in Lyft Line. I believe they had 10 min wait option wherein when you request
and wait for 10 mins you'll get cheaper fare. I remember getting 10-20%
cheaper fares consistently using that option. I'd regularly take 10 min wait
option especially going to east bay or peninsula from SF.

Uber also has "express pool" option (again in bay area), wherein you have to
wait for 2 mins to get matched.

As a rider, these options are great. However, not sure if it's profitable for
these companies. I guess with higher rider/driver density, they can make it
work?

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jessriedel
The longer the rider is willing to wait, the more the service can optimize the
allocation of drivers. (Less distance driven without a passenger, more
distance driven with multiple passengers in a car pool, more direct carpools.)
This is a real elimination of waste whose value can be split between the
service and the passenger, although it's not clear whether the size of that
value is really at the 10-20% level.

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zaroth
If they can pair you up with a drop-off already on the way to your exact
location by having you wait a couple minutes, I would estimate this is easily
worth 20% to the driver, assuming average trip time is on the order of 10-20
minutes.

~~~
jessriedel
Sure, but the question is how much more often they can make this happen given
a 10 minute wait.

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dannyw
IMO, the worst thing about Uber's pricing 'experiments' are silently gouging
frequent riders with higher upfront fares, hiking up return fares (since it
knows you didn't drive to the location) as well as hidden surges (that aren't
passed on to the driver) during night.

[https://therideshareguy.com/uber-is-ripping-off-frequent-
rid...](https://therideshareguy.com/uber-is-ripping-off-frequent-riders-and-
heres-how-to-avoid-it/)

~~~
masonic

      hiking up return fares
    

... which is why one should have separate accounts on separate devices. For
each trip, compare prices. Or, split Uber/Lyft.

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BugsJustFindMe
This is pretty much what express pool does already. You sit on your thumbs for
2 minutes while the app pretends to do a search and then the car comes right
to you anyway, and you pay less.

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tvanantwerp
I've frequently used Uber Pool, and have noticed that it's started forcing a
waiting period of a minute to "find the best match". I've also noticed that
I'm getting matched with drivers further and further away from me, frequently
waiting up to ten minutes. The matching algorithms sure don't seem improved,
so maybe they're just covering up a decreasing number of drivers in my area.

~~~
dannyw
Uber most likely thinks you're a habitual user, so it gives priority for newer
riders. Uber dynamically prices rides based on the person and your ride
history[1], as well as factors like your battery percentage.

[1]: [https://therideshareguy.com/uber-is-ripping-off-frequent-
rid...](https://therideshareguy.com/uber-is-ripping-off-frequent-riders-and-
heres-how-to-avoid-it/)

[2]: [https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/20/11721890/uber-surge-
prici...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/20/11721890/uber-surge-pricing-low-
battery) \- while it was only a study in 2016, in 2018 this is definitely
true. Your upfront fares are hiked if your battery say 5%.

~~~
rrix2
> Your upfront fares are hiked if your battery say 5%.

Do you have a source for this?

~~~
dannyw
See the second source. I've only anecdotally confirmed that this actually
happens, but when your battery is low and you're requesting an Uber, I
encourage you to get an upfront fare and then compare that versus Lyft.

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mandeepj
Before ordering a ride, Uber always shows ~2 mins wait time. After placing an
order, it goes up to 6-9 mins. Their GPS is also bad quality. I live in the
downtown of a big city. Lyft drivers come right away, consistently. Lately,
for the same reason, I have started using them. Whereas, Uber's drivers keep
on circling around until I call them and give them directions. Their reason -
it's these big buildings. I respond by saying: these big buildings also exist
for Lyft.

In a nutshell, this Uber feature is already there for me. I will admit -
Uber's prices are mostly lower than Lyft.

~~~
erikig
Turn off "Live Location Sharing" when you are around tall buildings especially
on iOS.

I commute via Uber/Lyft every day and this happens to me often and I've found
that relying on the actual address instead of using location sharing gets me
the best results. In most open places Live Location Sharing can be great
especially in crowds or when dealing with intersections but it is too
sensitive in areas with congested Wi-Fi signals or tall buildings.

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foobaw
Hah! I remember this was an interview question for one of my PMs that was
looking to join Uber.

Without breaking NDA, it was something along the lines of "Why would Uber let
customers wait longer?"

It's an interesting product problem but I felt that it would be more relevant
for an economist to analyze, given that it's more of a supply/demand
equilibrium challenge.

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nanis
My biggest disappointment with Uber is that they did not actually implement a
double-auction, and instead they try set prices.

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Ar-Curunir
Uber is becoming more and more like public transit. Just took a few billion
dollars and lots of hype for us to realise that...

~~~
sidcool
Regardless, its impact has been way bigger than any public transit. That
impact also has been both positive and negative.

~~~
cozzyd
The number of Uber/Lyft rides a day pales in comparison to the number of
public transit rides.

~~~
woolvalley
The cost is also far less than transit. If we judged Uber by the same
standards that we judged local transit costs, they would be ahead by quite a
bit and fairly profitable. You could even increase the take home that drivers
took and still come out ahead.

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ihsw2
Frequently, the actual time-to-pick-up does not match the predicted time-to-
pick-up. It's effectively the proposed system -- you have to wait longer. Now
they want to make you wait _even longer_.

Why not offer better service for higher prices (instead of the reverse)?
Getting service from a "super" tier of drivers, ones that have:

* a history of __ON TIME __pick-ups

* fluent spoken English

* straightforward following of GPS directions

* GUARANTEED air-conditioning

* non-smoking

* quiet __not talking loudly on the phone __

* not a POS car with destroyed vehicle suspension /shock absorbers and trashed seating

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stephencoyner
Waiting longer for a ride... So... A bus?

~~~
njovin
Not having to stop a dozen times between pickup and destination makes it quite
a bit better than a bus IMO.

~~~
stephencoyner
Less stops yes, but in Uber pools the stops can be incredibly inconvenient and
made worse with poor drivers or riders, resulting in long rides. At least with
a bus I get a well trained professional who is prepared for almost all
scenarios. I also can estimate how long s bus will take, pools can be
unpredictability long.

~~~
so33
The idea of Uber Express Pool is set up so that you walk to a designated
pickup point, wait, and walk from a designated drop-off point.

So, essentially, it's a tiny bus that makes stops along a route. But with less
capacity than a bus and less consistent scheduling and routing.

(To be clear - I am pretty skeptical of the idea of demand-responsive
"microtransit" such as Uber Express Pool).

~~~
sokoloff
In this case, semi-customized routing and scheduling soundly beats consisting
routing and scheduling.

Even when my ride is paid by someone else (business travel), I will often use
Pool and now Express Pool as I find it efficient.

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maym86
Why doesn't Uber/Lyft support actual carpooling so that if I know I need to go
somewhere I can offers other people a ride to/from nearby locations. Given the
traffic in large cities and the number of single cars going the same direction
at rush hour it would make a lot of sense. Adding the option for a longer wait
like this would make it easier to manage for the commuting driver. I guess the
issue is it'll annoy the more professional drivers but for users it would be
good.

~~~
pininja
Uber Commute existed in the past, but I’m not sure what happened to it.

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hardlianotion
I do wonder how you get drivers to accept rates for them that flow from lower
prices. I visit Accra reasonably often and frequently get drivers dropping me
on price grounds - this would make the areas covered by this behaviour bigger,
I think.

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johnchristopher
Funny, in the tourism industry we are asking more money from people to cut
lines.

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remyM
Uber is great in the suburbs (sydney, AU), and I'd be fine waiting 5-10 mins
more and being put on a low priority so I can get it cheap. It'd also be
pretty good during peak periods.

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barking
Never taken an uber nor a lyfft, was in a taxi in Gran Canaria, professional,
nice livery, well maintained cars and the drivers wear a uniform.

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sturmeh
Good, sitting there and refreshing the view during random spikes in small
surge periods is not a great experience.

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ulisesrmzroche
I don't use Uber, but I do like the idea. Hopefully, Lyft steals it.

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bowmessage
Bet that Uber employee is feeling the heat now...

~~~
tedmiston
Given the deleted tweet, I guess he/she didn't realize the feature wasn't
public yet?

