<story><title>Uber charges more if you have credits in your account</title><url>https://viewfromthewing.com/uber-caught-overcharging-how-having-credits-in-your-account-might-be-costing-you/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jlund-molfese</author><text>Probably false, like the urban legend that Uber charges more when a device&amp;#x27;s battery is low [0].&lt;p&gt;Claims like this go viral because they&amp;#x27;re practically unfalsifiable (It isn&amp;#x27;t in Uber&amp;#x27;s best interest to make their pricing algorithms public) and generate clicks. But when you take a closer look, it&amp;#x27;s always some anecdote that can be explained by people selecting different pricing tiers, or by multiple phones looking at the same route implying increased demand (the latter search might display a higher price). A proper experiment would involve dozens of phones under different scenarios making searches in a random order, then trying to correlate the variables with the prices. But for whatever reason, nobody ever does those experiments.&lt;p&gt;For what it&amp;#x27;s worth, I checked the price of an Uber with credits in my account against Lyft to the airport just now, and Uber was slightly cheaper.&lt;p&gt;0. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wkyc.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;verify&amp;#x2F;verify-does-uber-charge-you-more-if-your-battery-is-low&amp;#x2F;507-3b1c0166-0d82-4f91-9d96-c4aa01921b12&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wkyc.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;verify&amp;#x2F;verify-does-uber-ch...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>acdha</author><text>&amp;gt; Probably false, like the urban legend that Uber charges more when a device&amp;#x27;s battery is low [0].&lt;p&gt;That article certainly doesn’t prove that was an urban legend. Uber built an entire system to serve fake data to government officials&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;resources&amp;#x2F;idt-f2971465-73d2-4932-a889-5c63778e273d&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;resources&amp;#x2F;idt-f2971465-73d2-4932-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;technology&amp;#x2F;uber-greyball-program-evade-authorities.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;technology&amp;#x2F;uber-greyball-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;They were almost kicked out of the App Store for building a system to deceive Apple’s employees, too:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;financialpost.com&amp;#x2F;technology&amp;#x2F;personal-tech&amp;#x2F;uber-was-almost-kicked-off-the-app-store-by-tim-cook-for-breaking-rules-and-deceiving-apple-about-it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;financialpost.com&amp;#x2F;technology&amp;#x2F;personal-tech&amp;#x2F;uber-was-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Given the other ways they tried to intimidate journalists, anything like this which is conducted with the journalists’ own phones or near places they frequent is inadequate to say whether this actually happened — especially after it was going viral and all they’d have to do is flip the switch and lie about it until the attention dissipated.</text></comment>
<story><title>Uber charges more if you have credits in your account</title><url>https://viewfromthewing.com/uber-caught-overcharging-how-having-credits-in-your-account-might-be-costing-you/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jlund-molfese</author><text>Probably false, like the urban legend that Uber charges more when a device&amp;#x27;s battery is low [0].&lt;p&gt;Claims like this go viral because they&amp;#x27;re practically unfalsifiable (It isn&amp;#x27;t in Uber&amp;#x27;s best interest to make their pricing algorithms public) and generate clicks. But when you take a closer look, it&amp;#x27;s always some anecdote that can be explained by people selecting different pricing tiers, or by multiple phones looking at the same route implying increased demand (the latter search might display a higher price). A proper experiment would involve dozens of phones under different scenarios making searches in a random order, then trying to correlate the variables with the prices. But for whatever reason, nobody ever does those experiments.&lt;p&gt;For what it&amp;#x27;s worth, I checked the price of an Uber with credits in my account against Lyft to the airport just now, and Uber was slightly cheaper.&lt;p&gt;0. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wkyc.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;verify&amp;#x2F;verify-does-uber-charge-you-more-if-your-battery-is-low&amp;#x2F;507-3b1c0166-0d82-4f91-9d96-c4aa01921b12&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wkyc.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;verify&amp;#x2F;verify-does-uber-ch...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>asdasdsddd</author><text>As usual, the real story is buried beneath garbage anecdotes like this. The multiple elephants in the room include&lt;p&gt;- positional pricing, certain geocodes command what is called pricing elasticity, aka. people going to the hospital dont care about the price. Time based pricing elasticity is also exploited, for example, people leaving the concert at 12am likely dont have other options&lt;p&gt;- driver bonuses and rider coupons optimizing for marginal rides. The riders and drivers at the margins of pricing are typically switchers, which mean that if you are loyal to any particular app, you will likely never get see these coupons or bonuses</text></comment>