Uber charges more if you have credits in your account

I like how people in comments are keen to change the world, but I - more realisticly - only focus on gaming the system so I can actually save myself couple bucks right away.

I set pick up and destination, exit the app, open another rides app, wait few minutes for uber to notify me that the price went down.

I only give it initials (instead of full name) and phone number, not even my gender, I rarely rate drivers positively, if it is not a negative experience, I skip reviewing, so they don't know I "like" the service.

When it takes more than a minute to find a ride, I cancel the ride and choose the "others" option, as this is the de-facto the option for "I will just take a cab", so I get inserted on the "churn risk" list.

I use a virtual card that I some time leave empty so payment fail after the ride, and on the next ride I readjust my virtual card limit on the next ride and pay the last bill so I am added on the "poor and miserable riders" list.

I am well protected

Probably false, like the urban legend that Uber charges more when a device's battery is low [0].

Claims like this go viral because they're practically unfalsifiable (It isn't in Uber's best interest to make their pricing algorithms public) and generate clicks. But when you take a closer look, it'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.

For what it'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.

0. https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/verify/verify-does-uber-ch...

I'm not a heavy user, but I noticed that if I start with Google Maps anonymously and hit the ride-share button which gives you a comparison of Uber, Lyft, etc. prices, that when you click through the price is consistently lower than if you start with an app. I'm not sure if it's circumstance, but it's worth giving a shot if you have the time.

I always wonder what do the devs who coded these "features" think about themselves and/or what other people think about them.

Yes I know they are literally paid to not have these questions. But deep down, is there any remorse or guilt at all or is it just "not my problem" attitude all the way to the bank?

On a tangent, this is why I think there need to be more regulations with software development. Any real engineering discipline has tons of oversight and government agencies breathing down their neck to ensure compliance. Software came out when all these pushes for safety has been gutted and as a result we have a free for all race to the bottom.

People are assuming that some evil mustache-twirling PM/engineer decided to charge users more if they have credits in their account. The truth may be far more banal. They may be using a ML model to determine pricing. The ML model takes as input all known information about that user. One of those inputs, which simply came bundled together with everything else, is the user's credit balance. The ML model, after much historical analysis, figured out that it can charge users more if they have credits available. The relevant engineers treated the ML model as a black box, ran an A/B test, saw a 1.3% increase in revenue, and decided to roll it out.

If this isn't already happening, I expect this will be the future of our industry.

I'm not a big fan of Uber, but this seems like a case of "confirmation bias." The author formed an opinion, then searched for anything that confirmed it and accepted that as proof, even if it was completely unrelated or just due to chance.

It's called "dynamic pricing" for a reason. Like stock market prices, it fluctuates rapidly based on hundreds of factors.

You don't need credits to see different prices—just compare with a friend's phone. Sometimes, their fare will be higher than yours, and other times, it will be lower.

Uber was consistently charging me 20%-50% more than my friends. Same time, same origin, same destination, no discounts, regardless of who asked first or rider rating. Can't share screenshots without doxxing myself, though.

After being gaslit by Uber support for weeks, they finally admitted to charge riders different prices, and that there was nothing they could do to reset my price multiplier[1]. I suspect it was because I added a Work profile with corporate credit card for a trip years ago.

So I deleted my account, waited 30 days for the data to be expunged[2], and created a new account under a new email address and without my middle name. The prices are now normal!

This plus drivers constantly cancelling rides, makes me avoid Uber as much as I can.

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[1] Quoting Uber support: "The prices of the trips and promotions are unique to users, that is correct. [...] There is sadly nothing you can do personally to change the fare rate of the trips before any discount is applied."

[2] After requesting to delete your account, I received an email asking to explain the issue and if they could help me. Replying "no" automatically reactivated my account and reset the 30 day timer.

I’m not sure if the story here has any merits. But what I do know is: there needs to be more transparency.

https://youtu.be/OEXJmNj6SPk

This report shows multiple drivers all located in the same area (literally, phones next to each other), getting marginally different quotes for the same ride.

What is accounting for these differences?

Taxi industry may have been shitty, but at least the price was transparent. You pay while the meter is running. With Uber/Lyft, it’s a fucking black box.

For all we know, the algorithms learned which drivers tend to take whatever is given to them so they can opt to shave a couple of dollars.

The entire purpose of modern technology has become to programmatically extract as much profit from every transaction every individual undertakes every day comfortable in the knowledge there’s not enough hours in the day for said consumers to scrutinize them all.

Not surprised. Uber doesn’t exactly have a reputation of being the most ethical company out there.

Completely anecdotal.

I feel if I open Uber ahead of a planned travel and type in a destination to get an idea on the price, the price is $X. I then open the app back later when I'm ready to travel (say 15 minutes later after packing and leaving the hotel) and the price has gone up (sometimes by quite a bit).

Now maybe I'm just unlucky and the dynamic market prices have gone up every time, but I've never seen the same price or less.

Which makes me wonder if Uber records your interest in using them to get to a destination and then increases the price when you come back after committing to using them for your trip.

I now only open the app and search when I'm ready for the trip.

I have a bunch of credit from the Costco thing and haven’t noticed any changes in pricing on my usual routes.

An alternatively hypothesis is that users with credits in their account are committed spenders, and so are less likely to receive discounts. In the same way, frequent users are more committed.

I rarely use Uber/Eats, so when I do I almost always have ~1/3rd off through some voucher or something. They also do vouchers that work over multiple purchases in order to build habits.

If they do charge more, it will only hurt them with people checking and using a competitor for a lower price. It will not hurt the employed economist's paycheck though who will continue to peddle pricing patterns that don't actually work in the real world, still collecting a generous salary for deceiving the company and shareholders.

I’ve experienced the situation where my partner gets lower rates than I do on nearly all ride sharing apps. We’ll open the app at the same time, from the same place, heading to the same destination, and mine will be at least 10% higher. We have very similar ratings.

Honesty and transparency can be a brand asset to create long-term loyalty, which reduces customer churn, reduce marketing spend, etc. All it takes is founders/executive leaders who can see past top- and bottom-line.

The ML pricing algos for uber have tons of features solely aimed at maximizing revenues. It wouldn't be a surprise that the HAS_CREDITS field has a +20% impact to ride pricing.

The Oriental Rug Salesman as a Service: "For you my friend, special price!"...

With apologies for stereotyping.

I rolled my uber costs into buying a car, now I go on hikes. I stopped ordering takeout and walk or drive to the restaurant. The fees are approaching 40% of the ticket price now. I'm out.

I never even hear of uber credits. I always charge it to my card. In europe we often use Bolt too, which is a competing service. So I actually have used Bolt more than Uber.

Ride sharing needs to be much more heavily regulated to increase transparency and discourage games like this. Especially in Uber's case, considering their history.

Based on my single user anecdotal data, I noticed that when I have additional Uber credit in my Uber account, I get less often or less amount of Uber Eats promotion.

Uber is the most dishonest app (and company) I know, by an order of magnitude.

The app lies about everything. What the wait time is likely to be, how many drivers there are, whether your driver is moving or not, how long it will take to find another driver when the first driver cancels, etc.

Wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be true. Completely consistent with the rest of my experience with this company.

Haven’t touched Uber in years and always try to use the city’s local service wherever available. Its usually more convenient anyway.

n=1, but also common knowledge in deals forums, that if you have credits in your account, you don't get deals. Uber eats is only usable at the 25-40% off deals they do since the markup is often that much. If you have credits or Uber one, you don't get the deals.

I can't wait for Uber to get checked by robotaxi.

For a brief period, I worked Uber(eats) and DoorDash at the same time. I'm absolutely convinced that the two services speak to each other on the backend (or perhaps monitor each other on your phone) and structure the orders they offer you in such a way as to thwart you efforts to double-app. Uber would be utter silent for 10-20 minutes, and then send an order right after accepting a DoorDash one, and generally in the opposite direction.

In general, I do wonder if/when all of the slimy anti-competitive, anti-labor stuff these companies are doing will come out. I'm not holding my breath for jail-time, but boy, would it be nice.

While I'm here, it sure would be nice if someone were to spin up a fediverse/decentralized alternative that municipalities could adopt and interconnect.

Is there an (academic / journalistic) area/body of research about the pricing/recommendation/other influential algorithms of various products?

I have conspiracy theories about Spotify autoplay (wouldn't it seem smart to prioritize songs with lower licensing cost?) and would like to see them checked. Surely I can't be the only person interested in the specific ways products used by hundreds of millions of people actually work?

There's a lot of superstition and anecdotal evidence in this area and it would be great to see a reliable source of actual research.

When is this shitty company going to be finally shut down. Its been caught so many times cheating or breaking state laws. Just shut it down already. The business model doesn't work, its cooked.

This is all nonsense. Uber does not do any sort of up charging based on anything remotely uniquely identifiable. All of the dynamic pricing is based on publicly stated known information Uber has stated, ie surge based pricing. This and other anecdotal stories, such as battery life are all click bait.

It's time to start legislating against dynamic pricing.

I don't know if this particular claim is true but dynamic pricing is getting out of control. Things should have an advertised price rather than some amorphous ML system deciding to charge you more because you're desperate or you can afford it (according to some criteria).

These companies have to be careful too because they may open themselves up to discrimination claims. There are protected classes you can't discriminate against under federal law. Facebook already settled a case of race discrimination in housing ads [1]. This has nothing to do with dynamic pricing but I guarantee you dynamic pricing will open up more of these issues.

[1]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-secures-gr...