9 ms·

Uber prices seem to increase when phone battery is low

190 points by eatonphil 5y ago

mam3 5y ago
Business is business
madman2890 5y ago
The battery level is likely a single feature in a dynamic pricing algorithm, which has discovered an inverse relationship between battery level and price receptiveness on its own.
- chitowneats 5y ago
  How convenient.
wil421 5y ago
Once the VC money starts to fade, the competition has been bought or crushed, and the IPO cash out has occurred it’s time to extract money from the users.
npongratz 5y ago
All data you share can and will be used against you.
- miej 5y ago
  well-stated.
- ryandvm 5y ago
  Perfect. I'm stealing this.
  - npongratz 5y ago
    To be forthcoming, I cannot take credit -- I stole it from Brian Sovryn. It is a sentiment that I wish was more ubiquitous.
swamp40 5y ago
They probably check your # of Instagram and Twitter followers too. Or they will, before long. They have to pull out every trick in the book (and make up some more as they go along). "True accounting of the last quarter has Uber losing 38 cents on every dollar it took in." [0] [0] https://marker.medium.com/end-of-the-line-for-uber-901e3077bbbc https://marker.medium.com/end-of-the-line-for-uber-901e3077b...
- okprod 5y ago
  In the app recently I saw Uber offering to drive you around on your errands. They're just pivoting until they get lucky buyout-wise or until they find a business they can actually make money in. The founder was the smartest to cash out; read somewhere he's been investing in ghost kitchens.
  - nikanj 5y ago
    They keep on finding new investors who believe true self-driving AI is just behind the corner
    - muststopmyths 5y ago
      given that they sold their self-driving car unit last year, these "new investors" should be very cautious.
    - voakbasda 5y ago
      > They keep on finding new investors who believe true self-driving AI is just behind the corner Which is ironic, as Uber sold their self-driving unit and doesn’t have skin in that game anymore.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - kcatskcolbdi 5y ago
        Uber doesn't have to invent self-driving for it to have a foundational impact on the industry. Uber with their legislative foothold + market share can still potentially dominate a market with an incredibly low cost of labor if self driving is realized. They would just buy a fleet or the company that makes them.
eatonphil 5y ago
Forbes covered this in 2016. https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/05/25/uber-low-battery/amp/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/05/25/uber-lo...
criticaltinker 5y ago
I'm skeptical but, one source says this was "debunked" in Sep 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yyJiz4K9gY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yyJiz4K9gY They point out that these rideshare apps can detect what your phone's battery % is, and the TOS says they may access that info. To test the allegation, they used two phones with different battery levels and compared the prices (at the same time, & with same destination), but did not find pricing differences. They reached out to Uber who made a statement: > Uber does not use personalized pricing nor is battery life a factor in determining fares. Pricing is optimized for the network as a whole, not any one individual rider or driver. [1] Here is the reference Uber provided which describes how prices are set, and how other marketplace functionality works. [2] [1] https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/verify/verify-does-uber-charge-you-more-if-your-battery-is-low/507-3b1c0166-0d82-4f91-9d96-c4aa01921b12 https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/verify/verify-does-uber-ch... [2] https://www.uber.com/us/en/marketplace/ https://www.uber.com/us/en/marketplace/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  Thanks for your excellent comment!
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  If Uber was tripling prices when the battery level fell below 20% (like this Tweet) then more people would have noticed it by now. I think this is an obvious case of someone attributing market-rate fluctuations to the only metric they can personally see with their own eyes: Their battery level. They can’t see Uber’s network of available drivers and other factors that influence the rate, so they overweight the only data point they can see. This is similar to the phenomenon where people have a verbal discussion about a topic and then coincidentally see an ad for that product in an app later. When we see 10s or 100s of ads per day, it’s inevitable they we’ll randomly see an ad for something we’ve been discussing. Yet some people see these coincidences and wrongly conclude that their phones are listening to their every word, using AI to parse it out (without draining their battery), and then sending those keywords to an ad server for targeting. It has been debunked many times over but it’s still a commonly held belief that all of your phone apps are listening to your conversations. It can be difficult to convince some people that coincidences are really just coincidences. Especially in this era where Big Tech has an incredible evil reputation in the journalism and media we consume.
peab 5y ago
Wow,I needed to take an Uber yesterday, and my battery slowly went from 10% to 5%. When it went to 5% the price doubled, allegedly saying that there was a surge in rides in my area. It wasn't rush hour, and there was no visible surgery as far as I could tell.
uubbeerr 5y ago
Personally, I struggle to believe this. Multiple companies are accused of it: all deny it. Surely, if this were true -- and endemic in the ride-sharing industry -- we'd see more than just rumours, whether that's acknowledgement from a company or whistleblowing from someone within these companies. Uber haven't just used flowery language to evade the question, they've denied in the strongest possible terms: > It is categorically not the case that the battery level on your phone affects the price of a fare
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
HarryHirsch 5y ago
You see stories like this and think that China is correct in coming down on the tech sector. No one is better off when a company pulls stunts like this.
- mc32 5y ago
  It’s true that a centralized system can make “the right calls” without having to compromise for the purpose of maximizing or minimizing something… that’s the good. On the other hand, they can also make unilateral and very poor decisions (like the cultural revolution).
- csomar 5y ago
  Sure, having a few monopolies is bad. Let's nationalize them all under one single monopoly.
  - thirdvect0r 5y ago
    Yes.
Kranar 5y ago
This should not be something that alleged without evidence. It would be trivial to take multiple phones with different battery levels and compare the prices. You could also vary the distance between the phones. Furthermore, and I could be wrong on this, I don't recall there being any API to get the battery life remaining.
- aetherson 5y ago
  There is an api for battery level in both iphones and androids. Evidence: life360 can tell you the battery levels of the phones of people in your circle.
- jadengeller 5y ago
  There are APIs for this. iOS: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uidevice/1620042-batterylevel https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uidevice/162... Android: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/BatteryManager https://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/BatteryMa...
  - angrygoat 5y ago
    I struggle to see a legitimate reason for an app to be able to access battery level. It's pretty unlikely that app is going to change behaviour to preserve battery life – that's probably better handled by the OS slowing things down. Better to simply deny the app this information.
    - jadengeller 5y ago
      Oh, I fully agree: https://twitter.com/jadengeller/status/1427672235028795396?s=21 https://twitter.com/jadengeller/status/1427672235028795396?s... (Seems like many others do too!)
      - gregoriol 5y ago
        Stop with all those permissions already: users are tired of those popups, they don't know or understand what they are asked about, and even when a pro user gets one, it's not possible to really know what will happen/break when it is allowed or denied, so this "solution" is not one, it's a bandaid and it's broken.
greatjack613 5y ago
This has been going on for years. Nothing new to see here. Uber is evil
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
newsbinator 5y ago
I've also heard it alleged that in NYC umbrellas are more expensive when it's raining
fairity 5y ago
I doubt this is actually happening due to lack of easily compiled evidence. But, I was curious and looked into price discrimination law a little more. Apparently this isn't illegal. Stated as a rule, price discrimination becomes unlawful under federal antitrust law only when it threatens to undermine competitive processes in an affected market. I.e. offering a lower price to one party who then goes on to outcompete the other party who you charge a higher price.
- pokot0 5y ago
  I LOLed a little when I realized you really thought for a moment something like this could be illegal in the US. (I have assumed you are in the US, as everyone else that does not specify the country in a topic that is clearly country specific)
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Why would you think price discrimination in various forms doesn't routinely happen in just about any country in the world?
    - pokot0 5y ago
      Of course it does. It's just that in my experience living for extended periods in both US and Europe, consumer protection laws are a lot more advanced in Europe. It feels like business regulation in Europe is driven (mostly) by consumer benefit, while in the US is driven by corporate benefit (which a lot of US voters believe it equates to consumer benefit; you know jobs, etc) Also the US tends to leave a lot more to the market and companies policies are more defined by the legal consequences more than the laws that prevent them to operate in certain manners in the first place.
- ghaff 5y ago
  In general, there's no reason why it should be. If we were personally negotiating to do some job that I don't particularly want to do--and especially if I have other clients I could work for instead--I will probably charge you more (and you will probably be willing to pay more) if you really need something ASAP.
marcasey 5y ago
If this is probably true, then it is an exploit if the company utilizes its data against you.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chenning 5y ago
I wonder if anyone has looked into the relationship between time-of-day and battery level? Could it be the case that phone batteries are typically lower across the board at certain times of day? If most people aren't charging their phone during business hours, perhaps it's likely that batteries are typically lower around rush (surge) hour. A correlation doesn't imply causality sort of thing.
throwthere 5y ago
The tweeter's evidence of battery-based price discrimination is a single heavily redacted photo. It could be true but I'm going to hold off getting outraged until I see some actual corroboration. It's not like it's hard to run a series of controlled experiments here.
boiler_up800 5y ago
This is the same vein as people claiming Facebook listens to their conversations.
huhtenberg 5y ago
Should be trivial to confirm by comparing prices on two phones with different battery charge levels sitting side by side.
crateless 5y ago
Regardless of the current usage of the battery info on a user's mobile, why shouldn't they leverage it to extract maximum value? This is exactly the kind of dark pattern a la Booking.com ,albeit behind the scenes, that I would expect from any tech company today. Or maybe I read too much doom and gloom headlines on HN nowadays.
tmsh 5y ago
The generalized “company flaw” is thinking one is smarter than customers. That’s always incorrect because customers form a large distribution that will always be dissatisfied and want what is better, driving innovation. But this is a cultural flaw that so many companies make. It’s good to be smarter than others. Life is a competitive resource fight sometimes. But you have to turn off that mindset with customers 100% to be successful in the long-term with them. The customer in the limit is always right. And it’s so much harder to regain customer trust once it’s lost.
golemotron 5y ago
How would people feel if this was "designed" by an algorithm? I don't know whether it was, but ML could discover that people pay more when their battery is low just by having that data and doing some hill climbing.
simonw 5y ago
This seems vanishingly unlikely to me. It would be far too easy for people to confirm that it was happening, and the PR hit - even to Uber - would be way more damaging than any financial benefit they would get from implementing this.
hkt 5y ago
If true, then gross. If not, well, it isn't hard to believe. When MBAs say "don't leave money on the table" everybody else should hear "the MBAs are going to gouge us at every possible opportunity".
treelovinhippie 5y ago
Got to love the cuckery of HN commenters when it comes to attacks on the VC wonder-childs. Now that Uber/Lyft have monopolized the market on the back of years of VC funded revenue deficits, they will inevitably begin to raise prices. You are aware that Uber continues to lose ~$1B/year yeah? The entire model is VC-fuelled predatory behavior with the goal of reaching industry monopoly. Taxis are already cheaper than Uber in many locations. Ironically I think that will become the ultimate outcome when all is said and done. And yeah I know this will be downvoted. HN is very predictable in their parochial memes. Edit: yep flagged and downvoted. Do you people want a world ruled by monopolies? You want only one choice? Very anti-capitalist of you.
- dang 5y ago
  This sort of dross is not cool, regardless of how superior you are, or feel you are, to the rest of the community. Moreover, you've been breaking the site guidelines habitually. Therefore I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
decremental 5y ago
What a joke submission. "Some guy said this" now you're acting like you're some news organization? This should have been shut down immediately. Or, maybe it's a chance for us to reflect on what most news stories really are.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
trident5000 5y ago
I use lyft more than uber these days. Its typically cheaper especially at the airport for some reason. If you want competition make sure you're using the competition.
paulcnichols 5y ago
If true, genius level asshole design.
toss1 5y ago
Seems plausible, slimy, but also allegedly debunked and not a controlled test (at least show two phones w/different battery levels side-by-side with the same ride). I find a LOT more concerning the allegations regarding racism and charging blacks more -- and down that chain there is a pic of two phones side-by-side with one black and one white hand, and prices of $57.80 vs $32.58 for the same ride [1], along with other mentions of the same phenomena in the thread. Another one [2] showed $48.91 vs $33.67, but only screenshots. Obviously it is possible that this is somehow manipulated, but, this kind of "personalization" is definitely possible. What is almost more surprising is that Uber evidently doesn't detect these tests and ensure that two quotes to the same destination from the same location at the same minute aren't shown the same price. If they want to "personalize" according to race, battery level, or whatever, you'd think they'd at least be as good as VW at avoiding scrutiny (after all, Uber is supposedly a 'tech' company, vs VW being merely a car company). [1] https://twitter.com/_Adam_Bomb_/status/1427007434166579210 https://twitter.com/_Adam_Bomb_/status/1427007434166579210 [2] https://twitter.com/tmhaem/status/1427344296965918735 https://twitter.com/tmhaem/status/1427344296965918735
LightG 5y ago
That would be one of the darkest pattern I've seen for a while ... Hey YC. Are you proud of your progeny?
1helloworld1 5y ago
Lets not turn hackernews into a fake news dissemination service, and upvote some guy's unproven assertion just because you hate uber. With the millions of rides Uber makes, what are the coincidences of this guy's battery being low and surge price happening at same time?
WhompingWindows 5y ago
Could this be a case of correlation =/= causation? If we consider independently when batteries may be low, and when prices may be high, it's possible those overlap. For instance, at the end of the day on Friday or Saturday, after being out late at night, the battery is more likely to be low; similarly, Uber prices are probably higher on weekend late-nights with higher demand.
zug_zug 5y ago
It occurred to me this would be fairly easy to test. However then I realized this user could be in an A-B test, or this could be a feature-flag that they turn off as soon as a tweet blows up. If somebody wants to prove it though, they should take a video of the whole process, preferably using 1 phone and 1 account, and show it happening 4-5 times in a row within the space of an hour, and that would be definitive proof.
cameldrv 5y ago
Regardless of whether price is based on battery life, it has been shown that price is based on who the customer is and the circumstances. Uber is modeling based on willingness to pay. For example, others have shown that on average, a ride back home will cost more than a ride from home to somewhere else. Uber's algorithm has learned that if you are away from home without your car, you may have few other options, and you may be willing to accept an inflated price. While this does great things for Uber's short term revenue, it will absolutely destroy it long-term. If the drive to the restaurant is only $10, but the ride back is $40, people will remember this and just drive themselves the next time.
- polynox 5y ago
  > others have shown that on average, a ride back home will cost more than a ride from home to somewhere else Are you sure this isn't confounded by riding into and out of dense or commercial areas?
  - cameldrv 5y ago
    No. I have personally seen two people next to each other get very different prices for the same trip though. IMO it's reasonably obvious that Uber is incorporating its estimate of willingness to pay in the moment to determine the price.

190 points by eatonphil 5y ago

mam3 5y ago

Business is business

The battery level is likely a single feature in a dynamic pricing algorithm, which has discovered an inverse relationship between battery level and price receptiveness on its own.

chitowneats 5y ago
How convenient.

wil421 5y ago

Once the VC money starts to fade, the competition has been bought or crushed, and the IPO cash out has occurred it’s time to extract money from the users.

npongratz 5y ago

All data you share can and will be used against you.

miej 5y ago
well-stated.
ryandvm 5y ago
Perfect. I'm stealing this.
- npongratz 5y ago
  To be forthcoming, I cannot take credit -- I stole it from Brian Sovryn. It is a sentiment that I wish was more ubiquitous.

swamp40 5y ago

They probably check your # of Instagram and Twitter followers too. Or they will, before long. They have to pull out every trick in the book (and make up some more as they go along). "True accounting of the last quarter has Uber losing 38 cents on every dollar it took in." [0] [0] https://marker.medium.com/end-of-the-line-for-uber-901e3077bbbc https://marker.medium.com/end-of-the-line-for-uber-901e3077b...

okprod 5y ago
In the app recently I saw Uber offering to drive you around on your errands. They're just pivoting until they get lucky buyout-wise or until they find a business they can actually make money in. The founder was the smartest to cash out; read somewhere he's been investing in ghost kitchens.
- nikanj 5y ago
  They keep on finding new investors who believe true self-driving AI is just behind the corner
  - muststopmyths 5y ago
    given that they sold their self-driving car unit last year, these "new investors" should be very cautious.
  - voakbasda 5y ago
    > They keep on finding new investors who believe true self-driving AI is just behind the corner Which is ironic, as Uber sold their self-driving unit and doesn’t have skin in that game anymore.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - kcatskcolbdi 5y ago
      Uber doesn't have to invent self-driving for it to have a foundational impact on the industry. Uber with their legislative foothold + market share can still potentially dominate a market with an incredibly low cost of labor if self driving is realized. They would just buy a fleet or the company that makes them.

eatonphil 5y ago

Forbes covered this in 2016. https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/05/25/uber-low-battery/amp/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/05/25/uber-lo...

criticaltinker 5y ago

I'm skeptical but, one source says this was "debunked" in Sep 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yyJiz4K9gY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yyJiz4K9gY They point out that these rideshare apps can detect what your phone's battery % is, and the TOS says they may access that info. To test the allegation, they used two phones with different battery levels and compared the prices (at the same time, & with same destination), but did not find pricing differences. They reached out to Uber who made a statement: > Uber does not use personalized pricing nor is battery life a factor in determining fares. Pricing is optimized for the network as a whole, not any one individual rider or driver. [1] Here is the reference Uber provided which describes how prices are set, and how other marketplace functionality works. [2] [1] https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/verify/verify-does-uber-charge-you-more-if-your-battery-is-low/507-3b1c0166-0d82-4f91-9d96-c4aa01921b12 https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/verify/verify-does-uber-ch... [2] https://www.uber.com/us/en/marketplace/ https://www.uber.com/us/en/marketplace/

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
LatteLazy 5y ago
Thanks for your excellent comment!
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
If Uber was tripling prices when the battery level fell below 20% (like this Tweet) then more people would have noticed it by now. I think this is an obvious case of someone attributing market-rate fluctuations to the only metric they can personally see with their own eyes: Their battery level. They can’t see Uber’s network of available drivers and other factors that influence the rate, so they overweight the only data point they can see. This is similar to the phenomenon where people have a verbal discussion about a topic and then coincidentally see an ad for that product in an app later. When we see 10s or 100s of ads per day, it’s inevitable they we’ll randomly see an ad for something we’ve been discussing. Yet some people see these coincidences and wrongly conclude that their phones are listening to their every word, using AI to parse it out (without draining their battery), and then sending those keywords to an ad server for targeting. It has been debunked many times over but it’s still a commonly held belief that all of your phone apps are listening to your conversations. It can be difficult to convince some people that coincidences are really just coincidences. Especially in this era where Big Tech has an incredible evil reputation in the journalism and media we consume.

peab 5y ago

Wow,I needed to take an Uber yesterday, and my battery slowly went from 10% to 5%. When it went to 5% the price doubled, allegedly saying that there was a surge in rides in my area. It wasn't rush hour, and there was no visible surgery as far as I could tell.

uubbeerr 5y ago

Personally, I struggle to believe this. Multiple companies are accused of it: all deny it. Surely, if this were true -- and endemic in the ride-sharing industry -- we'd see more than just rumours, whether that's acknowledgement from a company or whistleblowing from someone within these companies. Uber haven't just used flowery language to evade the question, they've denied in the strongest possible terms: > It is categorically not the case that the battery level on your phone affects the price of a fare

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

HarryHirsch 5y ago

You see stories like this and think that China is correct in coming down on the tech sector. No one is better off when a company pulls stunts like this.

mc32 5y ago
It’s true that a centralized system can make “the right calls” without having to compromise for the purpose of maximizing or minimizing something… that’s the good. On the other hand, they can also make unilateral and very poor decisions (like the cultural revolution).
csomar 5y ago
Sure, having a few monopolies is bad. Let's nationalize them all under one single monopoly.
- thirdvect0r 5y ago
  Yes.

Kranar 5y ago

This should not be something that alleged without evidence. It would be trivial to take multiple phones with different battery levels and compare the prices. You could also vary the distance between the phones. Furthermore, and I could be wrong on this, I don't recall there being any API to get the battery life remaining.

aetherson 5y ago
There is an api for battery level in both iphones and androids. Evidence: life360 can tell you the battery levels of the phones of people in your circle.
jadengeller 5y ago
There are APIs for this. iOS: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uidevice/1620042-batterylevel https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uidevice/162... Android: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/BatteryManager https://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/BatteryMa...
- angrygoat 5y ago
  I struggle to see a legitimate reason for an app to be able to access battery level. It's pretty unlikely that app is going to change behaviour to preserve battery life – that's probably better handled by the OS slowing things down. Better to simply deny the app this information.
  - jadengeller 5y ago
    Oh, I fully agree: https://twitter.com/jadengeller/status/1427672235028795396?s=21 https://twitter.com/jadengeller/status/1427672235028795396?s... (Seems like many others do too!)
    - gregoriol 5y ago
      Stop with all those permissions already: users are tired of those popups, they don't know or understand what they are asked about, and even when a pro user gets one, it's not possible to really know what will happen/break when it is allowed or denied, so this "solution" is not one, it's a bandaid and it's broken.

greatjack613 5y ago

This has been going on for years. Nothing new to see here. Uber is evil

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

newsbinator 5y ago

I've also heard it alleged that in NYC umbrellas are more expensive when it's raining

fairity 5y ago

I doubt this is actually happening due to lack of easily compiled evidence. But, I was curious and looked into price discrimination law a little more. Apparently this isn't illegal. Stated as a rule, price discrimination becomes unlawful under federal antitrust law only when it threatens to undermine competitive processes in an affected market. I.e. offering a lower price to one party who then goes on to outcompete the other party who you charge a higher price.

pokot0 5y ago
I LOLed a little when I realized you really thought for a moment something like this could be illegal in the US. (I have assumed you are in the US, as everyone else that does not specify the country in a topic that is clearly country specific)
- ghaff 5y ago
  Why would you think price discrimination in various forms doesn't routinely happen in just about any country in the world?
  - pokot0 5y ago
    Of course it does. It's just that in my experience living for extended periods in both US and Europe, consumer protection laws are a lot more advanced in Europe. It feels like business regulation in Europe is driven (mostly) by consumer benefit, while in the US is driven by corporate benefit (which a lot of US voters believe it equates to consumer benefit; you know jobs, etc) Also the US tends to leave a lot more to the market and companies policies are more defined by the legal consequences more than the laws that prevent them to operate in certain manners in the first place.
ghaff 5y ago
In general, there's no reason why it should be. If we were personally negotiating to do some job that I don't particularly want to do--and especially if I have other clients I could work for instead--I will probably charge you more (and you will probably be willing to pay more) if you really need something ASAP.

marcasey 5y ago

If this is probably true, then it is an exploit if the company utilizes its data against you.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

chenning 5y ago

I wonder if anyone has looked into the relationship between time-of-day and battery level? Could it be the case that phone batteries are typically lower across the board at certain times of day? If most people aren't charging their phone during business hours, perhaps it's likely that batteries are typically lower around rush (surge) hour. A correlation doesn't imply causality sort of thing.

throwthere 5y ago

The tweeter's evidence of battery-based price discrimination is a single heavily redacted photo. It could be true but I'm going to hold off getting outraged until I see some actual corroboration. It's not like it's hard to run a series of controlled experiments here.

boiler_up800 5y ago

This is the same vein as people claiming Facebook listens to their conversations.

huhtenberg 5y ago

Should be trivial to confirm by comparing prices on two phones with different battery charge levels sitting side by side.

crateless 5y ago

Regardless of the current usage of the battery info on a user's mobile, why shouldn't they leverage it to extract maximum value? This is exactly the kind of dark pattern a la Booking.com ,albeit behind the scenes, that I would expect from any tech company today. Or maybe I read too much doom and gloom headlines on HN nowadays.

tmsh 5y ago

The generalized “company flaw” is thinking one is smarter than customers. That’s always incorrect because customers form a large distribution that will always be dissatisfied and want what is better, driving innovation. But this is a cultural flaw that so many companies make. It’s good to be smarter than others. Life is a competitive resource fight sometimes. But you have to turn off that mindset with customers 100% to be successful in the long-term with them. The customer in the limit is always right. And it’s so much harder to regain customer trust once it’s lost.

golemotron 5y ago

How would people feel if this was "designed" by an algorithm? I don't know whether it was, but ML could discover that people pay more when their battery is low just by having that data and doing some hill climbing.

simonw 5y ago

This seems vanishingly unlikely to me. It would be far too easy for people to confirm that it was happening, and the PR hit - even to Uber - would be way more damaging than any financial benefit they would get from implementing this.

hkt 5y ago

If true, then gross. If not, well, it isn't hard to believe. When MBAs say "don't leave money on the table" everybody else should hear "the MBAs are going to gouge us at every possible opportunity".

treelovinhippie 5y ago

Got to love the cuckery of HN commenters when it comes to attacks on the VC wonder-childs. Now that Uber/Lyft have monopolized the market on the back of years of VC funded revenue deficits, they will inevitably begin to raise prices. You are aware that Uber continues to lose ~$1B/year yeah? The entire model is VC-fuelled predatory behavior with the goal of reaching industry monopoly. Taxis are already cheaper than Uber in many locations. Ironically I think that will become the ultimate outcome when all is said and done. And yeah I know this will be downvoted. HN is very predictable in their parochial memes. Edit: yep flagged and downvoted. Do you people want a world ruled by monopolies? You want only one choice? Very anti-capitalist of you.

dang 5y ago
This sort of dross is not cool, regardless of how superior you are, or feel you are, to the rest of the community. Moreover, you've been breaking the site guidelines habitually. Therefore I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

decremental 5y ago

What a joke submission. "Some guy said this" now you're acting like you're some news organization? This should have been shut down immediately. Or, maybe it's a chance for us to reflect on what most news stories really are.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

trident5000 5y ago

I use lyft more than uber these days. Its typically cheaper especially at the airport for some reason. If you want competition make sure you're using the competition.

paulcnichols 5y ago

If true, genius level asshole design.

toss1 5y ago

Seems plausible, slimy, but also allegedly debunked and not a controlled test (at least show two phones w/different battery levels side-by-side with the same ride). I find a LOT more concerning the allegations regarding racism and charging blacks more -- and down that chain there is a pic of two phones side-by-side with one black and one white hand, and prices of $57.80 vs $32.58 for the same ride [1], along with other mentions of the same phenomena in the thread. Another one [2] showed $48.91 vs $33.67, but only screenshots. Obviously it is possible that this is somehow manipulated, but, this kind of "personalization" is definitely possible. What is almost more surprising is that Uber evidently doesn't detect these tests and ensure that two quotes to the same destination from the same location at the same minute aren't shown the same price. If they want to "personalize" according to race, battery level, or whatever, you'd think they'd at least be as good as VW at avoiding scrutiny (after all, Uber is supposedly a 'tech' company, vs VW being merely a car company). [1] https://twitter.com/_Adam_Bomb_/status/1427007434166579210 https://twitter.com/_Adam_Bomb_/status/1427007434166579210 [2] https://twitter.com/tmhaem/status/1427344296965918735 https://twitter.com/tmhaem/status/1427344296965918735

LightG 5y ago

That would be one of the darkest pattern I've seen for a while ... Hey YC. Are you proud of your progeny?

1helloworld1 5y ago

Lets not turn hackernews into a fake news dissemination service, and upvote some guy's unproven assertion just because you hate uber. With the millions of rides Uber makes, what are the coincidences of this guy's battery being low and surge price happening at same time?

WhompingWindows 5y ago

Could this be a case of correlation =/= causation? If we consider independently when batteries may be low, and when prices may be high, it's possible those overlap. For instance, at the end of the day on Friday or Saturday, after being out late at night, the battery is more likely to be low; similarly, Uber prices are probably higher on weekend late-nights with higher demand.

zug_zug 5y ago

It occurred to me this would be fairly easy to test. However then I realized this user could be in an A-B test, or this could be a feature-flag that they turn off as soon as a tweet blows up. If somebody wants to prove it though, they should take a video of the whole process, preferably using 1 phone and 1 account, and show it happening 4-5 times in a row within the space of an hour, and that would be definitive proof.

cameldrv 5y ago

Regardless of whether price is based on battery life, it has been shown that price is based on who the customer is and the circumstances. Uber is modeling based on willingness to pay. For example, others have shown that on average, a ride back home will cost more than a ride from home to somewhere else. Uber's algorithm has learned that if you are away from home without your car, you may have few other options, and you may be willing to accept an inflated price. While this does great things for Uber's short term revenue, it will absolutely destroy it long-term. If the drive to the restaurant is only $10, but the ride back is $40, people will remember this and just drive themselves the next time.

polynox 5y ago
> others have shown that on average, a ride back home will cost more than a ride from home to somewhere else Are you sure this isn't confounded by riding into and out of dense or commercial areas?
- cameldrv 5y ago
  No. I have personally seen two people next to each other get very different prices for the same trip though. IMO it's reasonably obvious that Uber is incorporating its estimate of willingness to pay in the moment to determine the price.