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>You literally cannot profitably transport people at the prices they're offering That's not my understanding of the figures, which say that they're charging pl
by SilasX 7y ago
>You literally cannot profitably transport people at the prices they're offering
That's not my understanding of the figures, which say that they're charging plenty enough to cover the costs associated with the ride, but are blowing lots of money on aggressive marketing. The transportation costs (i.e. driver pay and customer service) are not what's killing them.
- CydeWeys 7y agoA lot of these "marketing" costs are clever ways of hiding costs of providing rides as separate line items.
- projektfu 7y agoYes, but if they were all driver incentives, there would be no revenue according to the model they're using. Customer incentives, on the other hand, are hidden in operating costs and not placed in the cost of revenue where they probably should be.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago"incentives", i.e. discounts/coupons for passengers or pay bumps for drivers, are a huge part of those marketing costs. So while they're rolled under the marketing budget they fundamentally are a distortion of the price they need to pay drivers or amount they need to charge passengers to become profitable.
- MiroF 7y agoI was in an empty pool ride for 45 minutes taking me from inner Boston to the suburbs and I paid $5. Unless I'm wrong, that's below minimum wage so someone somewhere is subsidizing the difference