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It has nothing to do with that. Surge pricing negatively affects the reliability of the service. As other people have mentioned, when surge pricing is going int

by exelius 12y ago

It has nothing to do with that. Surge pricing negatively affects the reliability of the service. As other people have mentioned, when surge pricing is going into effect, it's a signal to drivers that demand is high and supply is low. So they can cancel rides with few repercussions and just take a fare that pays more. It doesn't matter that you're willing to pay more; you have to book another Uber and hope that the price doesn't continue to rise. Uber's response would be "so then give the driver a bad rating". Right. That works when the driver is the one who the Uber account belongs to, but if you've ever used Uber in NYC you'll know that a driver will often just rent out his cab + phone to another driver. I'd say the Uber driver who actually picks me up is the same one in the profile maybe 30% of the time. These other drivers don't care about their reputation, so damaging their reputation is a poor deterrent to bad behavior. They see an Uber login as the same thing as a cab medallion; an asset to be rented out for profit. Edit: Also wanted to add that Uber's business model in NYC is that the service is free to taxi drivers, but in exchange the drivers have to pay $4 whenever they cancel a booking. So Uber's business model in NYC needs to encourage drivers to cancel bookings every so often, hence the surge pricing.

jljljl 12y ago
>>That works when the driver is the one who the Uber account belongs to, but if you've ever used Uber in NYC you'll know that a driver will often just rent out his cab + phone to another driver. I'd say the Uber driver who actually picks me up is the same one in the profile maybe 30% of the time. These other drivers don't care about their reputation, so damaging their reputation is a poor deterrent to bad behavior. They see an Uber login as the same thing as a cab medallion; an asset to be rented out for profit. Isn't this a pretty serious violation of Uber's terms of service, which would result in a suspension of the account? Also, if you send negative feedback to the driver renting the account, eventually the renting driver will lose their Uber account. So they will either stop renting or have their account shut down all together. This could work as a deterrent.
- exelius 12y ago
  Yeah, but nobody reports them; and even if you did they'd probably just get a new phone with a fake name and sign up again. There are just too many cabbies in NYC and they're too transient to really police it.
eridius 12y ago
> So they can cancel rides with few repercussions If there's few repercussions, it's only because the people being cancelled on don't file a complaint. And is this actually true? I haven't heard any stories of this happening before. As far as I'm aware, it's a violation of Uber policies for a driver to cancel without a good reason. My believe was that Uber checks up on every driver cancellation, but perhaps they only do that if the customer complains. Certainly I've complained before when I got cancelled on (unrelated to surge pricing). > That works when the driver is the one who the Uber account belongs to, but if you've ever used Uber in NYC you'll know that a driver will often just rent out his cab + phone to another driver. Really? Wow, I've never seen that happen before.. I would expect that to be an extremely serious violation of Uber's terms of services, as jljljl said. Certainly if I ever got picked up by a driver that was not the one listed in the Uber app, I'd file a complaint with Uber, and would consider not even getting in the car. > Also wanted to add that Uber's business model in NYC is that the service is free to taxi drivers Are you talking about the Taxi calling functionality in Uber, rather than the actual Uber or UberX service? Because that's quite different. I didn't think surge pricing even affected the regular taxi functionality. Of course, my experience with Uber is in SF, so it's certainly plausible that the model works differently in NYC, though I would be surprised to hear that. Also, $4 when they cancel a booking? That doesn't sound like a good model, are you sure that's how it works? In SF with the taxi functionality my understanding was they simply charged a flat fee for each taxi ride (which is taken out of the guaranteed 20% tip to the driver).
- exelius 12y ago
  Their business model is different in every city because the laws are different in every city. I only know this because I asked my Uber driver; so I don't know the reasoning behind it in NYC. I would suspect that it's something like dispatch services are not allowed to charge drivers per-ride. NYC in general has a very different attitude towards cab drivers than SF. The city also has rules that the driver is supposed to put his taxi license in the window, and guess what? Half the time it's either not there or it's someone else's license in the window. It's hard enough to get a taxi many places in NYC that if you refused to ride with these guys, you'd just never get a ride. But basically, the city's enforcement of the rules is lax enough that the drivers ignore any rules placed on them and their customers don't expect them to be followed.

by exelius 12y ago

jljljl 12y ago

>>That works when the driver is the one who the Uber account belongs to, but if you've ever used Uber in NYC you'll know that a driver will often just rent out his cab + phone to another driver. I'd say the Uber driver who actually picks me up is the same one in the profile maybe 30% of the time. These other drivers don't care about their reputation, so damaging their reputation is a poor deterrent to bad behavior. They see an Uber login as the same thing as a cab medallion; an asset to be rented out for profit. Isn't this a pretty serious violation of Uber's terms of service, which would result in a suspension of the account? Also, if you send negative feedback to the driver renting the account, eventually the renting driver will lose their Uber account. So they will either stop renting or have their account shut down all together. This could work as a deterrent.

exelius 12y ago
Yeah, but nobody reports them; and even if you did they'd probably just get a new phone with a fake name and sign up again. There are just too many cabbies in NYC and they're too transient to really police it.

eridius 12y ago

> So they can cancel rides with few repercussions If there's few repercussions, it's only because the people being cancelled on don't file a complaint. And is this actually true? I haven't heard any stories of this happening before. As far as I'm aware, it's a violation of Uber policies for a driver to cancel without a good reason. My believe was that Uber checks up on every driver cancellation, but perhaps they only do that if the customer complains. Certainly I've complained before when I got cancelled on (unrelated to surge pricing). > That works when the driver is the one who the Uber account belongs to, but if you've ever used Uber in NYC you'll know that a driver will often just rent out his cab + phone to another driver. Really? Wow, I've never seen that happen before.. I would expect that to be an extremely serious violation of Uber's terms of services, as jljljl said. Certainly if I ever got picked up by a driver that was not the one listed in the Uber app, I'd file a complaint with Uber, and would consider not even getting in the car. > Also wanted to add that Uber's business model in NYC is that the service is free to taxi drivers Are you talking about the Taxi calling functionality in Uber, rather than the actual Uber or UberX service? Because that's quite different. I didn't think surge pricing even affected the regular taxi functionality. Of course, my experience with Uber is in SF, so it's certainly plausible that the model works differently in NYC, though I would be surprised to hear that. Also, $4 when they cancel a booking? That doesn't sound like a good model, are you sure that's how it works? In SF with the taxi functionality my understanding was they simply charged a flat fee for each taxi ride (which is taken out of the guaranteed 20% tip to the driver).

exelius 12y ago
Their business model is different in every city because the laws are different in every city. I only know this because I asked my Uber driver; so I don't know the reasoning behind it in NYC. I would suspect that it's something like dispatch services are not allowed to charge drivers per-ride. NYC in general has a very different attitude towards cab drivers than SF. The city also has rules that the driver is supposed to put his taxi license in the window, and guess what? Half the time it's either not there or it's someone else's license in the window. It's hard enough to get a taxi many places in NYC that if you refused to ride with these guys, you'd just never get a ride. But basically, the city's enforcement of the rules is lax enough that the drivers ignore any rules placed on them and their customers don't expect them to be followed.