Uber and Lyft both operated this way in the beginning, and switched to upfront pricing later, presumably after having enough data to make upfront pricing reliable. I still remember the outcry - people say it’s a tactic to bury surge pricing and implement price discrimination.
Yeah - I remember the claims about upfront pricing being bad / illegal etc.
I think they did upfront pricing because users preferred it - I certainly did.
But you can't do upfront pricing under CA law - the driver has to be able to earn whatever they earn from driving - if they take you on a long route now - they get the extra I think and you are charged the extra.
>But you can't do upfront pricing under CA law - the driver has to be able to earn whatever they earn from driving
I think the two parts of this statement can be decoupled. Couldn't Uber feasibly keep fixed upfront pricing on the customer side but provide variable payouts to drivers to be compliant with the law? They probably wouldn't do this because it exposes them to risk on every ride (i.e. they might undercharge for the ride and have to pay up to the driver anyway) but the law is not directly forcing them to provide a worse experience - they're doing that by passing the risk to customers.
In the rest of the world, and in CA before this change, drivers are paid per mile/time and riders pay an upfront price.
The only way this is possible is if Uber does absorb the risk for the rider's convenience. They will not be providing this service from now on because it strengthens their claim that the drivers are contractors.
For what it's worth, I agree that the drivers deserve more protection, and I also consider that it's impossible to envision Uber drivers as employees without totally destroying the whole concept.
The only solution that I can see to this problem is to improve the status of contractor for these people's health care to be covered at large.
Government is pretty bad in this country like in most other countries. I suspect it is because most good solutions are the product of balanced view-points, but politics and legislation is driven by public opinion, which is rarely balanced in its views.
I for one would happily pay, or at least like to have the option to pay, a risk-adjusted flat fare instead of by-mile. This change will absolutely tilt my default provider to lyft.
Its just nice as a customer to be able to know that a 40$ trip to the airport can't wind up being 140$ if the car gets stuck behind an accident on a bridge (or whatever). I'd much rather round it up to 42 - call it trip insurance. Uber must have enough data to be able to handicap their markets to within 5% or so, and still come out ahead.
Does the law say you can't do upfront pricing? Surely the company could just eat the difference in the situation you raise? To me this seems to be Uber's way of passing on any extra cost and risk to customers rather than risk any of their own skin.
The law prohibits upfront pricing unless the drivers are employees of uber.
The law requires you (the rider) to be the customer of the driver. So the pricing / payment between driver and rider need to be linked.
If you are a customer of uber transit services (instead of uber ride finding and safety platform) they can offer flat rate prices and eat difference, but the drivers then need to be employees.
Uber can do upfront pricing if they accept that their drivers are employees and pay them by the hour. Eventually, they'll be forced to do this in California.
Yes, it felt like it was all to hide surge info from consumers.
Surge pricing gives the consumer insight into when they're being charged more. Many consumers reluctantly will pay a high price, but will not pay an "inflated" price.
It also allowed areas like sf to have continuous surges over weekends at low levels without consumers feeling like "uber is always surging".
Guess you can’t please everybody :(