
Uber introduces surge pricing in downtown Sydney during hostage siege - covi
http://mashable.com/2014/12/14/uber-sydney-surge-pricing/
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vbuterin
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.

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jsprogrammer
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.

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Sorgam
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?

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butwhy
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.

~~~
girvo
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.

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l33tbro
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.

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

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

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

~~~
akerl_
Unfortunately, appears not:

[https://twitter.com/Uber_Sydney/status/544319760809222144](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."

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

[https://twitter.com/Uber_Sydney/status/544329935943237632](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."

~~~
waterlesscloud
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.

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

~~~
jsprogrammer
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?

