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> It has even concocted an algorithm similar to a Netflix feature that automatically loads the next program, which many experts believe encourages binge-watchi

> It has even concocted an algorithm similar to a Netflix feature that automatically loads the next program, which many experts believe encourages binge-watching. In Uber’s case, this means sending drivers their next fare opportunity before their current ride is even over. I have to say that as a USER, I've noticed this change (I think it's been fairly recent) that they assign you a driver who hasn't yet finished a trip. What ends up happening is Uber tells you an "estimate" of 3 minutes to arrival before you book. Then it assigns the driver and says "10 minutes" to arrival, but the driver hasn't even dropped off their last passenger yet. So, what's happened multiple times is that the 10 minute estimate ends up staying at "10 minutes" for 5-10 minutes straight and 15-20 minutes after I booked, the driver shows up. I would understand this if I ordered an Uber pool, but I ordered a black car and it still operated like that. I'm not sure when they made this specific change, but I've noticed it a lot more in 2017 and overall I've been really disappointed with the uber app this year as they seem to be trying to over-optimize everything to the hilt and it's starting to backfire

karthikb 10y ago
I've also seen the opposite - 10 minute estimate and the car shows up in less than 3. This is just as bad...maybe I ordered the car early because of the long projected lead time, now the driver has to wait for me while possibly blocking traffic.
- 0xC0DECAFE2020 10y ago
  Consider yourself lucky. It's never happened to me. I've only been charged numerous cancellation fees. Im starting to think i can just walked there faster.
manacit 10y ago
Yeah, I noticed this for the first time a few weeks ago when I was ordering one. Their time estimates are already pretty horrific in Midtown NYC traffic, assigning me to someone that is "5 minutes away" from dropping someone off "5 minutes away" from me can easily be 15+ minutes of wall clock time before a car gets there.
jjcm 10y ago
I've noticed this so much that I've recently started a spreadsheet of estimated arrival times, actual arrival times, estimated trip duration, and actual trip duration. I currently only have 4 entries so the results don't really hold weight (though right now the average wait is ~4 minutes estimated with ~12 minutes actual). Uber's time estimates have been simply atrocious lately.
- javiramos 10y ago
  Me too! I have roughly ~35 entries and I observe, on average, that actual times are ~2.5 times the estimate (roughly what you have seen as well). I am sure that there is some strategy here, estimates that are consistently 2.5x off are just ridiculous... With the amount of trip data that they have, they could easily build a fairly accurate ETA predictor. Even google maps would do MUCH better...
joelrunyon 10y ago
They also sweeten the deal so that if you cancel more than 5 minutes AFTER you accept the fare, they still charge you a cancellation fee. So, they give you a pie-in-the-sky estimate, you wait ten minutes, realize it's still gonna be an extra 10 minutes and then cancel because you can grab a taxi right there and they want to charge you a cancellation fee. I understood that when they were at least close on their estimate times, but now it just seems like they're intentionally being difficult.
- tehlike 10y ago
  i wonder if you could dispute through credit card. they would have paid more for such stupid system.
  - mahyarm 10y ago
    It's faster and easier to just get a refund through the app first, and then try a credit card dispute. %99 of the time they do it. I've never had something not refunded when it should of been.
    - chinathrow 10y ago
      > %99 of the time they do it. This would need to stop - how many of the clients file a dispute? Maybe a large percentage of HN readers - but not so much from the general public. Uber wins money it never was entitled to. No service provided, no pay. I see now why legislation might have been the better choice, after all.
      - praneshp 10y ago
        I don't think that is correct. I'd wager that people outside of HN would spend more time to make sure their $5 is returned.
        stouset 10y ago
        If you're suggesting that lower-income people would be more likely to dispute the charge due to it having a larger impact on their bottom line, I strongly suspect you're wrong. People in that demographic tend to, in my experience, not put forward the effort to get things like that refunded. Even though the money is important to them, it's frequently conditioned that it will take hours of time and effort to recoup the $5, and that's hours and effort they simply don't have. Whether or not it actually takes that amount of time is irrelevant. The problem is that people expect it will take too much of their time to deal with and simply let the money go. This is yet another example of Uber treating their customers like shit. If it's easy enough for them to determine that the cancellation was legitimate and issue the refund, they should do so proactively. Waiting for customers to complain before returning money they collected for a service they did not provide is as user-hostile as anything else they do. I will never give another dollar of my money to Uber.
cavisne 10y ago
When the driver is on another trip the app tells you "Joe is completing another trip". I don't think this feature has much to do with behavioral science, more to do with combating the previous behavior which was drivers starting a Lyft ride as they get near the end of a Uber trip and vice versa.
- joelrunyon 10y ago
  Yes, but they only point that out AFTER you've requested the ride. They give you 3 times that are all not the same thing (but are obviously insinuated to be). 1) It gives you the 3 minute estimate. 2) Then says that Joe is completing a ride 5 minutes away 3) And then he drops the person and they say he's 5 minutes away (this is 5 minutes after you initially requested). You could make a case that they're technically not lying because [1] is an estimate, [2] is a truth and [3] is the actual, real ETA but the whole thing is obviously confusing, deceitful and makes for a terrible user experience.
faitswulff 10y ago
This makes me think that drivers aren't the only ones whose mental circuitry Uber is trying to master. "Well well well, looks like users don't notice if our ETA is off by 10 minutes as long as we show them an interactive map..."
- macNchz 10y ago
  This smells like the prototypical A/B-tested product 'optimization' that has become widespread these days. Sure the data probably makes it look like an unequivocal win in the short term, but it compounds ill will towards the platform every time someone goes downstairs to meet their car 10 minutes too early in a downpour.
- vosper 10y ago
  I think it's the exact opposite of "users don't notice". I think it's more that people are annoyed but Uber can't measure that easily, so they don't realize. Anecdote: my friends and I have frequently experienced this recently and the result has just been frustration - "it said 3 minutes and now it says 10 minutes" or "why's he driving over there?!". I hang on for the Uber, but if there was a taxi driving by I probably would have hailed it.
- heymijo 10y ago
  This reminds me of Schlitz beer and its downfall [0]. Schlitz went from battling Budweiser for domestic supremacy to a case study in how to ruin your brand by repeatedly cheapening your product coupled with a belief that your customers are stupid. Uber has been like Teflon so far, and Lyft is no Budweiser, but do I wonder if there's a tipping point. [0] http://www.philcooke.com/the-schlitz-mistake-and-what-beer-can-teach-us-about-excellence/ http://www.philcooke.com/the-schlitz-mistake-and-what-beer-c...
daurnimator 10y ago
Thanks for mentioning this. I've stopped using Uber because this happened to me the last 4 times I've tried to book one. I feel like it's bait and switch. I have better luck to just walk toward a busy road and hail a taxi.
ProAm 10y ago
Just use Lyft, its a better experience all the way around.
- joelrunyon 10y ago
  I try to domestically. They do not seem to have the network effect internationally though :(
  - FabHK 10y ago
    They seem to operate only in the USA, but form an "alliance" with other services in other countries (Didi Chuxing, Grab Taxi, etc.), for which you need the respective app though.
- otterley 10y ago
  Lyft now does this too. It just happened to me two days ago after requesting a pickup at SFO.
- splintercell 10y ago
  I hate Lyft, if Uber is evil then Lyft is just dumb. I started using Lyft because they allowed me to tip the drivers after a ride. So I preferred Lyft whenever I knew I would be a difficult passenger (like when I have to take my cat to the Vet or my wife is sick and she might have (and did) throw up in the car). The idea was that I would just tip the driver at the end of the ride for the extra trouble caused. Months later when my ratings were tanked, some driver told me that I had really low rating on Lyft and that I seemed like a nice guy to have the low ratings. It turned out Lyft pooled the tip money together and paid the driver at the end of the week. So now tipping had no meaning other than 'just give your driver some extra money anonymously'. I attribute this behavior to simple stupidity on the part of Lyft. Since then I just use Uber and pay all my tips in cash everytime I think it would be a problem.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
debt 10y ago
"estimate ends up staying at "10 minutes" for 5-10 minutes straight and 15-20 minutes after I booked" this is the type of organization uber likes to run. these are the types of experiments they're comfortable with green-lighting. i wonder what else they're concocting.
rustoo 10y ago
I've observed this too, where the driver accepts your trip but he is yet to drop his current passenger. While this may be 'optimization' from a business point of view, it's actually bad from a user perspective. We have cancelled so many trips because there is a mismatch in the expected time of arrival! I have a feeling sooner or later they will have to either stop this or show longer wait times.
martin-adams 10y ago
Wait, does that mean Uber charge you if the car doesn't turn up? There must be an upper limit on how long you have to wait before that's a non-delivery of service.
vilius 10y ago
> So, what's happened multiple times is that the 10 minute estimate ends up staying at "10 minutes" for 5-10 minutes straight and 15-20 minutes after I booked, the driver shows up. I have noticed this over the weekend as well. Got an estimate of 15 minutes (which is much more than usual). After 7 minutes the car was still 15 minutes away and it was even further! Had to cancel, got charged, used my own car as I was already late. This has happened in Vilnius. What fascinates me most is that how a single shift in software behaviour has an instant impact on people lives around the world. Makes me think what economical impact would happen if it unexpectedly stopped working (or worse behaving as expected).
dbot 10y ago
I was in Charleston this weekend. On East Bay Street, I was connected to a driver who was 11 minutes away and had another fare. I canceled immediately and tried Lyft. After agreeing to a 450% surcharge, it reported a 12 minute wait with the driver also carrying another fare. I looked up from my phone and found a cab within 10 seconds. $8 ride. Nice guy. Unfortunately, we are starting how easily small changes to the business model can impact user experience at companies like Lyft and Uber. Ride surcharges, cancellation charges, getting connected to over-busy drivers...It seems simple in concept but the execution is really hard, as taxi cab companies are aware. They just don't have billions in VC money to cover up the problems.

karthikb 10y ago

I've also seen the opposite - 10 minute estimate and the car shows up in less than 3. This is just as bad...maybe I ordered the car early because of the long projected lead time, now the driver has to wait for me while possibly blocking traffic.

0xC0DECAFE2020 10y ago
Consider yourself lucky. It's never happened to me. I've only been charged numerous cancellation fees. Im starting to think i can just walked there faster.

manacit 10y ago

Yeah, I noticed this for the first time a few weeks ago when I was ordering one. Their time estimates are already pretty horrific in Midtown NYC traffic, assigning me to someone that is "5 minutes away" from dropping someone off "5 minutes away" from me can easily be 15+ minutes of wall clock time before a car gets there.

jjcm 10y ago

I've noticed this so much that I've recently started a spreadsheet of estimated arrival times, actual arrival times, estimated trip duration, and actual trip duration. I currently only have 4 entries so the results don't really hold weight (though right now the average wait is ~4 minutes estimated with ~12 minutes actual). Uber's time estimates have been simply atrocious lately.

javiramos 10y ago
Me too! I have roughly ~35 entries and I observe, on average, that actual times are ~2.5 times the estimate (roughly what you have seen as well). I am sure that there is some strategy here, estimates that are consistently 2.5x off are just ridiculous... With the amount of trip data that they have, they could easily build a fairly accurate ETA predictor. Even google maps would do MUCH better...

joelrunyon 10y ago

They also sweeten the deal so that if you cancel more than 5 minutes AFTER you accept the fare, they still charge you a cancellation fee. So, they give you a pie-in-the-sky estimate, you wait ten minutes, realize it's still gonna be an extra 10 minutes and then cancel because you can grab a taxi right there and they want to charge you a cancellation fee. I understood that when they were at least close on their estimate times, but now it just seems like they're intentionally being difficult.

tehlike 10y ago
i wonder if you could dispute through credit card. they would have paid more for such stupid system.
- mahyarm 10y ago
  It's faster and easier to just get a refund through the app first, and then try a credit card dispute. %99 of the time they do it. I've never had something not refunded when it should of been.
  - chinathrow 10y ago
    > %99 of the time they do it. This would need to stop - how many of the clients file a dispute? Maybe a large percentage of HN readers - but not so much from the general public. Uber wins money it never was entitled to. No service provided, no pay. I see now why legislation might have been the better choice, after all.
    - praneshp 10y ago
      I don't think that is correct. I'd wager that people outside of HN would spend more time to make sure their $5 is returned.
      - stouset 10y ago
        If you're suggesting that lower-income people would be more likely to dispute the charge due to it having a larger impact on their bottom line, I strongly suspect you're wrong. People in that demographic tend to, in my experience, not put forward the effort to get things like that refunded. Even though the money is important to them, it's frequently conditioned that it will take hours of time and effort to recoup the $5, and that's hours and effort they simply don't have. Whether or not it actually takes that amount of time is irrelevant. The problem is that people expect it will take too much of their time to deal with and simply let the money go. This is yet another example of Uber treating their customers like shit. If it's easy enough for them to determine that the cancellation was legitimate and issue the refund, they should do so proactively. Waiting for customers to complain before returning money they collected for a service they did not provide is as user-hostile as anything else they do. I will never give another dollar of my money to Uber.

cavisne 10y ago

When the driver is on another trip the app tells you "Joe is completing another trip". I don't think this feature has much to do with behavioral science, more to do with combating the previous behavior which was drivers starting a Lyft ride as they get near the end of a Uber trip and vice versa.

joelrunyon 10y ago
Yes, but they only point that out AFTER you've requested the ride. They give you 3 times that are all not the same thing (but are obviously insinuated to be). 1) It gives you the 3 minute estimate. 2) Then says that Joe is completing a ride 5 minutes away 3) And then he drops the person and they say he's 5 minutes away (this is 5 minutes after you initially requested). You could make a case that they're technically not lying because [1] is an estimate, [2] is a truth and [3] is the actual, real ETA but the whole thing is obviously confusing, deceitful and makes for a terrible user experience.

faitswulff 10y ago

This makes me think that drivers aren't the only ones whose mental circuitry Uber is trying to master. "Well well well, looks like users don't notice if our ETA is off by 10 minutes as long as we show them an interactive map..."

macNchz 10y ago
This smells like the prototypical A/B-tested product 'optimization' that has become widespread these days. Sure the data probably makes it look like an unequivocal win in the short term, but it compounds ill will towards the platform every time someone goes downstairs to meet their car 10 minutes too early in a downpour.
vosper 10y ago
I think it's the exact opposite of "users don't notice". I think it's more that people are annoyed but Uber can't measure that easily, so they don't realize. Anecdote: my friends and I have frequently experienced this recently and the result has just been frustration - "it said 3 minutes and now it says 10 minutes" or "why's he driving over there?!". I hang on for the Uber, but if there was a taxi driving by I probably would have hailed it.
heymijo 10y ago
This reminds me of Schlitz beer and its downfall [0]. Schlitz went from battling Budweiser for domestic supremacy to a case study in how to ruin your brand by repeatedly cheapening your product coupled with a belief that your customers are stupid. Uber has been like Teflon so far, and Lyft is no Budweiser, but do I wonder if there's a tipping point. [0] http://www.philcooke.com/the-schlitz-mistake-and-what-beer-can-teach-us-about-excellence/ http://www.philcooke.com/the-schlitz-mistake-and-what-beer-c...

daurnimator 10y ago

Thanks for mentioning this. I've stopped using Uber because this happened to me the last 4 times I've tried to book one. I feel like it's bait and switch. I have better luck to just walk toward a busy road and hail a taxi.

ProAm 10y ago

Just use Lyft, its a better experience all the way around.

joelrunyon 10y ago
I try to domestically. They do not seem to have the network effect internationally though :(
- FabHK 10y ago
  They seem to operate only in the USA, but form an "alliance" with other services in other countries (Didi Chuxing, Grab Taxi, etc.), for which you need the respective app though.
otterley 10y ago
Lyft now does this too. It just happened to me two days ago after requesting a pickup at SFO.
splintercell 10y ago
I hate Lyft, if Uber is evil then Lyft is just dumb. I started using Lyft because they allowed me to tip the drivers after a ride. So I preferred Lyft whenever I knew I would be a difficult passenger (like when I have to take my cat to the Vet or my wife is sick and she might have (and did) throw up in the car). The idea was that I would just tip the driver at the end of the ride for the extra trouble caused. Months later when my ratings were tanked, some driver told me that I had really low rating on Lyft and that I seemed like a nice guy to have the low ratings. It turned out Lyft pooled the tip money together and paid the driver at the end of the week. So now tipping had no meaning other than 'just give your driver some extra money anonymously'. I attribute this behavior to simple stupidity on the part of Lyft. Since then I just use Uber and pay all my tips in cash everytime I think it would be a problem.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

debt 10y ago

"estimate ends up staying at "10 minutes" for 5-10 minutes straight and 15-20 minutes after I booked" this is the type of organization uber likes to run. these are the types of experiments they're comfortable with green-lighting. i wonder what else they're concocting.

rustoo 10y ago

I've observed this too, where the driver accepts your trip but he is yet to drop his current passenger. While this may be 'optimization' from a business point of view, it's actually bad from a user perspective. We have cancelled so many trips because there is a mismatch in the expected time of arrival! I have a feeling sooner or later they will have to either stop this or show longer wait times.

martin-adams 10y ago

Wait, does that mean Uber charge you if the car doesn't turn up? There must be an upper limit on how long you have to wait before that's a non-delivery of service.

vilius 10y ago

> So, what's happened multiple times is that the 10 minute estimate ends up staying at "10 minutes" for 5-10 minutes straight and 15-20 minutes after I booked, the driver shows up. I have noticed this over the weekend as well. Got an estimate of 15 minutes (which is much more than usual). After 7 minutes the car was still 15 minutes away and it was even further! Had to cancel, got charged, used my own car as I was already late. This has happened in Vilnius. What fascinates me most is that how a single shift in software behaviour has an instant impact on people lives around the world. Makes me think what economical impact would happen if it unexpectedly stopped working (or worse behaving as expected).

dbot 10y ago

I was in Charleston this weekend. On East Bay Street, I was connected to a driver who was 11 minutes away and had another fare. I canceled immediately and tried Lyft. After agreeing to a 450% surcharge, it reported a 12 minute wait with the driver also carrying another fare. I looked up from my phone and found a cab within 10 seconds. $8 ride. Nice guy. Unfortunately, we are starting how easily small changes to the business model can impact user experience at companies like Lyft and Uber. Ride surcharges, cancellation charges, getting connected to over-busy drivers...It seems simple in concept but the execution is really hard, as taxi cab companies are aware. They just don't have billions in VC money to cover up the problems.