Uber's Rise In China May Be Counterfeit

retroworks writes: Josh Horwitz' story in Quartz reports both the apparent rapid success of Uber adaptation in China, and a queasy footnote for shareholders applauding the rapid growth. While China is a natural ride-sharing haven, it also has a tradition of gaming the western system. From the story: "Accomplices can sit in their apartments, disable location settings, and specify a pickup not far from the actual location of driver's vehicle, the report said. The driver then accepts the hail, and goes on a trip without a passenger. After the accomplice approves payment, the driver will – hopefully – pay back the fee and share a cut of the bonus. It's not the most clever get-rich scheme on the planet. But for drivers, it's better than waiting for a hail in a parking lot." Uber's spokeswoman told the Quartz writer that the company has an on-the-ground team who investigate into these various type of fraud, then uses "deep analytics, and new tools developed by our Chinese engineers in our dedicated fraud team to combat against such fraud." The Uber spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the nature of these tools.

Comments

Re:Trying to figure out how this works...

[jaseuk]

Free rides and bonuses, that are funded from the service charges.

Re:Trying to figure out how this works...

[rhazz]

You aren't trying very hard then, since TFA clearly states that Uber is adding special bonuses and subsidies to attract drivers. They are weathering smaller profits and some losses to gain market share because there were existing players in the market.

By one account, Uber was handing drivers 300 yuan (about US$50) for every 30 trips and 400 yuan for every 40.

Seems like they need to add other metrics into their bonus system, like a minimum fare required to count towards the bonus.

run this one by me again?

[nimbius]

so the purveyors of unlicensed, unregulated public transportation services by potentially non directly employed third party contractors not required to submit to drug or background checks is complaining their service, which has been banned in spain, thailand, india and briefly germany, is being bilked for incentive payments in a country with markets for such exotiques as recycled cooking oil rendered from waste food. I guess the best solution could be to stop running an unregulated, unlicensed transit network thats been charged of raping and assaulting passengers in the past...or i guess just try another country and see if the idea of ayn rand on wheels works any better.