
How I no longer pay Uber's surge rates - arielm
https://medium.com/@arielmichaeli/how-i-no-longer-pay-uber-s-surge-rates-c2f50ca48da9
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eagsalazar2
Here is a better insight: don't user Uber. They have seriously become one of
the most distasteful companies to give money to. Try Flywheel in SF, it is
virtually identical to the Uber app, the drivers are way better, the app
doesn't mislead you about driver location, there is no surge pricing, the
waits are (in general) less, and drivers are just as polite :)

Wait what was that last part? Yes it is true. When I first moved to SF 4 years
ago taxi drivers were unbelievably rude but the one good thing Uber has done
is change the bar for customer service for the better and make rating drivers
in an app a standard. The result is that there is no reason to use Uber in SF.
I don't know the details of other cities but I know other major areas like NYC
have similar services.

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k__
Every of those pseudo-sharing company is distasteful.

Sharing should work without for-profits.

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nosuchthing
Infrastructure 'aint just gonna build itself.

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c2h5oh
This has not been my experience at all. Surges usually last between 10 and 30
minutes with an average closer to 30.

The only thing I agree about with the author of the article is that the surge
is highly predictable if you use some common sense: in the morning, if the
weather has just turned worse, from 6.05 to 6.15 pm when people are leaving
offices, etc

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bosdev
Are you using the 'Notify Me' feature?

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c2h5oh
I am - that's how I know how long the surges lasted: by how long I had to wait
for the 'surge ended' notification.

This also means that all my surge time estimates are underestimating the
actual length, since I've only started measuring while the surge has been
active for a period of time.

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adrianmacneil
The SurgeProtector app is also great for those times when you could walk a few
blocks and avoid surge pricing.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/surgeprotector/id925613132?m...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/surgeprotector/id925613132?mt=8)

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samstave
I've noticed that if you stare at the app long enough you can see the surge
rate fluctuate also.

Did anyone here go to the secret uber party a few weeks ago?

I did and boy was that lame. It was marketing genius but it was super lame: at
9pm sharp, open the app and if you see a party icon on the type selection
slider, click it and request a car.

You get into a lottery and if your one of the lucky 100 winners your driver
will take you to a secret uber party with a DJ!

I won the lottery to get a slot - but that took 40 minutes of clicking on two
open uber apps.

So we get in the uber and they take us to Harlot in SF. But they charge you
for the ride there.

Then you get in, after they check your uber receipt to prove you actually got
the party uber slot, and they give you a wristband.

Then there was some shitty radio station playing for the first 20 minutes, and
uber sold this as if you were coming to some uber corporate event!

Nope it was just a regular night at harlot, and their over priced drinks.
Drinks were $15 each and I swear they swapped out the grey goose vodka and put
gilbeys in the grey goose bottle.

The DJ Arty came on and was mediocre. He played pieces too quickly (every time
the music was getting the crowd dancing and moving he'd switch and go to a
break down which killed all dancing)

So after about an hour and a half, we decided to leave.

You would have thought uber would have arranged a "take me home from the
secret uber party you brought me to by way of a lottery ride that I still had
to pay for"

Nope.

So we then had to stand in front of harlot tapping request an uber home. And
had to wait just like normal..

It was literally the lamest "sponsored" event I've ever been to.

And the worst part is that the whole thing was a douchey ploy for their data
teams to mine a bunch of data on the behavior of users when given an
opportunity to go to some "event"... That's all fine, but make it a good
experience at least. It was shamefully bad.

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nemo44x
A few people commenting this has not been their experience. It has been my
experience in the NYC area. It could be a NYC thing. We have an abundance of
taxi's so it very well could mean enough people just drop Uber and grab a cab
instead. This would quickly lower the demand in an area.

It might also have to do with the density dynamics of NYC. Ubers are
constantly going into and out of designated areas that surge pricing zones. It
won't take long for a few Ubers to roll into the zone where there is a surge.

Things work differently in NYC due to the density and relative small area of
Manhattan.

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arielm
That's certainly possible. I doubt that supply fluctuates that much for the
price to change that quickly though.

Maybe Uber lowers the trigger for surge during specific times of the day where
they know the supply does fluctuate.

My experience is from rides at different hour of the day, but those could have
all been coincidences.

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lacker
I don't think Uber is doing this to add to their bottom line - it isn't really
enough money to make a difference to them. Instead, they do surge pricing
because it's a better experience than telling people there are no cabs
available. It prevents their best customers from ever needing an alternative
to Uber.

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arielm
I don't know if that's their way of saying "no", I think if anything it's
their way of increasing the value of a ride.

In a dense city like NYC however, where there are a ton of alternatives, I
think it's more clever than just reallocation resources.

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SubZero
I live in St. Louis and recently took a ride with Uber. Our driver basically
gave us the exact same information. He told us that if we ever see surge
pricing, to wait ~10 minutes and the rates will be back down to normal again.
Its interesting to see that this is being seen from the rider's side as well.

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Gravityloss
Isn't this great, load balancing on the demand side? You get fast rides with a
smaller amount of cars.

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steven2012
This blog post is patently false. If Uber wanted to rip the riders off, or
maximize revenues, they wouldn't have dropped UberX prices in every city to
below taxi rates, and they didn't have to provide the ability to wait for
surge to finish. By using the button, they are doing exactly what Uber wants,
which is time-shift the demand to another point where there's enough supply to
properly service the customer. It's not a trick or some secret discovery, it's
exactly the point of the service!

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arielm
It's definitely possible that this has nothing to do with revenue and
everything to do with allocating limited resources better. Either way, knowing
this means I don't have to pay surge pricing ;)

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mistercow
> nothing to do with revenue and everything to do with allocating limited
> resources better

I'm not sure how you can separate those.

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anonu
Its my understanding that "surge" is also linked to number of open Uber apps -
and not necessarily the number of people actually requesting a ride. Can
anyone confirm this?

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hayd
My bet: The features not been fully completed, just roughed out.

I think this happened early when Uber announced pool (the day before lyft),
for a short while no-one shared and you just got a cheaper ride (lyft had
actual sharing from launch).

Obviously it was worth Uber fleshing out sharing asap, but maybe it just isn't
with surge-notify. If hardly anyone is taking advantage of it... just having a
delay of a few minutes may mean that most users impatiently go with the surge.

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gcb0
the lyft app requires less permissions and they don't surge prices like that.

also you get lots of promotions, like Mondays 50% ofg

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lemiffe
I can confirm this has happened to me multiple times. Interestingly enough,
sometimes I've seen it surge to 2.5x, so I tapped notify me... checked again
after a minute, still 2.5x, but after another minute it dropped to 2.0x.

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whysonot
Anecdotally this has not been my experience. Would love to see more data
points in various geos at different degrees of surge. That said, this is
reason enough to press notify every time now just in case.

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jinushaun
I haven't had much success with the "Notify" button in the past, even with 1
hr lead time.

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kurtisdipo
I was told by an Uber driver recently, that surge rates appear, when demand
outgrows supply in certain area. So those, who will to pay more, will receive
their car much faster. No big deal (-:

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tdylan
That's the entire premise. It's econ101.

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nosuchthing
Uber doesn't give drivers the ability to seek out surge areas of their city..?

