Slashdot Mirror
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."
"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."
Uber could cut into its 'billions of profit' and take a small hit by increasing pay to drivers while not passing the costs to customers
They did. Uber doesn't make a profit, they have massive losses (it's losing about $200 million per month). Thus cutting into that profit means taking a negative chunk away - which means INCREASING their revenue and trying to reduce their negative losses. Exactly what would happen when they surge price.
And yes, the insanity of a company that has never turned a profit, and is losing nearly $5000 per MINUTE (60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year) is still worth $70 billion and climbing, is not lost on me...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
How would you make the uber drivers go into an area they don't want to go into, if it isn't by offering them more money?? Armed police?
You ask for volunteers just like we do for most disasters.
Are all the cops volunteers who work for free?
Are all the doctors volunteers who work for free?
Are all the funeral homes going to work for free?
Are all the people who clean up and fix things working for free?
Are there ever enough volunteers?
So why are you picking on Uber?
imagine there was a pen injector device that cost $4 to make, but the people who needed it had to pay $600 for it..
And imagine that there are more than half-dozen competing devices available in Europe, but somehow they never show up in the US ... I wonder how that could happen?
It's New York City. You don't think their may have been a few yellow cabs around? You know the taxi's that are prohibited by law from raising their prices like this.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.