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Uber users with low phone batteries more likely to accept surge pricing
- msoad 10y agoThis came out of an interesting interview in this episode of The Hidden Brain: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908750?mt=2#episodeGuid=606d1336-b47b-4508-8c7f-feceb13df764 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-brain/id102890875...
- jessriedel 10y agoHere's the link to the write up by NPR Hidden Brain: http://www.npr.org/2016/05/17/478266839/this-is-your-brain-on-uber http://www.npr.org/2016/05/17/478266839/this-is-your-brain-o...
- deedubaya 10y agoDuh?
- kennywinker 10y agoDuh. But not duh is that we are, through info leakage from our technology, unknowingly allowing companies to exploit our current circumstances for their profit. I think the reason this story has gotten a lot of play is that people are not comfortable with this kind of thing, and yet also feel helpless to prevent it.
- kinkdr 10y agoThere is Lyft and there are normal taxi services too. I don't see Uber having a (unfair) leverage over the user.
- pyvpx 10y agoyou ever called a taxi service while in the middle of a suburb at 1am?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kinkdr 10y agoDo you mean that this is a classic case of supply and demand? I don't see a problem with this. But I don't think this is what was mentioned in the article.
- taxicabjesus 10y agoRide sharing has probably really hurt people who need a ride in the middle of the night. There used to be a whole crew of taxi drivers who preferred working the night shift. They'd make most of their money from the bar traffic. It'd get slow after 2am (last call), then people would start waking up to go to work at 4am. Sometimes I'd get a fare between 2am and 4am, depending on if I was taking a break in the right place. The fares that popped up on our electronic dispatch "board" in the middle of the night would usually get snapped up quickly, by someone. Then the vultures skimmed off a lot of the "easy money" bar traffic (7pm-2am). There are now only a fraction of the cabs on the road in the middle of the night as there used to be; I'm certain that "ride share cars" have not replaced all the cabs that used to be available at 3am. Towards the end of my taxi driving career, there was a fellow trying to go home from work at 10pm, from his restaurant at the edge of the map. He'd mostly switched to using the vultures' phone app, but there wasn't a "ride share" available. So he called Phoenix's legendarily-reliable taxi cab company, and I got him home. It was a few dollars more than getting a "ride", but at least he didn't have to walk.
- vonklaus 10y agonot to be rude, but this makes no sense to me. I would be a customer so that is the lens I am viewing this from but my interpretation was: * I liked working nights until the "vultures" allowed other people to work nights which increased supply and lowered prices. * One time, I picked up a guy who had trouble getting home because there wasn't always a vulture nearby. It cost him more money. * 7pm-2am on weekends are high volume times edit: I think the point was that because ridesharing typically knocks off at 2am or 3am there is a hole between 3am and 5am or something. However, taxi rates are pretty murderous at this hour at least when I've paid them. Regardless, between a taxi, lyft and uber someone needing a ride will be better off at all times of day.
- RockyMcNuts 10y agonetwork effects means it's winner-take-all in each market. all the drivers go to the service that has the most users who then have no reason to use the other service. then after being anti-regulation during the 'disruption' phase, Uber will be the incumbent and be quite happy to accept regs to make it harder for other services to start up. and they'll charge as much as they can based on being able to tell from your phone what your usage pattern is and how price-sensitive/desperate you are at any given time.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Retric 10y agoI expect Uber to eventually show prices based on how likely someone is going to accept 'surge' prices and how large a surge someone is willing to pay.
- r00fus 10y agoCould also mean that those surge accepters will find faster rides. Since they're not marked cars, you (as someone who may not accept surges) will never know that an Uber driver is passing you by for a juicier passenger.
- blantonl 10y agoSounds like a great parasite business idea... the "surge protector"
- jaredsohn 10y agoThat's how it already works; a nice aspect of surge pricing is that if you are willing to pay, you don't have to wait longer than you otherwise would. I view the GP as suggesting that Uber has an incentive to show some people a larger surge price than what the market would suggest since those people will pay it anyway. (And people don't have enough information to know if Uber is charging them more because they can get away with it or if that is the price that anyone who wants a ride would pay.)
- WalterBright 10y agoI wouldn't be in the least surprised if companies will use your previous buying behavior to give you a custom price. It's not all that different from a store/car salesman sizing you up based on clues like your clothing and quoting a price based on that. Home repair contractors will also size up the value of your home and give you a quote based on that for the same work. I know I've been treated differently by bankers and car salesman based on my dress.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- peteretep 10y agoWhich works fine until there's also a Lyft car that's not price gouging. You can only price discriminate if you have a monopoly.
- kilroy123 10y agoAgreed. I really hope Lyft grows and sticks around. There needs to be competition in this space. I could foresee a future where Uber wins, normal taxis go away. Then Uber because shity just like taxis have always been.
- jboles 10y agoI don't foresee such a future. Previously the barrier to entry by Uber, Lyft, etc. was government regulation. With those entrants the market is effectively deregulated. Short of the taxi cartel joining forces with the Uber drivers, Uber becoming "shitty" won't happen because people would switch to Lyft or back to taxis.
- WalterBright 10y agoA monopoly is not required. It works fine as long as the price differential is low enough that the user decides it is not worth the effort to investigate alternatives. Variable pricing is applied all the time in all sorts of businesses. It even happens when there is a sticker price.
- kristopolous 10y agoMaybe people who run their phone all the way down are just the type who are less careful with their pocketbook
- Navarr 10y agoYou don't use your phone once it's below 60%? You are an edge case, my friend.
- kristopolous 10y agoI took it out to make it less about me. When my phone gets below about 60 I turn it off and use it only when needed. I don't want to be in a situation where I need it and don't have it. I'm also the kind that carries around emergency money in his wallet and has a first aid kit and spare headlight in his car. In fact, I keep a spare credit card in my desk drawer with my passport so that if I lose my wallet I won't be without money for a few days. Thanks dad, you taught me well
- maxerickson 10y agoWhen my phone gets below 60 I've got 2 days left. (Moto G 2015)
- a_small_island 10y agounder 60%, really? That seems like overkill...
- kristopolous 10y agoIt's probably mostly lifestyle driven. If someone takes public transit (say, living the bay or ny) as opposed to their own car (say living in houston or la), there's one less charging opportunity. Then if someone has a job where there's lots of meetings or lots of walking ... etc ... For whatever reason, in my life at least, it's almost always north of 80%. And I don't have some special smartphone (in fact, I don't even know the model offhand). This has been a consistent story since I started carrying mobiles 15 years ago
- r00fus 10y agoSurge pricing = new name for Value Based Pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-based_pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-based_pricing
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- cloudjacker 10y agoWeb 2.0, when the marketing team doesn't let retarded technical names make it to production.
- apetresc 10y agoFrom the article: > Chen also said people are getting used to the surge and Uber has seen demand during peak periods drop by a much smaller amount than when it introduced the system. Doesn't that mean that surge pricing is starting to fail? Isn't the whole point of surge pricing precisely to spread demand out so it's not all concentrated at peak times?
- WalterBright 10y agoWouldn't surge pricing also increase the supply of available Uber drivers?
- niccaluim 10y agoThat was one of the stated goals but in practice it doesn't, according to some folks at Northeastern.* Uber says they're wrong, and Uber is certainly in a position to know, but I personally don't trust PR people farther than I can throw them, so who knows. *https://www.propublica.org/article/uber-surge-pricing-may-not-lead-to-a-surge-in-drivers https://www.propublica.org/article/uber-surge-pricing-may-no...
- darpa_escapee 10y agoThe purpose of surge pricing is to increase profits, the excuse is efficiency.
- oh_sigh 10y agoNo, the purpose of surge pricing is to get more drivers out on the road. That, in turn, is to increase profits, but I'm fairly certain you could argue that pretty much anything any company does is to "increase profits"
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoHuh? Even by the charitable interpretation, the purpose of surge pricing is to reduce the number of drivers being requested (so that the drivers who are actually available aren't overwhelmed).
- drdaeman 10y agoThe real question is why Uber has access to battery status information.
- AgentME 10y agoChrome and Firefox allow web pages to query your battery status.
- mahyarm 10y agoAnd iOS and Android do too. Just download a battery app to see how much.
- jasonjei 10y agoIf there isn't a setting to block apps from querying your battery status, I would hope both Google and Apple provide a way to allow the user to optionally disable this soon.
- rhizome 10y agoUber seems like the kind of company that would require that permission for the app to run.
- cicero 10y agoApps are told when a phone's battery is low so that they can change into a battery conserving state.
- awqrre 10y agoI'd rather uninstall battery-hogging apps
- corin_ 10y agoIt rather depends on why they are hogging the battery. Example #1, since it's an "app" you can't remove but that many (I'd guess not far away from most?) people use, is Mail. I wish my email servers would send push notifications, but they don't, so Mail is constantly checking for updates. That uses battery, but it's something I want it using battery for. And then in battery saver mode, it stops automatically checking, so you won't notice any new emails until you either turn off the mode, or go into Mail and manually have it sync.
- embro 10y agoRight now, even with surge, they seem to be a bit cheaper than the normal city taxi but I would bet that as soon as there will be no more competition they will raise the price AND still do price surge. In the end, we will pay more than we used to. Uber seem to be always on the edge between aggressive profit and shady business. EDIT: Don't think by my comment that I meant the taxis are better. I was just saying that right now, this is a great deal in most cities where Uber does offer their services but seeing how hungry they are for max profit, I doubt this will last and eventually we will realize that a broken system was replaced by another broken one.
- mahyarm 10y agoTaxis are a shady business pretty much world wide it feels like.
- pkorzeniewski 10y agoIt depends, for several years now I order taxis in my city from the same company and never had any problems - price is similar to Uber, ordering takes literally several seconds over the phone (call, tell the street, hang up) and drivers always take the shortest route (they usually know the city in and out, hardly ever using GPS). The only downside is that the cars are quite old, but always clean and a fun fact - a 20 years old Mercedes is more comfortable than a brand new Toyota :)
- supercoder 10y agoIn my city (Melbourne Aus) - There's a surcharge for phone bookings - Taxis generally refuse small fares - Taxis still just use their gps - Taxis are more expensive - Taxis drive more aggressively - The cars aren't as clean And they're wondering why their business is getting eaten alive...
- serge2k 10y agoHere in Seattle they bitch when you want to use a credit card, then pull out the really old mechanical slide things to take payment. Coming from Canada where the card just works I was shocked.
- whack 10y agoI wonder how much of this is also due to poor impulse control. People with stronger impulse control are more likely to charge their phones fully beforehand, and/or minimize their usage of it, so as to keep their charge at a healthy level. Such people are also less likely to accept higher surge prices, and choose alternatives that are cheaper but less convenient.
- namenotrequired 10y agoOr people have worse impulse control when they're already annoyed at their low battery.
- SapphireSun 10y agoOr people need to get home and if their phone dies they'll be stranded.... been there.
- MBlume 10y agoThey say they're not going to use this data to set fares, but honestly, if my battery's dying, I actually do want to pay more if it means a driver's more likely to agree to pick me up before my battery dies. In general, I wish I could turn on surge pricing for myself.
- sksksk 10y agoA local taxi app here in Bogotá has this feature, you can say your ride is a "VIP" ride and choose an pay some extra money to ensure you get your taxi faster.
- JBReefer 10y agoUber has that in New York if you ride enough
- crdb 10y agoIn Singapore, drivers told me to put a guaranteed tip in the "notes" section when it's difficult to find a driver, as many people add 5-10 dollars that way and get picked up first. Personal surge is also what came to mind reading the headline.
- brianwawok 10y agoSo 2016 version of waving a $20 bill to get a chance first?
- rspeer 10y agoSo Uber's not paying its drivers enough in Singapore, causing shortages of Uber rides, causing the amortized corruption of tipping to sneak back in. I wouldn't use Uber under those circumstances; it sounds almost as bad as taxis.
- crdb 10y agoI should be more specific: this applied mostly to Grab, an Uber competitor (the South East Asian Lyft if you will), in its early days before it implemented its own surge pricing (which is invisible - the price changes upwards, but is quoted upfront after you enter your destination). Today, both Uber and Grab have relatively short dispatch times (usually < 1-2 minutes where I live) at all times of the day and night. The interesting phenomenon is that both are running incentive campaigns and depending on which one has the better incentives, the other one will end up with dispatch times over 10 minutes. Like many customers, I run both apps and pick whichever is the flavour of the week based on dispatch time. I have a very slight preference for Grab since they quote the price upfront, but generally, taking UberX after a Grab quote, it comes to the same number or within 5% either way. Talking to drivers (I take Grab/Uber over 10x a week), I've noticed: - virtually all (one exception in the last 4 months) drive for both, and have a phone for each (Grab does not have an iOS app, apparently); - virtually all drivers have done it for less than 6 months, lending credence to the "fast food joint" theory of Uber driving (that it provides temp unskilled jobs with no long term prospects like fast food joints in the US); - maybe 80% of drivers are part timers, often unskilled workers (e.g. shop staff, construction) who are moonlighting, often because they have a lot of kids (highest was 8) and their wage is not amazing; - taxi drivers tell me virtually all bookings are now from either of the apps; one said he did only one physical street flag in the last 6 months! I anecdotally knew this to be the case for me, as even when the taxi queue is free I still book my car via the apps, so I don't have to pay in cash and because dispatch times are so quick; - some of the incentives seemed pretty good: if you made $150 in one day (the average trip being around $6-8) you got a whopping $23 extra per trip! Taxis in Singapore get substantial discounts both on car rental and gas ($0.70/l diesel for taxis vs $2/l petrol for everybody else) so the economics are funny; Singapore is one of the few countries where taxis are competitive with UberX. During surge hours, I take taxis on Grab since the rate does not seem to be surged unlike Uber, and there's always plenty around. This is not true of all other countries I've used Uber in. For example, in Sydney, in the last 2 years UberX has been about half taxi equivalent fares; in Paris, Uber Black (UberX is now famously illegal) is slightly cheaper than taxis but you get a really nice car and a much friendlier driver. Emotional anecdote: I had an older Malay driver who struggled a little bit with English and upon driving past Little India, pointed at his old school (he now lives a good half hour away as the area has massively gentrified). He said he got in with a bad crowd at school and spent many years in jail due to gang activities, but he climbed back out of it, got a job, married and had two kids. He drove Uber/Grab in part because the money was exceptionally good compared to his other options as an ex-con, in part because it was a way to have a car in Singapore where the permit for 10 years of ownership costs upwards of $100,000, the apps income offsetting the rental cost for the day. He wanted a car because his kids were proud and happy when he drove them to school instead of having to take public transport. He said this practically with tears in his eyes as if it was the most important thing in the world to him.
- erac1e 10y ago> Company researcher says Uber won't be acting on the information to set fares I don't believe that.
- DoggettCK 10y agoI'd be curious to see if certain locations trigger surge pricing, too. My wife and I got sideswiped about a month ago, had to go to the ER in Austin. Got out, had no way to get back to our truck, nor to our house an hour outside Austin. Called Uber, figuring we'd at least get a ride back to the truck to get our stuff, and see if any friends could take us the rest of the way home. Despite nothing going on in town that night, and only being about 8:30pm, the app warned me of surge pricing, saying it would be 1.5x the usual fare. Didn't have many other options, and had been happy with Uber in the past, so went ahead. Driver was cool, and not only took us back to the truck, but drove us all the way home, complete with a flat tire we helped him change on the side of a busy, dark toll road, and running out of gas. Wound up being $98, and that guy really earned his tip. I still wonder if the fact that we called from the exit of the ER triggered surge pricing, though. Not a great time to experiment, but I could've probably walked a few blocks and tried again, if my wife wasn't in the shape she was in at the time.
- maxerickson 10y agoI have to ask for clarification. Did you run out of gas, or did you only run low on gas? Running out of gas seems like a real unfortunate thing to have happen during a paid ride and falls pretty squarely on the shoulders of the driver.
- DoggettCK 10y agoThankfully, it wasn't sputtering on the side of the road out of gas, just the dashboard light coming on indicating that that was 10-30 minutes away.
- pfarnsworth 10y agoNo it's all drive by algorithms, based on supply-and-demand. If they targeted specific locations for surge pricing, they would certainly get their asses sued to oblivion and a ton of horrible press, especially if they targeted emergency rooms.
- qq66 10y agoI strongly doubt that Uber is dumb enough to apply surge pricing specifically to emergency rooms.
- nnd 10y agoThe company has determined that customers are more willing to accept surge pricing if they have a medical emergency and need to get to the hospital. Oh, your battery is low too? Well, now you are really screwed. Dynamic pricing!
- unlimit 10y agoIts still way cheaper than regular taxis here in Kolkata and thank you power banks.
- wkingfly 10y agoYeah, it's will could be
- wkingfly 10y agoYeah, it's will could be
- yakult 10y ago>Chen said it's just "an interesting kind of psychological fact of human behaviour." He stressed the company is not going to act on the information to set fares. ...but battery optimization of the Uber app is now a lower priority, amirite? takeaway: giving your battery status information to apps that do not explicitly need it for core functionality is a bad idea.
- oneloop 10y agoI thought that HN loved the "price for vague, not for cost" mantra. That's what they're doing when they charge you more on low battery.
- punnerud 10y agoIn the article: "..the company can track your smartphone battery life.." They ARE tracking my battery, all the time! I looked into the HTTPS-trafic from the Uber-app (with MITMproxy) and it is one of the few that send my battery and charging status on a regular basis: "battery_status": "unplugged", "battery_level": 0.73,
- punnerud 10y agoIt would be interesting to run a script that changed the battery status data in the HTTPS-trafic to make it look like it is dropping fast. Just to see if there is a correlation with the price, waiting time and available drivers I am getting back.
- hfjiepwlldmfm 10y agoAnd if so, get lower rates by running a script which lies to Uber and says the battery is plugged in and at 100%.
- throwaway43 10y agoHow do you proxy their traffic ? I couldn't because they seem to use pinned certificates.
- punnerud 10y agoRead up on MITMproxy. It works best on Mac. For Windows I recommend Kali-Linux virtually so you don't have to build for Ubuntu. If you have problems just email me: morten(at)punnerud.net They only force HTTPS, not their own sertificate as in Facebook and Snapchat. Visit mitm.it on your phone (after you have set up a proxy through your pc running MITMproxy) to automatically ad a sertifificate to get it working, or generate your own if you don't trust the service.
- paulus_magnus2 10y ago(on the risk of being downvoted) People with Appendix attack, stroke, stab wounds would be likely to accept 100x surge. If only Uber was able to detect them.