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The Uber app already requests a lot of access to your phone as it is. Shouldn't be a problem for the app to get info about the state of your phone re: battery p

The Uber app already requests a lot of access to your phone as it is. Shouldn't be a problem for the app to get info about the state of your phone re: battery power. There are iOS APIs that can tell you this. I don't know Android well enough to say, but my instinct is that every mobile device capable of running the Uber app has a low power mode. The app should be able to query the state of the phone to determine whether or not the user is likely to lose power before the pickup occurs. But of course, doing that would require that the Uber app was honest about when the driver is actually going to get to the rider. There are solutions to this problem. I don't know what all of them are, but I guarantee you that they exist. It's not that hard of a problem. And we also don't know how much of a problem that cancellations are in reality. And we don't know how much of this hypothetical problem is actually caused by drivers fucking with things. So, I dunno, I think your question involves a lot of assumptions that aren't really correct. Like, not even remotely. You're pretending there's a legit problem, where we have no evidence of one.

avar 10y ago
> I don't know Android well enough to say. You can easily fake the battery status on Android: https://stanfy.com/blog/android-shell-part-1-mocking-battery-status/ https://stanfy.com/blog/android-shell-part-1-mocking-battery... > It's not that hard of a problem. You and the grandparent are proposing that Uber somehow use information provided by the user's phone to waive the cancellation fee, when the user is in control of their phone and has every economic incentive to game the system. Even if you could get this to work it's not at all obvious that it's desirable. Right now the system is simple, you order a car and for some reason the app turns off, you get charged a cancellation fee. That's a hard problem to solve. What if you have one Uber and two customers who'd like to order it, one with 3% battery and one with 97%? Should the risk of sending the car to the user with 3% battery purely be assumed by Uber?
- ianamartin 10y ago
  Ugh. Remind me to never go on a date with you. Everything you're saying is backwards. You're probably a crazy person who would drop a mural on my face. Users don't have an economic incentive to game the system. Users have a desire to get from point a to point b. There's no incentive to cancel. People don't do that. Cancelling your ride is the worst thing a user can do because it fails to get them from point a to point b. But when drivers don't show up or take the long way around and subvert the timing system, or their phones die or blow up, you can't just assume a bad user and start charging people. That's stupid and wrong, just like you are. It's a cash grab, and that's all there is to it. It's Uber failing to solve a problem. The cancellation fee is all about getting money from people who fuck up the ride in one way or another. Dead phones, drunk mistakes, whatever. It's Uber taking advantage of the people who are likely to need them the most. I don't have access to Uber's internal data, but I bet you serious money that people who do know that this is true. In the case of a 97% vs. 3% battery, the call should be exactly as it is currently. Who is going to be the more lucrative for the driver. You just don't cancel on the 3% rider after agreeing to pick him/her up. The driver should actually show up at the place agreed upon. The fact that this is an issue really points out how bad Uber can be. And it argues in favor of some regulation that Uber isn't subject to at the moment. If you think this is a hard problem to solve, I would invite you to my world. We actually solve hard problems where I work.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Users game the system all the time. Call an Uber then get in a taxi which drives by before the Uber comes. That's what the cancellation fee is about. A policy you dislike is not an argument for regulation. It's an argument for you to use Lyft, gett or yellow cabs.
  - avar 10y ago
    > That's stupid and wrong, just like you are. I think your inability to have a civil discussion without needlessly throwing insults around speaks for itself. > Users have a desire to get from point a to > point b. There's no incentive to cancel. > People don't do that. There are trivial no-brainer cases where the potential for free cancellations allows you to offload costs on someone else. E.g. you and your 4 friends need to get from A->B together, you each order an Uber for the ride, but you only intend to use one car. The ETAs are in the range of 15-25 minutes, you all have the "Fake Battery Status" app installed & cancel 3 of the cars when the first one has an ETA of < 2 minutes. Now you're able to get where you need to go 5-10 minutes earlier than you otherwise would have, at no extra cost, but you've incurred a cost on Uber & lost opportunity (& real fuel costs) on the driver.
    - pacificleo11 10y ago
      Edge case
    - ianamartin 10y ago
      I apologize for being a jerk to you. You're right. That wasn't cool at all. But nothing about the case you just described is trivial or no-brainer. Getting into that situation takes a lot of work, planning, and collusion. I would need to see some serious data to believe that this kind of thing actually happens often enough for it to be a problem. In a place like NYC, getting places just takes time. An extra 10 minutes to get from point a to b just isn't a thing that people care about. If you're going to assert that cases like these are common enough to cause Uber to have a default policy of cancelling a ride when a rider's phone runs out of juice, I think the burden of proof is on you to show it. Otherwise, I'm not going to buy into that. And again, I apologize for calling you stupid.
- pacificleo11 10y ago
  Uber currently use low battery status to charge higher surge pricing from the user. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/22/uber-app-can-detect-when-a-users-phone-is-about-to-die/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/22/uber-app-can-... So its not whether its possible to do this or not. It's whether its something you want to do. An elegant middle ground can be attained by putting phone in power saving mode or by asking for an alternative phone number ( of your date ??) in case the battery is dangerously low .
  - sushid 10y ago
    The article you link specifically says that they do NOT use the status information to charge, but have noticed a higher willingness to accept surge pricing (makes sense) [0]. [0] "'We absolutely don’t use that to push you a higher surge price, but it’s an interesting psychological fact of human behaviour.'” - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/22/uber-app-can-detect-when-a-users-phone-is-about-to-die/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/22/uber-app-can-...

avar 10y ago

> I don't know Android well enough to say. You can easily fake the battery status on Android: https://stanfy.com/blog/android-shell-part-1-mocking-battery-status/ https://stanfy.com/blog/android-shell-part-1-mocking-battery... > It's not that hard of a problem. You and the grandparent are proposing that Uber somehow use information provided by the user's phone to waive the cancellation fee, when the user is in control of their phone and has every economic incentive to game the system. Even if you could get this to work it's not at all obvious that it's desirable. Right now the system is simple, you order a car and for some reason the app turns off, you get charged a cancellation fee. That's a hard problem to solve. What if you have one Uber and two customers who'd like to order it, one with 3% battery and one with 97%? Should the risk of sending the car to the user with 3% battery purely be assumed by Uber?

ianamartin 10y ago
Ugh. Remind me to never go on a date with you. Everything you're saying is backwards. You're probably a crazy person who would drop a mural on my face. Users don't have an economic incentive to game the system. Users have a desire to get from point a to point b. There's no incentive to cancel. People don't do that. Cancelling your ride is the worst thing a user can do because it fails to get them from point a to point b. But when drivers don't show up or take the long way around and subvert the timing system, or their phones die or blow up, you can't just assume a bad user and start charging people. That's stupid and wrong, just like you are. It's a cash grab, and that's all there is to it. It's Uber failing to solve a problem. The cancellation fee is all about getting money from people who fuck up the ride in one way or another. Dead phones, drunk mistakes, whatever. It's Uber taking advantage of the people who are likely to need them the most. I don't have access to Uber's internal data, but I bet you serious money that people who do know that this is true. In the case of a 97% vs. 3% battery, the call should be exactly as it is currently. Who is going to be the more lucrative for the driver. You just don't cancel on the 3% rider after agreeing to pick him/her up. The driver should actually show up at the place agreed upon. The fact that this is an issue really points out how bad Uber can be. And it argues in favor of some regulation that Uber isn't subject to at the moment. If you think this is a hard problem to solve, I would invite you to my world. We actually solve hard problems where I work.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Users game the system all the time. Call an Uber then get in a taxi which drives by before the Uber comes. That's what the cancellation fee is about. A policy you dislike is not an argument for regulation. It's an argument for you to use Lyft, gett or yellow cabs.
- avar 10y ago
  > That's stupid and wrong, just like you are. I think your inability to have a civil discussion without needlessly throwing insults around speaks for itself. > Users have a desire to get from point a to > point b. There's no incentive to cancel. > People don't do that. There are trivial no-brainer cases where the potential for free cancellations allows you to offload costs on someone else. E.g. you and your 4 friends need to get from A->B together, you each order an Uber for the ride, but you only intend to use one car. The ETAs are in the range of 15-25 minutes, you all have the "Fake Battery Status" app installed & cancel 3 of the cars when the first one has an ETA of < 2 minutes. Now you're able to get where you need to go 5-10 minutes earlier than you otherwise would have, at no extra cost, but you've incurred a cost on Uber & lost opportunity (& real fuel costs) on the driver.
  - pacificleo11 10y ago
    Edge case
  - ianamartin 10y ago
    I apologize for being a jerk to you. You're right. That wasn't cool at all. But nothing about the case you just described is trivial or no-brainer. Getting into that situation takes a lot of work, planning, and collusion. I would need to see some serious data to believe that this kind of thing actually happens often enough for it to be a problem. In a place like NYC, getting places just takes time. An extra 10 minutes to get from point a to b just isn't a thing that people care about. If you're going to assert that cases like these are common enough to cause Uber to have a default policy of cancelling a ride when a rider's phone runs out of juice, I think the burden of proof is on you to show it. Otherwise, I'm not going to buy into that. And again, I apologize for calling you stupid.
pacificleo11 10y ago
Uber currently use low battery status to charge higher surge pricing from the user. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/22/uber-app-can-detect-when-a-users-phone-is-about-to-die/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/22/uber-app-can-... So its not whether its possible to do this or not. It's whether its something you want to do. An elegant middle ground can be attained by putting phone in power saving mode or by asking for an alternative phone number ( of your date ??) in case the battery is dangerously low .
- sushid 10y ago
  The article you link specifically says that they do NOT use the status information to charge, but have noticed a higher willingness to accept surge pricing (makes sense) [0]. [0] "'We absolutely don’t use that to push you a higher surge price, but it’s an interesting psychological fact of human behaviour.'” - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/22/uber-app-can-detect-when-a-users-phone-is-about-to-die/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/22/uber-app-can-...