Uber Accused of Cashing In On Bomb Explosion By Jacking Rates (thesun.co.uk)

After a bomb exploded in Manhattan, leaving 29 injured, people leaving the scene discovered Uber had doubled their fares. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes The Sun: Traumatized families caught up in the New York bomb blast have accused Uber of cashing in on the tragedy by charging almost double to take them home. Furious passengers have taken to social media to slam the taxi firm in the wake of the blast... Uber reportedly charged between 1.4 and 3 times the standard fare with one city worker saying he had to pay twice as much as usual. Mortgage broker Nick Lalli said: "Just trying to get home from the city and Uber f****** doubled the surge price."
"Demand is off the charts!" the app informed its users, adding "Fares have increased to get more Ubers on the road." Uber soon tweeted that they'd deactivated their surge pricing algorithm for the affected area in Chelsea, "but passengers in other areas of Manhattan said they were still being charged higher than normal fares." One of the affected passengers was Michael Cohen, who is Donald Trump's lawyer, who tweeted that Uber was "taking total advantage of chaos and surcharging passengers 1.4 to 1.8 times." And another Uber user tweeted "I'm disgusted. People are trying to get home safe. Shame on you #DeleteApp."

Comments

Computer Power and Human Reasoning

[Fragnet]

It's an algorithm. The more in demand the product is, the higher the price.

Re:Computer Power and Human Reasoning

[Thyamine]

Exactly. A person was not sitting there watching the news thinking 'Excellent, we can get some extra dollars from this.' The algorithm saw more people than normal were suddenly looking for a ride, and the prices went up. From what I see, when Uber realized _why_ they tried to make adjustments, but people still complained they weren't adjusting it enough or in all areas or such.

This isn't a company trying to profit from terrorism; this is a company who has a product that is not being accused because they probably haven't had to deal with this before. And accurate news coverage during these times isn't exactly spot on; I doubt it was clear who/what/where was going on so they could accurately make all changes that in hindsight would have made sense.

Re:Volunteer and donate

[AK Marc]

Uber didn't increase the rates because there was a bomb. Uber doubled the rate because nobody was traveling to the city, only away, so to get more drivers to make the one-way unpaid trip into the city to get a fair, they were paid for the empty portion by the person who wanted the ride.

The Uber rates aren't driven by disaster, but ride requests. This wasn't an evil plot, it was effective capitalism. If we can't tell the difference between capitalism and evil, that says something about both.

Re: Market failure

[wonkey_monkey]

How about "not trying"? Uber and their drivers aren't under any greater moral imperative than anyone else to go into a potentially unsafe area to get people home.

Re:yawn

[AK Marc]

That's not a free market, that's a monopoly market. Uber isn't a monopoly. The options of cabs were still there, as well as Black Cars and limos. The artificial limits on taxis (not a free market) created the problem that Uber is trying to solve. If there were 10,000 Ubers, then Uber wouldn't ever hit boost conditions, because the load would be shared.

The "goal" in an ideal free market, is that 100% of drivers are signed up with a "ridesharing" company, and they pick up a nearby fare when headed home. But that ideal is never going to happen, so long as everyone is fighting the ride shares whenever possible.

Re:Volunteer and donate

[beamdriver]

Seriously, how stupid do you have to be to not understand this?

  There's not some sitting in Uber HQ with his hand on a knob that controls the surge amount. Surge pricing is based on an algorithm which is based on the ride data. It has no idea about terror attacks or other disasters.

Re:Volunteer and donate

[parkinglot777]

Really? Do you have the source code ?

I have to agree with GP on this. No one needs a source code to understand this but rather observe the behavior of the app in different situations (unless you have no programming concept). It is an algorithm. Uber set up an arbitrary number of requests within an area. If the request number goes up and passes the setup number, a surcharge is applied. There would be different level (e.g. multiplier) for request numbers.

If Uber intended to jack the price up because of the event, they would have to hire some people watching news on all places and adjust the ride price accordingly. Why would they need to pay extra to those people while they could simply quantify the requests within their program?

Anyway, if anyone doesn't know, Lyft have exactly the similar algorithm as well. And I believe all other share riding apps have the similar algorithm too.

I don't care for Uber, Lyft, or any share riding apps. I feel that their business model is ethically wrong. It is similar to a class action where the money actually goes to corporations and their drivers get something which is just enough to keep them going (or a bit more if they work very hard).